Firekeeper Gathering 2026: Nairobi

Nairobi, Kenya.

Firekeepers tend to the living flame at the heart of our inquiry into a culture of care and kinship rooted in radically shared aliveness. Like the keepers of an ancestral hearth, they help sustain the field of care and responsibility, ensuring that the space honours the interdependence of all beings.

Firekeepers come together as a body once a year to form a physical Firekeeper Circle. Throughout the year we gather online, tending to the flame. At the yearly gatherings, through facilitated experiences, deep listening, and embodied reflection, we track, deepen and strengthen the collective practices and capacities that form the preconditions for a culture of care and kinship – evolving towards radically shared aliveness.

You can read more about What Happens at a Firekeeper Gathering here.

In 2026, the World Ethic Forum gathered on the African continent for the first time. With the support of our partner organisation Nile Journeys, we were hosted in Kenya, at Brackenhurst, among the tea fields of Limuru.

For everyone, this shift in place marked a change in the quality of our connection. In 2026, the gathering started to feel properly like a field, or a frequency to tap into: wider, freer, less heavy. Maybe the longer time we spent together contributed: we extended the gathering, from two and a half days to four and a half, to allow for more depth.

Yet even as we transitioned our place of gathering, and with changes in the scenery and culture, continuity remained. It was there in the bodies of the Firekeepers themselves, some present from the beginning, ready to welcome those who had joined more recently. It was there in the ongoing thread of our inquiry and daring to be with the not knowing. It was there materially, in the form of ashes carried from the previous year’s fire, and water brought from Pontresina in a jug shaped from Pontresina clay. It was there, with our intention to lean in, listen to, and further deepen our practices for a culture of care and kinship.

Read a longer reflection on the 2026 gathering.

Video Snapshot

Visual Impressions

By various Artists

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Multi-day Gathering

The World Ethic Forum, in close collaboration with Nile Journeys, is delighted to announce its next in-person, multi-day gathering, taking place in Nairobi, Kenya, from June 27 to July 4, 2026.

This inspiring collaboration weaves the World Ethic Forum’s global community of firekeepers with Nile Journeys’ long-standing work across the Nile Bioregion, where ecological regeneration, cultural renewal, and community-led leadership are practised in daily life, honouring the diverse contexts. This partnership reflects a shared commitment to grounding global conversations and learning in local realities and their respective applications. A commitment to aligning, cross-pollinating and supporting across.

Over seven days, the gathering brings together bioregional stewards, practitioners, artists, thinkers, and community leaders from around the world to deepen the inquiry of our radically shared aliveness, strengthen relationships across difference, and cultivate shared capacities for care, agency, and planetary stewardship. The convening unfolds through two interconnected phases: the Firekeeper Circle Gathering and a public event open to wider participation.

These gatherings create space for deep listening, dialogue, connection, and shared sense-making, rooted in lived experience, diverse cultural wisdoms, and place-based practice.

Invitation Only

Firekeepers Circle Gathering

June 27 – July 1, 2026

The gathering opens with the annual in-person convening of the Firekeepers Circle, a core stewarding body within the World Ethic Forum. Firekeepers are people deeply engaged in their own communities and organisations, and who are dedicated to the collective inquiry through the Forum’s long-term work.

This phase of the gathering is deeply relational and by invitation only. It focuses on deepening trust, inquiry, and shared orientation across the Forum’s thematic strands and ongoing initiatives. Through dialogue, reflective practice, ceremony, and artistic expression, the Firekeeper Circle tends to the conditions that allow the World Ethic Forum to remain grounded, responsive to current unfolding, and fostering aliveness.

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