From 16 to 19 May 2026, EFFEA Artists and Festivals joined the European Festivals Association (EFA) in Budva, Montenegro, for the EFA Arts Festivals Summit 2026. They arrived alongside EFA Members, EFFE Hubs, alumni of The Festival Academy, cities and regions, speakers and guests for four days of conversations, artistic encounters and time together.
EFFEA brings festivals together to support emerging artists and develop collaborations across borders. EFFEA Artists and Festivals selected under previous calls were invited to the Arts Festivals Summit, where they met the wider EFA community, discussed festivals, the arts and politics with 209 delegates from 42 countries, and built connections beyond the EFFEA project itself.
What do we do for artists? What do artists think we do for them?
On 18 May, before leaving Budva for a full working day in Cetinje, delegates gathered over coffee for the Breakfast Talk “EFFEA Artists in focus: festivals as a platform for emerging artists”. EFFEA Artists Alessandro Brusinaro, Georgia Tsangaraki, Daniela Tomaz and Jorge Losana exchanged with festival representatives, Platform Members, Jury members and other cultural professionals about what support for emerging artists means in practice.
Alessandro Brusinaro spoke about how EFFEA made international collaborations possible that would otherwise have been difficult to finance, especially with the limited resources available to smaller cultural organisations. The residency helped create new relationships and gave more credibility to his work. Some of those contacts later opened doors to other projects and funding opportunities.
Georgia Tsangaraki brought another question to the table: how does an artist approach a festival and start such a collaboration in the first place? Her experience opened a conversation about the importance of meeting people, becoming visible and having access to professional networks.
For Daniela Tomaz, when festival programmes return repeatedly to the same established names, fewer opportunities remain for emerging artists and new ideas. EFFEA can give festivals the means to make a different choice.
From the festival side, Gabriele Ribis from EFFEA Festival Piccolo Opera Festival spoke about the challenges of finding the right partners, particularly in specialised fields such as opera, where the most relevant organisation may not always be a festival.
Beyond borders
The question of long-term collaboration also emerged during the session “Beyond Borders: Regional and Cross-border Collaborations”, which brought together around 50 festival representatives and cultural professionals. The conversation explored why festivals collaborate across borders, what makes those partnerships sustainable and how networks can create relationships that last beyond the timetable of a funded project. EFFEA and EFA themselves became examples in this discussion. EFFEA creates a concrete reason for festivals in different countries to begin working together. But what happens when the residency ends? How can those first collaborations continue? Participants spoke about moving from a project-based approach towards a relationship-based one: accompanying artists for longer, keeping exchanges between festivals alive and creating new collaborations together.
Participants from the Balkans and other parts of Europe spoke about cultural contexts that may be geographically close while remaining institutionally fragmented. Trust, continuity and informal professional relationships were repeatedly identified as essential to sustaining cooperation.
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Beyond the sessions
Not everything happened around a meeting table. Throughout the four days, the EFFEA Space was a meeting point for anyone curious about the programme: somewhere to stop, ask a question, meet an Artist or Festival, or start a conversation that might lead somewhere else. The EFFEA Generation #3 movie was also shown during the Summit, bringing some of the artistic journeys and experiences of the previous EFFEA Residencies into Budva.
And there was Budva itself. Between sessions, conversations continued over meals, through the narrow streets of the old town and against the backdrop of the Adriatic and the Montenegrin mountains. These less planned moments were also part of getting to know the people behind the projects and festivals. As Simon Mundy reflects in his Budva portrait, the place became part of the experience too: a reminder that bringing a network together is as much about discovering each other and the places we come from as it is about the meetings on the programme.
Daniela Tomaz, who has been part of several EFFEA generations (Generation #1, #3, and #4), shared what joining the Summit meant to her:
“The EFA Summit 2026 in Budva, Montenegro was a truly memorable experience. Thanks to the EFFEA grants, I had the opportunity to finally participate and discover the EFA community, a network full of inspiring and driven people, and rethink my own professional path.”
What comes next?
On the final morning of the Summit, EFA Members gathered for the Association's General Assembly, where 18 new festivals were welcomed into EFA. Among them was Piccolo Opera Festival, represented by Gabriele Ribis.
EFFEA participation and EFA membership are separate, but one can lead naturally towards the other. For EFFEA Festivals that want to stay connected beyond a residency, membership is a way of remaining part of the conversations, encounters and collaborations that continue throughout the year – with festivals, cities, artists and partners across Europe and beyond.
In 2027, EFA turns 75. It began in Geneva in 1952, when conductor Igor Markewitch and philosopher Denis de Rougemont brought together 15 festivals around an idea that still feels remarkably current: that festivals have a role to play not only in the arts, but in the societies, Europe and the world in which they exist. Seventy-five years later, that conversation continues across a network of around 130 individual members – music, theatre, dance and interdisciplinary festivals – together with national festival associations and cultural networks in 40 countries.
The next Arts Festivals Summit will take place in Athens from 18 to 21 April 2027, hosted by EFA Member Athens Epidaurus Festival. It will be a special occasion to mark those 75 years, look back at where the network has come from and, above all, continue the conversation about what festivals are for today.