GEN is us, all of us! This is not a festival, it is a place to get to know each other. We trust each other, we work together across borders and across continents. It is about human beings coming together and creating community.
– Steffen Emrich at the European Ecovillage Gathering 2025

Once again, people from all around the world gathered to explore, exchange, connect – and to celebrate communities. This European Ecovillage Gathering was truly unlike none before, as this year we marked 30 years of our ever-vibrant movement, showcasing the longevity, strength and resilience of an idea coming to life again and again. In Manas Garden, Hungary, hosted by the Gyuttment organisation, we came together to tend our roots, spread our branches,harvest the fruits and plant many seeds across this world.

From 12-17th of August, we were held by the wisdom of our elders, the steadfastness of the GEN Regions, inspired by the voices of NextGEN, the youth branch of GEN and as always, in gratitude for the more-than-human world which never ceases to offer us new learnings. The space we co-created was flourishing with ideas – the workshops featured inspiring facilitators and exciting content with strong emphasis on activism, inclusion, gender topics, and political action that continue to resonate with all of us.

The 2025 European Ecovillage Gathering in Hungary was more than just a conference – it was a truly global celebration of the Global Ecovillage Network’s 30th anniversary. Representatives came from 26 European countries, 5 Asian countries, 5 countries of the American continent, 4 African countries as well as Oceania. The diversity this year created a gathering of powerful cultural exchanges and learnings like the traditional Haka performed by indigenous voices from Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Honoring Our Roots 

During the first day of the Gathering, Ross Jackson, one of GEN’s founders, transported us back to the 1970s Danish cohousing movement and his life-changing spiritual awakening in an Indian ashram. His transition from businessman to community builder led to the creation of Gaia Trust in 1987. He shared the most magical moment from the early days of GEN with us: during his 1995 Findhorn presentation about “imaginal cells” transforming caterpillars into butterflies, an actual butterfly landed on his overhead projector. That butterfly moment sparked the formation of GEN, Gaia Education and is to this day embodied in the GEN logo.

Lucilla Borio of Torri Superiore Ecovillage brought out actual historical artifacts – DVDs, photos, and a t-shirt reading “Welcome to the Future” – sharing stories of the early days when organizing globally meant expensive phone calls, faxes, and money arriving in envelopes. The dedication was extraordinary, and the creativity made it all work.

Macaco Tamerice of Damanhur Ecovillage reminded us that “money is secondary – money comes when people have ideas and believe in things.” Her work with Kosha Joubert in GEN International helped organize the movement into regions and brought government support to ecovillages in Senegal, Togo, and Burkina Faso.

Jake Jay Lewin, representing NextGEN gave us an insight into how the youth branch of GEN grew. Elliot Saxby conceived NextGEN with its rebellious spirited name, initially creating a handbook to serve younger generations. In 2013 NextGEN was revived at the Schweibenalp Gathering. Since then, NextGEN has worked to replicate GEN International’s structures at a younger generation’s level. 

Celebrating Our Global Branches

The Gathering’s second day showcased the work happening across regions, each bringing distinct perspectives to shared challenges.

CASA Latina centers “Eco-sí-nuestra” (ecology is ours, instead of Eco-No-Mía) in their work across 20 countries, emphasizing Mother Earth’s rights as they approach their 20th anniversary.

GEN Asia continues responding to immediate crises—typhoon relief, conflicts—while building resilient communities like PANYA in Thailand, with hopes to expand to Burma when conditions allow.

GEN Africa has found an interesting entry point: transforming schools into community hubs where tangible results (children harvesting fruit through windows) help demonstrate to governments that ecovillages are ongoing processes rather than just infrastructure projects.

GEN Europe’s RefuGEN project in Lesbos during the 2015 refugee crisis exemplified how community values translate into direct action.

