Conrad Festival 2025: Radical Hope

Conrad Festival is the largest international literary event in Poland and one of the largest in Europe, as confirmed by the EFFE Award for 2019–2020. It presents world literature created in different corners of the globe, rooted in diverse cultures, growing out of diverse experiences. Artists from all over the world come to Kraków to work on the art of translation and mutual understanding again and again.

It’s a meeting place for writers, readers, professionals and amateurs who initiate intense artistic and social discussions. The event includes debates, workshops, film and theatre screenings, concerts, exhibitions, literary walks and urban games – all thanks to the cooperation of the City of Kraków, the Krakow Festival Office and the Tygodnik Powszechny Foundation.

The theme of this year’s 17th Joseph Conrad International Literary Festival in Kraków is Radical Hope. From 20 to 26 October 2025, the Kraków’s festival will host a plethora of accomplished writers. Chloe Dalton, Yan Ge, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Małgorzata Halber, Weronika Murek, Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir, Łukasz Orbitowski, Ishbel Szatrawska, Ziemowit Szczerek, Colm Tóibín are just some of them. The slogan for this year’s edition refers to the thoughts of philosopher Jonathan Lear, who in his essay Radical Hope poses a fundamental and universal question: what happens to people who experience the end of the world they have known so far. Together, we’ll consider how to live in a reality that lost all its sense (through wars or the diagnosis of an incurable illness), whether there’s any hope in such realities and, if so, in what language can we express it.

Conrad Festival traditionally also includes book industry meetings as part of the Book Congress, Reading Lessons, i.e. a series of workshops led by literature experts, and the Word2Picture cycle, which links the book industry with the audiovisual industry and invites the public to explore works created on the basis of literature – such as films, games and animations. The festival also features activities for children and families, as well as film screenings. For the eleventh time, the Conrad Award for the best prose début will be awarded to the best author.

To date, more than 1,500 writers from around the world visited the festival, including: Yuri Andrukhovych, Boris Akunin, Svetlana Aleksievich, Paul Auster, Dmitry Bukov, Jaume Cabré, Martín Caparrós, Siri Hustvedt, Han Kang, Etgar Keret, Karl Ove Knausgård, Sven Lindqvist, Amos Oz, Orhan Pamuk, Arundhati Roy, Oksana Zabuzhko, Serhiy Zhadan. Polish guests and visitors included: Joanna Bator, Jacek Dehnel, Jacek Dukaj, Janusz Głowacki, Manuela Gretkowska, Wojciech Jagielski, Hanna Krall, Dorota Masłowska, Jerzy Pilch, Andrzej Stasiuk, Olga Tokarczuk, Wiesław Myśliwski, Szczepan Twardoch, Jakub Żulczyk.