SNF Nostos

SNF Nostos gathers concerts, public talks, sport and a philanthropic conference into a single week, free of charge, on the grounds of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Kallithea. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s festival is expected to return in late June 2027, holding to the window of its previous editions: the 2026 festival ran from 21 to 28 June, the 2023 edition from 20 to 23 June.

The fixture began in July 2012 as a conference on the role of foundations, convened by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation with the European Foundation Centre, and grew across 12 consecutive editions into a full festival week. The foundation postponed the 2024 conference to concentrate resources on its $1 billion Global Health Initiative, which is building new hospitals in Greece to designs by Renzo Piano, and revived the festival in June 2026 to mark 30 years of its grant-making.

The 2026 edition, its concert programme produced with Release Athens, opened with David Byrne on the Great Lawn on 21 June and brought Gorillaz to Plateia Nerou on 25 June, while the SNF Nostos Conference gathered the foundation’s grantee-partners in four themed ‘Houses’ under the theme ‘Humanity at the core’. The SNF Nostos Run crossed central Athens on 23 June to finish at the Cultural Center, and participants across the week included Giannis Antetokounmpo, John Cleese and Willem Dafoe.