Seeds for the Future

Anna Kovasna’s keynote acknowledged hard realities—climate crisis, extinction, injustice—while emphasizing existing resources and capacities. Her framework for resilience included protecting foundational needs. Her strategies for resilience resonated deeply:

• Protect our ground: Food security, backup systems, diversified resources
• Build trust and equity: Communities with greater fairness handle crises better
• Sail toward a beautiful destination: Maintain vision while navigating storms

The NextGEN voices contributed perspectives on creating healing spaces, building alternatives without isolation, and connecting with broader social movements while learning from activists, elders, and indigenous peoples.

Voices from the Frontline

The Ukrainian delegation bore witness to what happens when ecovillages become sites of conflict—communities destroyed, people displaced, yet the work continuing. GEN Ukraine has become a symbol of resilience amid war, their testimony situating their experience within a broader context of atrocities unfolding in Gaza, Myanmar, Sudan, and beyond.

Their invitation to the global community—”Come to Ukraine. We are waiting for you”—carried profound meaning: a refusal of being abandoned, an assertion that community-building continues even in the most difficult circumstances, and a reminder that solidarity sometimes requires presence.

Power of Communities

As a part of the Communities for Local Green Deals project Day, András Takács closed the gathering with powerful words: “Crisis means both danger AND opportunity.” His message carried the weight of decades of community-building experience—we all have power, and that power can be exercised anywhere.

Local ecological communities can exist everywhere, he reminded us—from rural villages to urban neighborhoods. These aren’t escape pods from a burning world, but laboratories where solutions are tested, where different ways of organizing emerge, where the future takes shape in the present. We’re not just surviving; we’re “crystal growing seeds of the new ecological world”—each community a node in a growing lattice of regenerative living, gradually expanding and connecting until the alternative becomes the norm.

What Participants Valued

Many emphasized the depth of connection: “To reconnect with my soul tribe, get inspired and weave new connections” and appreciated meeting people from different countries sharing ecovillage experiences. The human element mattered most: “The people. The energy. All friends, old and new.”

Participants noted learning about the movement’s broader reach: “The movement is having a bigger impact than I expected, that there is a real and strong effort to penetrate into the mainstream, weave synergies and have a large scale impact.” Others discovered: “I feel like a whole new world opened up for me that I didn’t know about before!”

The gathering offered hope: “There is hope for humanity, after all” and affirmation “that GEN has matured to be a truly global network and there is a strong core of young and committed people who will take it and grow it into the future.”

Gratitude

Deep gratitude flows to our incredible team: MCs Laura Kaestele and Macaco Tamerice, hosts Gyuttment and Manas Garden, OST coordinators, workshop facilitators, Dream Team and volunteers, MTE coordinators, EXPO coordinators (who created the best expo experience many had ever seen), and the Houseband. Petra Oberfrank’s graphic facilitation, Fanni Sall’s design and artistic work creating the visual identity and beautiful merch, Emotional Support Team, Children’s Programme Coordinators, Open Stage organizers, Translation Coordinators, and the Imaginal team all contributed to making this gathering extraordinary. NextGEN brought together youth from throughout Europe, while Gaia Education reminded us how regenerative education flows through our movement’s foundation. Lots of gratitude to our Media team who took care all of the memories stay intact, our photographer Sofija Stojanović and our videographer Andre Patrao.

Gratitude, too, to the more-than-human world. Manas Garden provided an enchanting setting, particularly at night, where the land held us, trees sheltered our conversations, and butterflies joining our sessions as gentle reminders of transformation. The gathering welcomed families, including many pregnant participants, creating space where children played while adults planned, where grasshoppers joined our circles, and where the night sky witnessed our becoming.

Looking Ahead: To Dare to Trust

In a world of uncertainty and fractured connections, perhaps the most radical act is choosing to trust—in each other, in our collective capacity, in the process of building together. Ecovillages are laboratories of trust—proof that another way of living together is not only imaginable, but already tangible.

Next year’s gathering invites us into that courageous space. July 13-18, 2026 at Nature Community, Germany, we’ll explore what it means “To Dare to Trust” in times that often counsel fear and isolation.

Registration, workshops, and program details will be available from January/February 2026.

Photos by Sofija Stojanović. Explore the full Gallery here.