In cities around the world—including Sofia—our daily routes pass through fragmented geographies: between gated complexes and informal zones, neglected communities and speculative landscapes, between memory and forgetting, urgency and stagnation. Yet within this fractured environment, poetic, resilient, and resistant pathways continue to emerge.
The second edition of the Nine Elephants Festival took place from July 10 to 20, 2025, under the title “Fantastic Routes,” once again presenting artistic interventions and research across the city and its periphery. For the first time, we organized Sofia Performance Night, and through the symposium Imagining Cities, as well as the research program Urban Storytelling School (in collaboration with C*SPACE Berlin and Център за социална визия), the festival acquired an international dimension.