European Youth Week

Welcome to the European Youth Week 2026, an event organised by the European Commission every second year to celebrate and promote youth engagement, participation and active citizenship all over Europe and beyond.

It will take place from 24 April to 1 May 2026.

This edition will be dedicated to ‘Solidarity and Fairness’. We will celebrate 30 years of volunteering in Europe with an exhibition dedicated to Europeans who have made a difference in society. 

The week will kick-off on 24 April 2026 at the European Parliament in Brussels with over 1000 participants, mainly young people, who will exchange their ideas and views during a full day of activities. The kick-off event is co-organised by the European Commission and the European Parliament. 

The plenary session will take place from 9.15 to 11.00 am (Brussels time) in the Hemicycle of the European Parliament, which will open with video messages from Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission and Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament. Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, Director General of the Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture will moderate a high-level session featuring dynamic paired conversations between high level speakers and inspirational young people: 

• Nela Riehl, Member of the European Parliament and Yuliya Ralko, Belarusian youth advocacy expert and journalist
• Glenn Micallef, European Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport and Magnus Lenngren, Vice President of Red Cross Youth Norway
• Marios Panayides, Permanent Secretary at the Cyprus Ministry of Education, Sport and Youth and Lars Westra, EU Youth Delegate to the United Nations
• Rareș Voicu, President of the European Youth Forum and Anastasia Andreou, Digital Communications Expert and Inclusion Advocate.

Watch via the livestream below! 

Programme

How to get involved

Want to learn more about EU opportunities and policies? Discuss topics that matter to you and engage with policymakers? Organise and take part in all sorts of activities across Europe and beyond? Get inspired by stories of other young people? 

Reach out to your National Agency for Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps and the Eurodesk network for more information.