Youth and student organizations across the world are intensifying their mobilization efforts in anticipation of the 20th World Festival of Youth and Students, set to take place in Venezuela in 2026. Framed as a historic gathering of anti-imperialist forces, the upcoming festival is expected to unite thousands of young people in a collective stand for peace, sovereignty, and social justice.
The call for participation, recently circulated among international youth movements, highlights the growing urgency of global resistance against what organizers describe as the escalating aggression of imperialism. With rising military expenditures, expanding geopolitical conflicts, and deepening economic inequality, youth organizations argue that the current global situation demands coordinated international action.
The appeal underscores that the burdens of war, austerity, and systemic inequality fall disproportionately on young people. Across continents, youth face limited access to education, healthcare, housing, and dignified employment, while simultaneously confronting discrimination, forced migration, and political repression. These realities, the statement argues, are not isolated phenomena but are structurally linked to the global crisis of capitalism and the policies of dominant powers.
Particular attention is drawn to ongoing conflicts and interventions in regions such as the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. The appeal denounces war, occupation, and economic coercion, while emphasizing solidarity with peoples resisting these conditions. It also frames the festival as a continuation of the historic anti-fascist and anti-colonial struggles that defined earlier generations of international youth movements.
Despite these challenges, the statement expresses confidence in the transformative potential of youth-led struggle. Around the world, young people are organizing, resisting, and contributing to broader popular movements, demonstrating resilience and determination in the face of adversity.
The 20th festival is envisioned not merely as an event, but as a process of collective political construction—bringing together diverse movements committed to building a world free from imperialism, colonialism, and war. Organizers emphasize that participation in the festival represents both a symbolic and practical step toward strengthening international solidarity.
As preparations continue, youth and student organizations are calling on their peers worldwide to take part in this historic moment, framing the festival as a decisive platform for advancing a shared vision of peace, justice, and equality.
Full Text of the Appeal
To the Youth and Students of the World
A CALL FOR PARTICIPATION XX WORLD FESTIVAL OF YOUTH AND STUDENTS
VENEZUELA / 2026
Nearly 80 years after the first World Festival of Youth and Students, held in 1947 in Prague under the motto “Youth Unite, Forward for Lasting Peace!” – following the victory over Nazi-fascism in the Second World War with the decisive contribution of anti-fascist resistance, USSR and the soviet people, which paved the way for a period of profound global transformations – the struggle for peace, against fascism and imperialist war, once again takes on the utmost importance.
Imperialism represents the most serious threat facing the youth and peoples of the world today. The increase in military spending, the arms race, war, occupation, interference, economic, military, and political coercion are all fostered by imperialist polices, such as does by USA, NATO and EU, to impose its diktats and domination, assaulting the rights and aspirations of youth, workers, and peoples. The intensification of imperialism’s aggressiveness reflects the crisis of capitalism, the relative decline of the US and the other G7 powers, and the growing economic development and role in international relations achieved by other countries.
The promotion of destabilization, coercion, aggression, the worsening of capitalist exploitation, the attack on the people and worker´s rights, and the anti-democratic, reactionary, fascist concepts and forces, emerges as a resource to try to stop the advance of the peoples’s struggle for their rights, sovereignty, development, and social progress. Developments require the strengthening of the struggle of the peoples and youth for Peace, sovereignty and rights against imperialism.
The genocide of the Palestinian people, the continuous bombings of Lebanon and the aggression against on, peoples of the Middle East, the conflict occurring in Ukraine making suffer both peoples, interference and conflicts in Africa, the threats of military aggression is USA against Venezuela and Colombia, the blockade of Cuba and interference in Latin America, the militarization of the Asia-Pacific, show how far imperialism and monopolies are willing to go to achieve their objectives.
It is upon the youth and the peoples that the costs fall: the costs of the arms escalation, wars, the “so called” flexibilization of labour laws, the privatization of public services, the rollback of social rights, while the profits of economic and financial groups, including the war industry, grow.
The youth of the world feel the consequences of these policies. Millions lack sufficient food, access to clean water, basic hygiene conditions, basic healthcare, including sexual and reproductive health and mental health, or access to education, work with rights, housing, the conditions to start a family and live autonomously, culture, sports, or leisure.
Many young people, in their own countries or in the countries to which they were forced to emigrate or seek refuge, face situations of discrimination, racism, xenophobia, and violence, particularly fostered by reactionary and fascist forces.
This reality is accompanied by an intense ideological offensive aimed at dividing, disorienting, and paralyzing the organized struggle of the people, workers and the youth.
However, reality is demonstrating that imperialism is not omnipotent. All over the world, young people are resisting and fighting, also participating in the resistance and struggle of their peoples, with their confidence, joy, dedication, and creativity, overcoming obstacles and difficulties, opening perspectives for a fairer and better world without exploitation, a world of social justice and equality.
The struggle for the interests and aspirations of youth is an integral part of the anti-imperialist struggle, the struggle for liberation, peace, sovereignty, freedom, democratic rights, and the achievement of social and national emancipation, Progress in favour of peoples and the revolutionary society.
The XX World Festival of Youth and Students will take place in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in 2026 and will constitute a significant moment in the anti-imperialist struggle, continuing the legacy of struggle for peace and internationalist solidarity of the democratic youth of the world.
The participation of young people from all over the world in the XX World Festival of Youth and Students will be an important demonstration of unity, determination, and confidence in the youth’s struggle for rights, for peace, for a world of justice and social equality.
The XX World Festival of Youth and Students will be an impressive moment of solidarity with the Palestinian people, with the Latin American and Caribbean peoples, with all the peoples of the world who resist imperialist aggression and interference.
The XX WFYS will result from a collective construction, led by thousands of young people who identify with the principles and character of the Festival movement, who fight for a world free from imperialism, any form of colonialism, fascism and zionism for a world of peace and cooperation among peoples.
We call upon the youth and students of the World to, from their own countries, join the antiimperialist struggle, contribute to the construction, and participate in the XX World Festival of Youth and Students, in Caracas, Venezuela, in 2026.
FOR PEACE AND SOLIDARITY, WE STRUGGLE AGAINST IMPERIALISM AND WAR!
