TRANSEUROPA26: Reclaiming the Cloud

But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Maya Angelou

After finding the Undercurrents of new political imaginaries in Venice in 2024, and igniting Margins on Fire in Paris in 2025, the October 2026 edition of TRANSEUROPA Festival will inflate life into our breathless democracies with the Anemoi winds in Athens.

Air is global commons. The air knows no borders. The air is invisible. 

Air is an unseen, uncontrollable, and naturally shared element. Our air carries smog beyond borders, into and out of Athens, one of Europe’s most polluted cities, along with storms, rains and environmental damage. The winds stir the fire that destroys our planets. But the air is also a carrier of voice, of oxygen, a witch of light. The invisible air makes visible our intrinsic codependence, the futility of individualist and violent trajectories, and the necessity of trans-national and trans-species solidarity and organising. 

Immaterial clouds – a new air we breathe from – are a pandoras box of information and disinformation, or creation of new and alternative truth and of parallel worlds, that we – as citizens – must demand control of and pilot away from its current dangers to democracy and the most vulnerable in our societies. 

In the context of current EU policies – from the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, to the AI Act, to the European Green Deal’s focus on interconnectedness and sustainability –  tension lies between the ideals of freedom & commons and the political realities of securitized, nationalised, & digital borders. 

TRANSEUROPA is a transnational artistic, cultural and political festival organised by European Alternatives since 2007. The festival is a space of translocal activism, solidarity, and future-thinking imaginaries. 

For 4 days, we will learn to breathe as a collective – with political, cultural, and artistic activities – to rebuild and imagine a feminist, inclusive, ecological, and participatory democratic commons. 

Together, we will stir a wind of democracy that won’t be deviated by rising storms of fascism and hate. A wind that recognises the need for citizens, youth, and marginalised voices to be brought to the center and that lifts the arts to create collective visions of alternative futures. We will reclaim our commons space across air, land, water, digital, contending their privatisation, and their tyrannical, polluting control. 

Coming soon – Last edition here