AUFKLÄRUNG IN ZEITEN DER VERDUNKELUNG
3–11 October 2026 · Canetti House · 12 Slavyanska Street · 7000 Ruse, Bulgaria
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THE INTERNATIONAL LITERATURE FESTIVAL RUSE
For almost two decades, the International Literature Festival Ruse has established itself as a cultural forum with a strong European and international presence. Bringing together contemporary literature and the arts, the festival creates an open space for encounters between authors, ideas and audiences through readings, discussions, film and visual arts.
At the heart of the festival is the Canetti House – an alternative cultural space closely connected with Ruse and the memory of Elias Canetti. Here, literature becomes more than text: it becomes conversation, encounter and shared experience.
In 2026, the festival celebrates its 19th edition, from 3 to 11 October, under the motto POLYLOGUE – THE VOICE OF REASON. The events of the 19th Literary Festival will take place at the Canetti House, the ‘Lyuben Karavelov’ Regional Library and the Library of Angel Kanchev University of Ruse.
At a time of competing realities, accelerating media environments and growing polarization, the festival asks what literature can contribute to our understanding of the present – and how dialogue, memory and critical thought can resist simplification and informational noise.
This year’s programme brings together Bulgarian and European voices whose works cross borders between languages, generations and experiences. Migration and belonging, memory and historical trauma, identity and displacement, the relationship between the virtual and the real, and the dialogue between literature, journalism and film form some of the central threads running through nine days of encounters in Ruse.
POLYLOGUE is an invitation to listen to different voices without reducing them to a single one – and to rediscover literature as a space in which reason, imagination and human experience can meet HERE and NOW.
The festival is organised with the financial support of the ‘Culture’ programme of Ruse Municipality, the Goethe-Institut in Sofia, the Embassy of the Republic of Austria in Bulgaria and our other partners:
