City of Women - International Festival of Contemporary Arts 2026

The City of Women festival is one of the oldest festivals, developing for thirty years and presenting feminist art across genres and disciplines. The theme and motto for 2026 will be “feminist joy.”This decision is not connected to escapism—from the problems of the world into individual pleasures—but to a firm belief that radical joy has transformative potential. Joy is not a fleeting happiness or forgetfulness; it is connected to persistent mutual care, meaning, and maintaining faith in the beauty of the world despite all its obvious and increasingly acute problems and atrocities. Joy is not a diversion of attention but an act of defiance, a refusal to renounce our humanity. To sustain and spark joy as the lifeblood of existence is an act of resistance in a time of capitalist appropriation and all-encompassing surveillance; it is a political act in an age of activist burnout, community fragmentation, pessimistic projections, and anxiety. It is a clear and loud NO to despair. At the same time, it is not naïve optimism, nor is it something we can find under the pressure of toxic positivity. We find it in unexpected places, in unanticipated encounters with inspiring people, their works, and their practices, which show us, amid chaos and meaninglessness, that it is all still worthwhile.

The festival will remain committed to interdisciplinarity, where—regardless of genre or medium—feminist ideas, sensitivities, methods, and joy are transmitted, alongside the inclusion of international guests.