September 11 – 20, 2025 | Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Today, on September 11, the Mexican-American writer Cristina Rivera Garza will open the 25th international literature festival berlin (ilb) with her keynote “Breathing Together”. The award-winning sociologist, historian, essayist, and poet has contributed to shaping the program as Curator in Residence. Thanks to her, the festival welcomes many exciting guests and authors who will present their works in Berlin for the first time. Thus, in its 25th year, the festival once again becomes a celebration of storytelling, of languages, and of literature.
From September 11 to 24, 2025, Berlin will once again be the center of the international literary scene. More than 200 contributors from literature, art, science, and civil society will take part in a program of about 110 readings, panels, performances, and workshops. Over 90 authors from more than 50 countries, including four Nobel Prize laureates, will present their work and discuss the pressing questions of our time. Fantastic, magical, seemingly trivial, but also dramatic stories reflect highly personal worlds while always describing broader contexts. At the same time, outstanding literature always remains independent of time, political events, or social upheaval.
This is demonstrated by the major literary voices in the anniversary program “A Quarter Century of World Literature”. Among the special guests are five eminent writers who have shaped the history of the festival, including two Nobel laureates, Herta Müller and Abdulrazak Gurnah, as well as the feminist icon Mieko Kawakami. Isabel Allende (joining digitally) and Arundhati Roy will add further brilliance to the anniversary. Completing the celebration are a grand revue, an artistic research project by visual artist Olga Bubich, and “Read, Read, Read”, the new festival podcast.
The festival theme GLOW attempts to capture the permeability of literature: glowing is inherently ambivalent and thus a symbol of our time. A light undefined, both beautiful and terrifying. Everything could turn for the better, yet a sense of threat lingers. At the same time, GLOW is also unmistakably the radiance of the festival itself, the glow in the evening hours when the literary community gathers in the garden of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.
Patron of the 25th international literature festival berlin is Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.