November 15, 2026 · Berlin
A day of remembrance, exchange, and shared learning

The year’s Festival of Resilience focuses on turning memory into action. The day begins with the Ceremony of Resilience, creating a collective space to remember and reflect. The remainder of the day will open into a series of working groups and conversations. They will bring together people, initiatives, and projects from diverse backgrounds to exchange experiences, learn from one another, and engage with key questions around remembrance, solidarity, and resilience.

Music, shared meals, and opportunities to connect with regional focus groups will be woven throughout the day.

Turning Memory into Action: Building Coalition

Remembrance is more than an act of looking back. It can help us understand the present, bring people together, and create the relationships we need to shape what comes next.

In 2026 Widen the Circle is honored to take on the responsibility of hosting the Festival of Resilience, an initiative originally created by survivors of the far-right attack in Halle and Wiedersdorf on October 9, 2019 and developed in partnership with Hillel Deutschland e.V.

From the beginning the Festival has been a space for self-determined remembrance, grief, resilience, solidarity, and the celebration of life. It was created so that survivors and those directly affected by violence could shape how the events of October 9 are remembered, beyond media narratives, courtrooms, and political spectacle.

As the Festival enters a new chapter with Widen the Circle, we want to build on this foundation while asking what remembrance can make possible for the future.

At the heart of this work is a shared conviction: We want to build a society in which hatred and violence have no place. Together, we can strengthen the conditions for a more democratic and resilient society. We believe that exploring history and how we remember it can bring people in rather than push them out. This feels particularly urgent in 2026. In this moment, remembrance cannot exist only as a ritual of looking towards the past, it must also help us ask what kind of society we want to live in now and what relationships, alliances, and forms of solidarity are necessary to sustain it.

This Year We Begin with Coalition, Solidarity, and Partnership

Solidarity does not happen automatically. It requires investing in relationships, trust, patient listening, and the willingness to learn across differences. It requires empathy.

Questions we may explore include: What do we need from one another to work together respectfully and effectively? How can we build coalitions across different histories, experiences, and identities without erasing those differences? What makes solidarity possible beyond moments of crisis? How do we center ourselves and others in these conversations? The Festival is intended as a space to ask, consider, and explore these questions together.

The partnership between the Festival of Resilience and Widen the Circle is itself an opportunity to explore what effective coalitions can look like and what they require from the people involved, as has been already demonstrated between the Network surrounding those affected by the attack in Hanau 2020.

A Starting Point, Not an Endpoint

The Festival is a space to listen, connect, learn, question, and imagine what comes next.

We want the conversations and relationships that have already begun and will begin at the Festival to continue after the event itself. We hope to create opportunities for practitioners, survivors, communities, and organizations to exchange experiences, strengthen alliances, learn from one another, and develop new approaches together with ongoing support from Widen the Circle.

The Festival of Resilience is not a single day. It is the beginning of an ongoing conversation that we hope to carry forward into 2027 and beyond.

In Honor of Their Memory

We gather in memory of Jana L. and Kevin S., who were murdered in the far-right attack in Halle and Wiedersdorf on October 9, 2019.

Get in Touch

To get more information about the program, participants, workshops, and opportunities to take part, please contact: Wiebke Boysen at wiebke@widenthecircle.org or register here.

We invite you to follow along as we build the next chapter of the Festival of Resilience together.

Register to receive updates and an invitation to the Festival of Resilience