A note from Anna Kynthia Bousdoukou, iMEdD Co-Founder and Non-Executive Head of Steering Committee, SNF Dialogues Initiative Executive Director on the occasion of the SNF Nostos 2026
The conferences I remember years later are rarely the ones that gave me answers. They’re the ones that left me with better questions.
And more often than not, those questions emerged from a conversation with someone I wasn’t expecting to meet. For example, think about a chat between:
– A standup comedian and an investigative journalist.
– A sports icon and a robotics engineer.
– A Hollywood actor and a pioneering surgeon.
– An award-winning AI journalist and a climate expert.
At first glance, these sound like unlikely pairings. Yet at SNF Nostos 2026, people who you would not expect to cross paths will find themselves sitting around the same table.
From June 21–28 at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) in Athens, the open-to-all festival will once again bring together people from different regions, disciplines, generations, backgrounds, and perspectives. Not to agree on everything, but to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, and learn from one another.
This year’s gathering feels particularly special, as it also marks 30 years of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and three decades of supporting initiatives across countries, fields, and communities.
That spirit will be reflected throughout the program.
As iMEdD, we’re fortunate to contribute to SNF Nostos in different ways, from co-curating the program to opening journalism to the public through the iMEdD Station.
There, visitors will have the opportunity to meet journalists from Greece and around the world, see how stories are produced, and engage with new storytelling formats, including a Live Journalism session.
And once those conversations start, SNF Dialogues picks up the thread.
Since 2017, Dialogues has sought to create spaces where different voices can come together to discuss issues that affect us all. At Nostos 2026, that conversation continues through talks led by members of the Dialogues community, a large intergenerational fishbowl discussion on what ethos means today, and a chat with artist Jean-Michel Jarre.
Perhaps that’s why SNF Nostos has never felt like just an event to me.
It has always felt like an invitation to pull up a chair at a table with people you might never otherwise meet and see where the conversation takes you.
