ZEG Tbilisi Storytelling Festival 2026: The Day After Tomorrow Starts Here

The word is Georgian, and it is ancient. ZEG — it means "the day after tomorrow." Not tomorrow, which is too close and too known, but the day after that: the day that is still unwritten, the day that the stories being told today will help to shape. It is a specific, beautiful choice of name for a festival, and in a city as historically layered and politically charged as Tbilisi, it lands differently than it might elsewhere.

The ZEG Tbilisi Storytelling Festival 2026 returns for its sixth edition on Friday June 19 to Sunday June 21, 2026, gathering more than 100 storytellers from across journalism, film, activism, technology, and the arts at five venues in the heart of Tbilisi's Marjanishvili district and the streets around Constitution Square. For three days, the festival fills these spaces with intimate conversations, thought-provoking panels, film screenings, performances, workshops, walking tours through historic Tbilisi, town-hall style events, and the ZEG Supra — the signature Georgian feast that has become the festival's most beloved tradition, rooted in the ancient conviction that the best conversations happen around food.

Nearly 1,000 participants from dozens of countries joined the 2025 edition. The 2026 sixth edition builds on that momentum.

Tickets and 2026 programme at zegfest.com.

The Story Behind ZEG: Founded in 2019 in a City That Offered the World a Lesson

The ZEG Storytelling Festival was born in 2019 from a partnership between two Tbilisi organisations with overlapping but distinct missions: Coda Story, the award-winning investigative journalism newsroom dedicated to covering the roots of global crises, and Impact Hub Tbilisi, a professional membership organisation supporting social innovators, enterprises, and change-makers in Georgia.

Ketevan Ebanoidze, who co-founded the festival, described the original vision with a simplicity that has defined every edition since: the festival was created to give everyone, regardless of background, a chance to talk and be inspired. It would be multi-disciplinary — bringing together journalists, artists, technologists, activists, scientists, and engaged citizens who do not ordinarily share a stage. And it would be deliberately democratic: "a very democratic festival where everyone is on the same level" — no VIP section, no separation between speakers and audience, breakfasts and lunches and receptions where the journalist from New York sits next to the activist from Nairobi who sits next to the student from Tbilisi.

In 2019, ZEG made history as the first international storytelling festival in the region — a significant claim in a part of the world that has one of the richest oral storytelling traditions on Earth (Georgia's national epic, The Knight in the Panther's Skin, was written in the 12th century, and the tradition of the tamada — the toastmaster who leads a feast through layers of poetic, philosophical, and personal speech — is still one of the most living literary forms in Georgian culture).

Five editions later, ZEG has grown from a promising debut into a genuinely global gathering that the journalismfund.eu describes as one of the most important independent journalism and storytelling events on the European-adjacent calendar. The 2025 edition drew nearly 1,000 participants from dozens of countries. The 2026 edition is the sixth — and the first in which the European Press Prize Award Ceremony is formally integrated into the programme, taking place at the Marjanishvili Theater during the festival weekend.

The ZEG Philosophy: What Makes It Different From Any Other Festival

The ZEG Storytelling Festival resists easy categorisation. It is not a journalism conference, though journalists are central to its programme. It is not an arts festival, though performance, film, and visual storytelling are consistently part of what it offers. It is not a political event, though the political reality of Tbilisi and Georgia — and the global reality of authoritarianism, disinformation, and civil society under pressure — runs through almost every conversation.

The key principles that define ZEG:

• No fixed theme: ZEG is "designed as a free-flowing conversation that does not shy away from difficult subjects" — there is no single theme each year, only the consistent invitation to examine the stories that are struggling to be heard and the perspectives that could reshape understanding
• Cross-disciplinary curation: Storytellers come from journalism, activism, filmmaking, technology, music, medicine, science, design, and every other discipline in which the ability to craft and communicate a narrative matters; the friction between these disciplines is precisely where ZEG finds its energy
• Democratic structure: Speakers and attendees are on the same level; the programme is built around conversation, not presentation — Q&A is not an afterthought but the point
• 100+ speakers, multiple parallel stages: The 2026 edition features 100+ storytellers across multiple simultaneous sessions, meaning attendees make choices about which conversations to attend and inevitably encounter multiple conversations across the three days
• The human texture: Breakfast, lunch, receptions, and happy hours are not social extras but structural elements of the festival — the idea that the connections made between sessions are as important as the sessions themselves; the ZEG Supra (the Georgian feast on the closing evening) is the fullest expression of this

The 2026 Programme: What Three Days at ZEG Looks Like

The sixth edition of ZEG (June 19–21, 2026) builds on the expanded format of recent years while adding a significant new element: the formal integration of the European Press Prize Award Ceremony at the Marjanishvili Theater.

