Connecting dots and moving forward, together: What happened at the 4th EAYW and why it matters now?

From 5 to 8 May 2026, almost 200 professionals from across European youth work, youth policy and research came together in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia, for the 4th European Academy on Youth Work. The room held practitioners, trainers, researchers, National Agency staff, SALTO Resource Centres, policymakers, students from five universities, and a turtle costume making its now-customary appearance to remind everyone that meaningful innovation often requires us to slow down.

They came to talk about the future. What they ended up talking about, more often than anyone expected, was what it feels like to not know what that future holds, and what that uncertainty demands of the people who work with young people every day.

This was a closing event and a bridging event at once. It marks the end of the Academy cycle under the current generation of EU youth programmes, and opens the question of what comes next. As co-facilitator Darko Marković put it on the final day, we were standing at the edge of an unbuilt bridge.

Uroš Skrinar, Director of MOVIT, opened with a simple call to action: “Let’s go together towards stronger youth work.” From the European Commission Youth Unit, Charalampos (Babis) Papaioannou joined online to remind everyone of the public consultation on the next EU Youth Strategy, a narrow window in which youth work’s place in the future framework will either be argued for or quietly lost.

Before any slides or keynotes, participants were paired up and asked: Why do you do this work? The words that filled the room were passion, impact, freedom, fun, hope, connection, curiosity and these set a tone that held for four days: this work is personal before it is institutional.

Three plenaries, one throughline

The programme was anchored by three plenary sessions. Taken together, they formed a single argument arriving from three directions: Peter Merry asked what kind of change we are in; Özgehan Şenyuva asked who we are in relation to each other within that change; and Hranush Shahnazaryan and Dermot O’Brien asked what it costs us personally to show up for it. All three, in different language, arrived at the same place: the systems are too complex for prediction, the relationships too real for politeness, and youth workers cannot sustain any of it if they neglect their own wellbeing.

Generations forward

Prof. Dr. Özgehan Şenyuva (Middle East Technical University, Ankara) delivered a friendly but uncompromising provocation: most of what we call “intergenerational” is in fact only pluri-generational – different generations sharing the same space, but without any real exchange between them. Real intergenerational work, he argued, doesn’t happen by accident. It has to be designed, it has to be able to hold disagreement, and it only means something if the people involved can come through conflict and still want to stay in the room together.

His conclusion pushed beyond youth work’s traditional boundaries. As demographic, economic and political pressures intensify, five generations now sharing the same labour market, displacement breaking family lines, digital culture fuelling generational stereotypes, youth work will increasingly need to function as community work, not just youth-specific programming.

Six deep dives

Making sense together

To download a higher resolution of the graphic, find it on the link HERE.

Beyond the plenaries and Deep Dives, a Tools Labs and a Fair showcased over 60 practices for future-oriented youth work – from futures thinking card games, virtual reality to sustainability checklists and digital youth work frameworks. And the Future Sparks, daily warm-ups mixing playful provocation with hard data, ensured that even the morning coffee fog couldn’t survive first contact with the programme. At the Ljuba & Drago bus parked outside the venue, board games from across the continent gave participants a different way to think about civic participation, conflict and futures.

On the final morning, youth work students from five European universities took the stage to present findings from interviews they had conducted with participants throughout the week. “Uncertainty is the only constant,” they observed. Youth work needs more visibility, more sustainable funding, and more honest attention to the mental health of the people doing it. Their closing line stayed with the room and was followed by a standing ovation:

 

Take good care of yourself. Youth work is a marathon, not a sprint.

The Academy closed the way it began: with an invitation to participate in something larger than the event itself. Advisory Board members Hilary Tierney and Juha Teubl-Kiviniemi reflected on what the Academy has built.

Hilary spoke about what she called “the better story.” Youth work, she argued, carries an implied promise to young people, and if we want to fulfil that promise, we have to come from the position of hope. Not the passive kind, but an activated hope that brings together curiosity, compassion, creativity, courage and conviction. “We are role models,” she said, “but we are role models in how to be human. How to deal with all the complexity and how to negotiate it together.”

Juha described the Academy as a living organism, one that has kept reinventing itself over four editions, responding to what the field needs. Whether the Academy continues in its current form remains uncertain, but Juha expressed confidence that the instrument and the spirit behind it will endure. He closed with Arthur C. Clarke: “The only way of discovering the limits of what is possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”

Sonja Mitter Škulj, the Academy’s coordinator, asked the room to keep creating spaces to think and talk about the future, whether or not the Academy continues as a project. Each participant committed to one seed of action – experimentation, being political, coaching for collective wellbeing, co-creating spaces with young people, playing and letting go, staying open to what is coming. One participant captured the essence in three words: doing our job.