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.
Connection to Land and Place
The gathering itself was structured around the elements: fire to open, water to connect, earth to deepen, air to give direction, then a coming together of all in a final day of integration.
On the first night, we lit up a physical fire in an open field, inside the compound where we gathered. Our intention was, this year again, for at least one person to sit beside it at all times as a literal fire keeper, and for most of the four and a half days, it did happen. This turned out to be a practice in itself. Tending the fire meant stepping away from the room, and missing whatever was unfolding there. In return, the ones who were in the session flow, were also aware of the ones firekeeping, brought them food, or met in small breakouts around the fire. The fire made a real tension tangible: that presence in one place is absence in another, and that a living gathering needs its attention distributed, not concentrated. It taught us this, viscerally.
It held other lessons too: that others will engage with what we build. The second morning, we discovered that the security guards had been looking after “our” fire, even warming themselves up around it in the night. Over the following days, many conversations occurred with them, connecting our Firekeepers through stories of the land.
That fire also served as a focal point for us, as fires tend to do. At night, we gathered around it to share stories. With Annoury, our photographer from Nubia, Egypt, many of us would engage in soft chanting prayers to the spirits of the fire. Around it, on the third day, Philimon from the Nile Journeys invited us all to an Ethiopian coffee ceremony. We spoke about spirits, family, religion, politics. We laughed, we hugged, and we danced too.
An expanded capacity to hold
Firekeeper gatherings involve emotional release. On the second day, water day, we returned to a practice we first engaged with at the lake of Zurich, introduced by Erin and the Healing, Reconciliation & Restoration thematic strand. We went on a mindful walk, holding a bag of stones that marked all the weight and the grief we brought with us to the gathering. Then, by a waterfall in the forest, we threw them into the water, one at a time. After which Lucia broke into song, a melancholy tune traditionally sung by Portuguese women, exploring sadness. And together, we let go.
What we noted through the gathering is an increasing capacity to hold tension. Most likely the sign of our greater maturity. Many of our Firekeepers came with a lot to hold from the outside world. Personal wounds and collective wounds interweaving. Fires, earthquakes, illness, and structures around them fraying. Yet we were able to metabolise it together.
We were also capable of holding great levels of internal tension. This was particularly clear during our Council. On the afternoon of the Third day, for two and a half hours, we engaged in this process. The Firekeepers sat in a circle, and each spoke in turn. What was coming up for them. No answers. Just a series of voices sharing what resonated for them, over two rounds. Everyone receiving, listening, letting it reverberate onwards. A second circle around them, the witness, then mirrored back what had reached them, what they witnessed, what had landed in them.. Switching circles, letting the outer circle move to the centre. What came out this year was heavy. Anger. Grief. Loneliness. Fear. But also, the recurring insight that the voices heard were not only personal. It was the field revealing itself through us. And we were able to hold its tensions. One mirroring, which sounded to us like a poem, is shared here. The next day, we were lighter.
This change in our capacity to hold is something we reflected on again, as we noted a shift in the quality of how leadership manifested. Marie-Pascale’s drawing showed it: that the World Ethic Forum was evolving into a deeply participatory space, with strong feminine energy.
An Inquiry, Not a Manifesto
Right before the gathering, our co-leads came up with a new metaphor for what the World Ethic Forum is: a sourdough mother. This metaphor resonated with the group, and guided the process itself. It had been a long-hanging question: what is the World Ethic Forum? The metaphor of a biome had not helped to clarify this in the past. And there was this recurring question of identity, especially since we don’t run “on the ground” projects or focus on any single specific issue. Well, like a sourdough mother, our purpose is not to grow larger and larger. Rather, it is to develop a culture which can then inform the process through which other doughs, to which it is added, can flourish in their own spaces and time. It is something to be tended, so that it can be given away, one piece at a time. At the World Ethic Forum we are no bakers, but we cultivate and care and give so that others can bake their own bread.
With that came a renewed commitment to our inquiry-based approach: we begin not with a manifesto or a solution, but with a question. This question itself is part of our inquiry, and in 2026, we rephrased it into this new form: “What can bring forth a culture of care and kinship, rooted in radically shared aliveness? And what collective practices and capacities can help us take responsibility for making it happen?”
As we come towards the later phases of our initial seven-year arc, this is also crystallising. To help with this movement of converging, at the end of the gathering, we formed a curation circle for the thematic strands. Firekeepers, invited by the co-leads who committed to look after each strand, and bring forward ways of sharing the core insights made in each of them – and through their interconnections – for a culture of care and kinship.
Guiding this process, we also articulated a set of principles that, we realised, had been quietly guiding our inquiry all along. Rather than fixing them in single definitions, we chose to hold them as clusters of words, meant to invite curiosity rather than ‘nailing’ or ‘pinning’ down something alive.
Honouring absence and transitions
In 2023, we set up four empty chairs in the space to mark the presence of those who weren’t physically there. We had five this year, holding space for future generations, for ancestors, for those who contributed in the past, for the voices not yet heard, and for the more-than-human. We honoured them in our process, making time for them in council as the talking stick paused with each of them. And we engaged with them in playful ways, too, decorating them with leaves and sticks and post-its. On the more-than-human, we gave space for people to write down who we thought of here: ants, rivers, flamingos.
One absence, though, was most noticeable. Linard Bardill, our founder, could not join the gathering. His vision was there at the Forum’s beginning. His absence marked a genuine transition. At the close, we sang his song, Il bös-ch rumantsch da Tamangur, together in his honour. Evoking the Swiss mountains where it all began, and trees living on after winter. It was a celebration of life and continuity, where a few tears of joy and gratitude for the journey so far were shed.
Into Nairobi
Held in Kenya, the 2026 gathering was an invitation for us to connect with the African Continent more widely. Our partner Nile Journeys accompanied us in this connection. The first morning of our gathering, we were invited to reflect on African wisdom cards. Each of us pulled a card from the centre of the circle, each bearing an image and a word that crystallised a core principle of wisdom from one part of the African Continent. This guided us as individuals through the gathering, while three cards informed us as a group. A card representing motherhood – pulled by our new Firekeeper Dr Karambu – even took centre stage in one of Marie-Pascale’s drawings.
The continent was present more broadly through consciously being greeted by four people from its cardinal directions and the Nile flowing from the heart of the continent. We were guided through a collective connection to place on Water Day, and on a closing ritual where Firekeepers from the various parts of the continent invited us to mark our gratitude again, for the North, the South, the East, the West, and the heart.
After the gathering, we continued our time together in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. There, our partner Nile Journeys organised a range of field visits to Nairobi River, Kibera, Karura Forest and the Giraffe Centre. All were ways for our visiting Firekeepers to experience, first hand, how land and people connect locally, in a large metropolis. A public event on Regenerative Impulses offered a range of ways in, from the practical to the reflective and cultural. Afterwards, some Firekeepers went on to visit local projects hosted by either witnesses or Firekeepers, seeing how a culture of care and kinship takes form in specific settings on the ground.
This was a meaningful, heart-opening, and insightful connection with a place that will host us again next year and for which we are looking forward to deepening the connections that have started to grow.