Friday, September 25, at 11:30 a.m. in the Talk Area in Piazza Unità d’Italia, the 15th edition of Trieste Next will officially open with the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

After the inauguration, everyone is invited to the UniTS marquee, which hosts the Festival’s exhibition spaces, offering a rich opportunity to discover and experience cutting-edge research.

There will be eight activities, including “Cheers to Science,” “Guess the Country!”, “The Mind at Play,” “From the Sun to Movement,” and “gECO podcast.” One space will also be dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the Friuli earthquake, exploring the history of seismic monitoring and the University’s research in this field. Another space will focus on UniTS’s public and social engagement and the role of the University’s Third Mission.

Special events

All of the major events at Trieste Next 2026 will be organised by UniTS.

The Festival’s opening evening, which was previously announced around a keynote lecture by archaeologist and anthropologist Lambros Malafouris, will feature a second guest: Umberto Galimberti.

The event, “The Shape of Thought,” will take place on Friday, September 25, starting at 8:30 p.m. at the Teatro Verdi in Trieste. Admission is free, with advance registration required.

The evening will begin with a keynote lecture by Malafouris, Professor of Cognitive and Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Oxford, introduced and moderated by Gabriele Beccaria, editor-in-chief of La Stampa’s Tuttoscienze science section. Malafouris proposes looking for the origins of consciousness not within the brain, but in the space where the body, environment and material culture intersect: an idea he calls STRANGE, Situated TRANsactional GEnesis. He also applies this perspective to one of the most pressing questions of the present day: what kind of people algorithms are turning us into.

This will be followed by a talk by Umberto Galimberti, one of Italy’s most widely read philosophers, essayists and psychoanalysts, entitled “The Misadventures of Truth.” Galimberti traces a genealogy of truth throughout the history of Western thought, from the Greek alétheia to the Hebrew emet, from Plato to modern science and from Christian faith to contemporary technology. He then explores what truth appears to have become today: effectiveness. If truth is merely what works, he asks, what room is left for critical thinking, and who decides what is true? His investigation addresses the crisis of democracy, the rhetoric of populism and the dominance of artificial intelligence, starting from a fundamental conviction: giving up on truth means giving up on humanity itself.

On Saturday, September 26, the special event “Being and Thought” will feature psychiatrist and writer Vittorino Andreoli. Meanwhile, renowned sociolinguist Vera Gheno will take part in the panel “Knowledge Is Not a Solitary Pursuit”, funded by the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia. She will engage in a dialogue with Regional Councillor Alessia Rosolen and UniTS Rector Donata Vianelli on the idea of shared knowledge built through relationships and cross-disciplinary exchange.

Also on Saturday evening, science will meet music: evolutionary biologist and philosopher of science Telmo Pievani will engage in a dialogue with Deproducers – Vittorio Cosma, Gianni Maroccolo and Riccardo Sinigallia – in a performance entitled “DNA – The Show That Makes Science Sound”, combining scientific outreach with musical languages.

View the full UniTS programme at Trieste Next 2026:

Friday, September 25

Saturday, September 26

Sunday, September 27