Programme formats across the three days:

Main Stage Sessions

The main stage at 6/52 Constitution Street hosts the programme's headline conversations — the sessions featuring the most prominent speakers, the most publicly significant subjects, and the largest audience gatherings. Main stage sessions have historically included journalists reporting from conflict zones, international documentarians presenting work-in-progress, technologists examining the impact of AI on truth and narrative, and activists speaking to the specific political reality of Georgia and its post-Soviet context.

Intimate Conversations and Parallel Sessions

At the Honoré and Aprili venues on 4 Constitution Street, smaller parallel sessions run simultaneously with the main stage — intimate conversations designed for deeper engagement with specific subjects and smaller groups. These are among the most sought-after ZEG experiences: the setting is closer, the conversation more direct, and the possibility of genuine dialogue between speaker and audience more real.

In previous editions, these parallel sessions have covered subjects ranging from investigative journalism methodologies to documentary film craft; from the ethics of storytelling about trauma to the mechanics of disinformation campaigns; from mental health narratives to climate storytelling.

Film Screenings

Film — documentary in particular — is a core strand of the ZEG programme. Screenings are followed by conversations with the filmmakers, making the film programme an extension of the festival's dialogue model rather than a passive cinema experience. The 2026 film strand continues this format at the Tbilisi venues.

Workshops

The workshops programme provides hands-on skill development in storytelling craft — narrative journalism techniques, visual storytelling, audio documentary production, and other practical tools for anyone who wants to build their capacity to tell stories that matter, not just to hear them. Workshops are typically limited in size and require separate registration.

Walking Tours Through Historic Tbilisi

One of ZEG's most distinctive programme elements is the expert-led walking tour of historic Tbilisi — excursions that use the city's extraordinary physical and historical fabric as a framework for conversations about memory, identity, displacement, and the stories embedded in architecture and urban space. These walking tours have become a signature ZEG format because they make the city itself part of the programme.

The old town of Tbilisi — with its overhanging wooden balconies, sulfurous bath-houses in the Abanotubani district, the Metekhi cliff fortress above the Mtkvari River, the Orthodox cathedrals and synagogues and mosques occupying adjacent neighbourhoods in the historic city — is one of the most narrative-dense urban environments in the world, and walking through it with a guide who can connect the architecture to the living political and cultural realities of contemporary Georgia is an education that no panel can replicate.

Town-Hall Style Events

The town-hall format — open, participatory discussion events in which the boundary between speaker and audience is dissolved entirely — reflects the festival's commitment to conversation over presentation. In the context of the broader ZEG programme, the town-hall sessions are where the accumulated energy of two days of conversations comes to a head, and where the connections between different subjects begin to surface.

The European Press Prize Award Ceremony at Marjanishvili Theater

A major new addition to the 2026 ZEG programme is the European Press Prize Award Ceremony — the annual ceremony recognising the finest journalism in Europe — taking place at the Marjanishvili Theater at 8 Kote Marjanishvili Street during the festival weekend. The integration of this ceremony into ZEG connects the festival directly to the community of European investigative and narrative journalism at its highest level.

The ZEG Supra — The Georgian Feast

The ZEG Supra is perhaps the festival's most beloved tradition — and the one that most specifically grounds it in Georgian culture. A supra is the traditional Georgian feast, presided over by a tamada (the toastmaster whose role is one of the most sophisticated performative traditions in Georgian culture), in which food, wine, and speech are woven together through hours of toasts that move from the personal to the universal, from the celebratory to the elegiac.

The ZEG Supra takes this tradition and brings it to a multi-national gathering of storytellers, journalists, artists, and activists from across the world — and in doing so, it demonstrates something about the Georgian approach to conversation that the rest of the festival spends three days trying to articulate. In 2025, the Supra was prepared by star chef Tekuna Gachechiladze — one of Georgia's most celebrated culinary figures. It concludes each day's programme, at the point when the conversations begun on stage have moved into the room, and the room has become a table.

Tbilisi as a Festival Setting: A City That Understands What Stories Are For

Tbilisi is one of the most compelling capital cities in the world for a festival about storytelling. The Georgian capital of approximately 1.1 million people sits in a bowl between the forested Mtatsminda ridge and the Mtkvari River, carrying a history of invasion, conversion, renaissance, occupation, and independence that has made storytelling — in every form from the epic poem to the political pamphlet to the investigative report — a matter of genuine survival.

