Festival Brings Together Thinkers and Artists to Discuss the Future of Cities

13 Jun 2026

In 2026, the Festival of Thought – FesThink consolidates its vocation: to disseminate the exercise of contemplation, doubt, and critical appreciation of world affairs as a political act, but also as a source of enjoyment. The event, which is part of the New European Bauhaus Festival (NEB Festival), reaches its third edition in partnership with the Portuguese Foundation Centre (Centro Português de Fundações) and the iM:PACT Innovations for the Mediterranean program. Electra magazine, from the EDP Foundation, joins the initiative as a media partner.

Following the example of previous editions, it summons agents who move across the fields of Philosophy, Culture, Architecture/Urbanism, and the Environment to debate central issues of today. Find out more about the participants here.

In convergence with the theme of the third NEB Festival, "Life. Spaces. Buildings," FesThink 2026 wanders through Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, finding in the chapter "Cities and Exchanges" the guiding thread of its programming, which includes debates, a performative manifesto, and a visual arts exhibition, to be held on June 13th in Lisbon and June 14th in Tondela.

In his "last love poem to the cities," Calvino portrays 55 cities with women's names. The characters are divided into 11 themes, such as "memory," "desire," "sky," but it is in the apologues of "Cities and Exchanges" that many of these themes converge, allowing for a reflection on the city from diverse angles, based on two fundamental pillars of urban thought: the relationship between the inhabitants themselves and the relationship between the inhabitants and the spaces they occupy.

The idea of a city made by people, in continuous transformation, also leads us to reflect on the community in which we want to live. By visiting Euphemia, Chloe, Eutropia, Ercilia, and Esmeraldina, the Festival of Thought proposes to face the dualities typical of urban fabrics: construction and deconstruction, paths and lost ways, illusion and disillusionment, decadence and the hope of a promising common future.

The Festival of Thought - FesThink was born in 2022 at the Solar do Zagallos, sponsored by the Almada City Council, already as an integral part of the first edition of the NEB Festival. Held biennially, the festival celebrates the advances of the New European Bauhaus (NEB), an ecological and cultural project inspired by the Bauhaus movement of the early 20th century, which aims to bring the European Green Deal closer to citizens, promoting the green transition in our cities on a large scale. The European Commission initiative is a call to imagination and the collective construction of a sustainable future. The second edition, in 2024, was held in partnership with IFILNOVA – Institute of Philosophy of the New University of Lisbon and MIMA – International Women's Museum, in Lisbon.

Program | Lisbon

Curated by Mirna Queiroz
June 13, from 10:00 am to 7:30 pm
Where: Rua de Santa Catarina, 9

• Portuguese Foundation Centre Table: The role of foundations in promoting the principles of the New European Bauhaus. With Celeste Afonso, Francisca Rocha Gonçalves, and Kees Eijrond. Moderated by Ricardo Pacheco Garcia. 10:00 am to 11:00 am.

• Euphemia: City-square: a space of confluence, cultural exchange, social integration, and the construction of collective memory. With Joana Gomes Cardoso, Patrícia Portela, and Rosa Cabecinhas. Moderator: Carla Adão. 11:15 am to 12:15 pm.

• Chloe: The city and ties: countering violence, speed, and fleetingness, creating a sense of belonging, and embracing identities, dreams, and desires. With Carolina Flores, Raquel Lima, and Tiago Mota Saraiva. Moderator: Sofia Pinto Coelho. 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm.

• Eutropia: A city for the future, from the perspective of women: daughters, sisters, mothers, and caregivers. The possibility of social, political, and environmental justice as the foundation for democratic consolidation. With Débora Diniz, Maria Gil, and Patrícia Santos Pedrosa. Moderator: Margarida Davim. 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm.

• Esmeraldina: Fluid City. This session explores what the city can offer its inhabitants as a space that is not only physical but also mental, fostering freedom and plurality. A city open to transformation and to the "other" that enriches the urban fabric. With Abdelkader Benali, in an interview conducted by Rodrigo Tavares. 4:30 pm to 5:30 pm. Session in English.

• Ercilia: Mother-city: a solid and permanent structure that sustains the relationships established between inhabitants, with their identities, stories, and experiences. A reflection on housing policies. With Flávio Almada, Marco Martins, and Sílvia Jorge. Moderator: Sofia Branco. 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

Memories - Gonçalo Mabunda

In the same space as the debates, the public will have access to the exhibition "Zora: Revisiting the Memory of Cities," which brings together works by Bruno Pacheco, Gonçalo Mabunda, Patrícia Almeida, Felipe Barbosa, Nuno Cera, Rosa Carvalho, Manuel Botelho, Rosana Ricalde, and Vera Mota, from the PLMJ Foundation collection. Curated by João Silvério. The exhibition will be on display until June 20th and can be visited from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm.

Plastic Bitch, by Claudia Clemente

Between sarcasm and provocation, Plastic Bitch offers a visual commentary on the society of excess. In this manifesto, Cláudia Clemente — writer and filmmaker — uses her own body to enact characters that expose the contradictions of a world dominated by consumption, plastic, and increasingly artificial identities. Inspired by the tradition of artists such as Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman, and Jo Spence, Cláudia Clemente uses self-representation as a critical instrument. The body becomes a stage, a mask, and a matter of transformation, giving rise to images that challenge the gaze and refuse neutrality. More than an exercise in self-representation, Plastic Bitch proposes an incisive reflection on the present. Rampant consumerism, extreme pollution, depletion of natural resources, and massive waste production form the backdrop of a series that acts as an uncomfortable mirror of contemporary society. In this reflection, the viewer is confronted with an implicit question: to what extent have we also become products of a disposable culture?

Program | Tondela

Curated by Celeste Afonso 
June 14, from 4:00 pm to 10:00 pm
Where: Museu Municipal Terras de Besteiros - Rua Dr. Simões de Carvalho

In 2026, the Festival of Thought extends its programming to Tondela. The municipality has been deepening its strategic reflection around architecture, landscape, and sustainable development models in the Tondela-Caramulo territory.

• Portuguese Foundation Centre Table: The role of foundations in promoting the principles of the New European Bauhaus. With Celeste Afonso and Pedro Krupenski. Moderated by Ricardo Garcia, at 4:00 pm.

• Documentary: "The Dermal Landscape of Public Life: Seven Blind Walkers in the Invisible City for the One Who Sees," by Cintya Floriani Hartmann and Daniel Tércio, at 4:45 pm.

• The Cities We Do Not See - Ercilia, Euphemia and the sensible reinvention of public space: Following the screening of the documentary "The Dermal Landscape of Public Life," this conversation proposes a reflection on the invisible forms that structure the contemporary urban experience: ties, affections, sounds, textures, memory, and sensitive ways of navigating public space. With Cintya Floriani Hartmann and Daniel Tércio. Moderator: Celeste Afonso, at 5:00 pm.

• Ephemeral Drawings, by António Jorge Gonçalves, at 9:30 pm: How to draw cities made of memory, desire, and imagination? In Ephemeral Drawings, António Jorge Gonçalves creates, before the audience, a visual cartography inspired by the universe of Italo Calvino. Through real-time digital drawing, lines, shapes, and urban landscapes appear and disappear continuously, following the unstable and transitory nature of invisible cities. Between the graphic gesture and the sound composition, the performance constructs an immersive space in which image, rhythm, and thought intertwine. Each stroke becomes construction and disappearance simultaneously, as if the city existed only as a momentary relationship between bodies, sounds, and imagination.

Find out more about the participants here.