Transpoesie 2026: Where voices meet

The 16th edition of the international contemporary poetry festival Transpoesie is taking place in Brussels during 17-19 September 2026. Cătălina Bălan will represent Romania this year and become part of the Romanian voices on display in the past years since its beginning:

Official communication:

„EUNIC Brussels invites poets, poet-performers and poet-translators to participate in this year’s edition of Transpoesie: Where Voices Meet, a thematic exploration of language, space, and poetic resistance through and within translation.

„We are looking for poets whose work engage with: • translation as creative practice;   • local histories, ecological  knowledge, or community memory;  •  geography, displacement,  or peripheral territories;  •  multilingual practices, code-switching,  accent, or linguistic friction;  •  experimental, performative, or oral  approaches to poetry ; •  minor, endangered, migrant, hybrid,  or “unofficial” languages; •  local foregrounds, situated voice and untranslatable experiences;

We particularly welcome those who work at the intersection of language and space, writers whose poetry emerge from borderlands, diasporas, rural or marginal regions, and in doing so explore how meaning shifts across cultures, histories, and territories/regions. Similarly, we particularly welcome writers whose languages are considered vulnerable or endangered within their respective countries or regions. Transpoesie is interested in poetic practices that embrace fragmentation, repetition, silence, multilingual layering, and productive misunderstanding. We seek voices  that are authentic and thought-provoking.„

EUNIC Members taking part in the project : Austrian Cultural Forum, Instituto Cervantes Brussels, Czech Centre Brussels, Permanent Representation of the Republic of Estonia to the EU, Liszt Institute, Hungarian Cultural Centre Brussels, Permanent Representation of Lithuania to the EU, Embassy of Luxembourg in Brussels, Polish Institute Brussels, Cultural Service of the Embassy of Portugal in Brussels, Romanian Cultural Institute in Brussels, Embassy of the Republic of Slovenia in Brussels

EUNIC Associate Members taking part in the project : Etxepare Euskal Institutua

And Embassy of the Republic of Estonia in Belgium, European Commission, Representation of the Commission in Belgium, It Skriuwersboun, Northern Ireland Executive Office, Scottish Government EU Office