Key Tbilisi landmarks near the ZEG venues and worth visiting around the festival:

• Marjanishvili district: The neighbourhood where most of the 2026 ZEG venues are clustered, around Kote Marjanishvili Street and Constitution Square; a lively, gentrifying district with excellent cafés, wine bars, and restaurants alongside older Soviet-era architecture; the Marjanishvili Theater (venue for the European Press Prize ceremony) is the neighbourhood's most prominent cultural institution
• Old Town (Dzveli Tbilisi): 10–15 minutes' walk from the Marjanishvili area; the historic core of the city with its wooden balconied houses, the Abanotubani sulfur bath district, the Narikala fortress ruin above the old town, the Metekhi Church on its cliff above the Mtkvari River
• Rustaveli Avenue: Tbilisi's grand central boulevard, lined with theatres, opera houses, and Soviet neo-classical architecture; connects the Marjanishvili area to the Rustaveli/Liberty Square district
• Fabrika: The creative hub converted from a Soviet sewing factory approximately 10 minutes from the ZEG venues; outdoor terrace, bars, cafés, independent shops, and frequent cultural programming — a natural gathering point for ZEG participants between sessions
• Georgian National Museum: On Rustaveli Avenue; covers Georgian history from pre-history through the Soviet period; the Soviet occupation section is essential context for understanding the political conversations that run through ZEG
• Georgian food and wine: Georgia is one of the world's oldest wine cultures (8,000-year history of wine production using the qvevri clay vessel method, now a UNESCO Intangible Heritage); the combination of natural wine, khinkali (dumplings), khachapuri (cheese bread), and the rich tradition of Georgian vegetable dishes makes Tbilisi an exceptional food destination alongside the festival

Practical Guide to ZEG Storytelling Festival 2026

Event: ZEG Storytelling Festival 2026 (6th Edition)

Category: International Multi-Disciplinary Storytelling and Journalism Festival

Edition: 6th (founded 2019 by Coda Story and Impact Hub Tbilisi; first international storytelling festival in the region)

Dates: Friday June 19 – Sunday June 21, 2026 (3 days)

City: Tbilisi, Georgia

Scale: 100+ storytellers; nearly 1,000 participants (2025 reference); dozens of countries represented

Confirmed venues for 2026:

• Main Stage: 6/52 Constitution Street, Tbilisi
• Honoré: 4 Constitution Street, Tbilisi
• Aprili: 4 Constitution Street, Tbilisi
• TBC Concept: 7 Kote Marjanishvili Street, Tbilisi
• European Press Prize Award Ceremony: Marjanishvili Theater, 8 Kote Marjanishvili Street, Tbilisi

Programme formats: Main stage sessions; intimate conversations; panel discussions; film screenings; workshops; expert-led walking tours of historic Tbilisi; town-hall style events; ZEG Supra (Georgian feast); networking; European Press Prize Award Ceremony

Disciplines represented: Journalism, film, activism, technology, arts, music, science, design

Admission: Ticketed

Tickets: zegfest.com/tickets; tiered pricing (Tier I from 220 GEL in previous editions; 2026 pricing at zegfest.com)

Organisers: Coda Story (investigative journalism newsroom) and Impact Hub Tbilisi

Nearest airport: Tbilisi International Airport (TBS) — approximately 20–25 minutes by taxi to the Marjanishvili district

June weather in Tbilisi: 26–32°C days; 18–22°C evenings; warm and dry; long daylight; ideal for the outdoor elements of the festival including walking tours and the Supra

Official websites: zegfest.com; codastory.com

Instagram: @zegfest

June 19 to 21, 2026: The Day After Tomorrow Is Being Written Here

The world is genuinely complicated right now — "the world is on fire" is how the ZEG website opens its description of this year's festival, and it is not being dramatic. Wars, disinformation, authoritarianism, collapsing trust in institutions, and the rapid transformation of the media landscape have created exactly the environment in which a festival dedicated to the stories that help us understand what is happening becomes more rather than less necessary.

June 19–21, 2026. Tbilisi, Georgia. 100+ storytellers. Five venues in the Marjanishvili district. Film, conversations, workshops, walking tours, the European Press Prize ceremony at the Marjanishvili Theater, and the ZEG Supra on the closing evening. Tickets at zegfest.com. The day after tomorrow is already being shaped — by the stories being told at ZEG this June.

Verified Information at a Glance