To mark EUSTORY’s 25^th anniversary, Körber-Stiftung’s multi-day festival aims to inspire hope in difficult times. We invite people from a variety of professions, backgrounds, and age groups to share and discuss ways how to engage with our past in a responsible, courageous, and forward-looking manner.

Our Topics

• Making Peace with History: reflections and best practise how to tackle history when it is contested and emotionally burdened.
• Who Owns the Past: reflections and best practice on coping with struggles over memory and painful gaps in public commemoration, as well as on the potential of history to promote social cohesion.
• Memory Meets Machine: orientation on future trends and strategies concerning the challenges and opportunities that history and commemoration face by AI, ChatGPT and social media.

Our programme will include

• Hands-On Workshops to experience and discuss meaningful approaches to transformative educational experiences and tools for current challenges
• Deep Dives by keynote speakers and panelists as food for thought
• Dialogue Across Borders to share and discuss potential solutions to urgent challenges and to enlarge your professional network
• Meet Hamburg when local organisations open their doors to offer a glimpse behind the scenes of innovation in civic education
• Young perspectives on histories that matter at the “Roots and Reels” Award Ceremony
• For this year’s EUSTORY history competition prize winners aged 16-20, we offer a Youth Workshop how to apply Constructive Journalism to historical storytelling as part of the festival

The festival schedule will be updated regularly.

Have a glimpse into our festival days.

The EUSTORY Past Forward Festival brings together people from many different backgrounds, countries, and life experiences. We want this diversity to be a source of strength and create a space where everyone can take part fully, be heard, and feel that they belong.

We’re aware that imbalances of power dynamics and discrimination can surface, sometimes without anyone intending them. For that reason, our team will be on site for the full duration of the festival, ready to listen and to help foster dialogue if needed. If something has made you feel uncomfortable, excluded, or unfairly treated — whether it happened to you or you noticed it happening to someone else — please don’t hesitate to come to our HelpDesk. You’ll find us approachable and everything you share will be treated in confidence.

Creating a festival where people feel free to engage, disagree, and learn together is a shared responsibility.

Our work is guided by Körber-Stiftung’s guiding principles and by the EUSTORY Mission Statement — we encourage you to take a look.

We’re looking forward to welcoming 200 professionals, practitioners, and young activists of history and civic education from across Europe and beyond.

The application for the EUSTORY Past Forward festival is open to experts, practicioners and activists from the field of history and civic education as well as to alumni from EUSTORY history competitions. For accepted participants, participation at the festival is free of charge. Lunch, dinner and coffee breaks during the festival will be provided.

However, participants are responsible for financing and arranging their own travel to and stay in Hamburg. We highly recommend booking your train or flights to and accommodation in Hamburg as early as possible after the confirmation of participation to secure the best prices.

We offer a limited number of conference scholarships and tickets for EUSTORY alumni that cover travel costs and accommodation in Hamburg. You can apply for those during the registration process.

Our aim is to ensure a diverse mix of participants. As places are limited, we may need to maintain a waiting list.

We are looking forward to meeting you at the festival in September!