The next European Poet of Freedom Festival, titled Points of Contact,will take place in Gdańsk from 16 to 18 April 2026. This will be the ninth edition of the event organised by the City Culture Institute. The leading theme will set the course for conversations and meetings and has been proposed by the Festival’s Programme Council, once again composed of Magdalena Kicińska and Małgorzata Lebda. Prior to the festival, at the end of February 2026, six volumes by the poets shortlisted for this edition of EPF will be published. The visual design of the books is by Maciej Bychowski. With these additions, our library of translations will reach 63 titles.

Since 2010, European Poet of Freedom has presented contemporary poetry from across the continent, enabling Polish audiences to meet its authors and focusing on poetry as a starting point for conversations about the world around us. EPF is a biennial literary festival, an international poetry award and a publishing series showcasing the most compelling contemporary poets in outstanding Polish translations.

POINTS OF CONTACT
In 2026, the festival will be held under the theme Points of Contact. We understand these as shared spaces in which stimulating encounters take place – both along the reader–text axis and face to face. Points of contact create the conditions for dialogue, conducted with respect and an openness to doubt.

‘We are also interested in what hinders contact: the edges of chaos on which we operate today’, says Magdalena Kicińska, co-author of the concept. ‘A war next door, genocides viewed on a phone screen, political polarisation increasingly translating into aggression in everyday life – these are just some of the threats surrounding us. Other processes affect us too, such as the development of artificial intelligence or accelerating climate change and its consequences. All of this gives rise to justified anxiety, which many of us struggle to cope with’, Kicińska explains.

We believe that poetry can be a space in which solutions are forged, and we want to seek them together with the festival’s guests and audiences. The event will take place from 16 to 18 April and will, as always, include meetings, discussions, poetry walks, a slam and artistic events. We will also meet the poets and translators shortlisted for the European Poet of Freedom City of Gdańsk Literary Award.

SHORTLISTED VOLUMES
The festival’s theme, rooted in contemporary realities, is closely linked to the threads and tendencies present in the work of the shortlisted authors. Their poetry directly addresses present-day challenges: the experience of migration, the role of women in the twenty-first century, non-heteronormative identities, the struggle for inner freedom in repressive realities, and questions of Europe’s heritage amid a crisis of values. The shortlisted volumes are firmly rooted in lived experience.

The European Poet of Freedom 2026 poetry series will reach bookshops in February 2026. We invited graphic designer Maciej Bychowski to design the series; he has moved away from illustrative covers in favour of typography. ‘The title became the sole element that generates meaning’, Bychowski explains. ‘Set out to resemble the notation of a poem, close to the thinking of concrete poetry, it subtly shifts interpretative emphases. A fixed, orderly typographic layout provides a background and point of reference for this variability’.

In February, the following books will be released:
Amina Elmi, With All My Love – poems selected and translated from Danish by Bogusława Sochańska
Nora Iuga, The Circle’s Captivity – translated from Romanian by Enormi Stationis
Laima Kreivytė, States of Weightlessness – poems selected and translated from Lithuanian by Dominika Jagiełka
Luigi Nacci, How Light Passes. Poems from 2004–2024 – selected and translated from Italian by Joanna Ganobis
Roger Robinson, A Portable Paradise – translated from English by Bartosz Wójcik
A.E. Stallings, The Other Side of the Detail. Poems from 1999–2024 – selected and translated from English by Janusz Solarz

The winners of the upcoming edition of the European Poet of Freedom City of Gdańsk Literary Award will be announced in spring of 2026. The award honours both the poet and the translator of the winning volume.

The prize is funded by the City of Gdańsk. The organiser of the prize and the festival, and the publisher of the series, is the City Culture Institute.

The project is financed by a targeted grant funded by the City of Gdańsk.

The publication of volumes by Amina Elmi, A.E. Stallings, Laima Kreivytė and Luigi Nacci was co-funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage from the Cultural Promotion Fund.