AALFIE, an award-winning, multilingual, multi-form celebration of literature and ideas, will unfold in its 2026 edition under the theme:

Literature & Art as an Antidote to Tribalism

The rise of populism across Europe, laid bare in moments such as Brexit rather than born from them, has exposed how deeply nationalistic and xenophobic discourses already course through the continent’s political imagination. We feel this raises a deeper question: what collective vision remains beyond borders, exclusions, and fear? And could this uncertainty create space for those on the margins of Europe to imagine and shape a different future  – one capable of igniting renewal across the continent? Can literature and art offer a shared language against populism and wall-building? Can stories make strangers kin?

We pose it not as a statement, but as a question – a provocation.

Through panels, performances, keynotes, one-person plays, read-a-thons, dance, and music, artists will move through this theme across multiple voices — and in as many languages as echo through Europe’s homes and streets, reaching up to eighteen languages in previous editions, including the languages of migrant communities across Europe, held here not as an afterthought but as an equal presence within the festival’s linguistic landscape. And, as ever, the festival will make room for the unruly and the tender: for playfulness, free-spirited encounters, flirtation, laughter, and the erotic and sensual traces that have stirred through its atmosphere since the very beginning.