IB Festival of Hope
We can’t believe it’s February already! As we go full steam ahead this year, we wanted to take a moment to share an update with our community on the breadth of work that has taken place across IB youth initiatives over the past year.
2025 marked a period of growth and consolidation. New structures were established, existing initiatives expanded, and youth participation continued to shape how the IB engages with young people globally. What follows is a snapshot of key developments and highlights from across this work.
Festival of Hope
Throughout 2025, the Festival of Hope continued to provide spaces for youth-led dialogue and participation. The initiative supported 15+ in-person festivals across regions including Jakarta, Bologna, Mombasa, Astana, Lima, North Carolina, São Paulo, and the Galápagos Islands.
Together, these events engaged thousands of students and educators in locally rooted gatherings shaped by youth priorities, with a focus on wellbeing, identity, peace, conflict, and collective action. The Festival of Hope marked its third anniversary, reaching more than 10,000 IB and non-IB students annually across 90 countries, with participation from over 1,000 schools
Global Youth Action Fund
The Global Youth Action Fund supported youth-driven action across communities worldwide. In 2025, more than 1,000 projects were submitted from over 100 countries, with 110 projects supported across 44 countries. Youth contributors engaged more than 100,000 people, mobilised over 1,300 volunteers, and reached millions through local and media-based storytelling. These initiatives reflect community-rooted solutions addressing environmental sustainability, wellbeing, inclusion, and access.
Youth Advisory Council (YAC)
The IB launched its first Youth Advisory Council (YAC) in October 2025. From more than 1,400 applicants across 92 countries, 12 students were selected to represent the perspectives of approximately 2 million IB students worldwide.
Following an initial onboarding meeting in September, the Council met in person at the IB Global Conference in The Hague, where members engaged in dialogue with IB leadership, including Director General Olli-Pekka Heinonen, and organised themselves into four working committees.
Since its launch, the Council has moved from establishment into early implementation. Since meeting in person, the council have held 2 quarterly meetings virtually and have been working on committee-based initiatives in collaboration with respective IB departments.
IBlieve
In 2025, the IB continued to strengthen pathways for youth engagement through its partnership with IBlieve, a global, student-led organization created by and for IB students. The collaboration supported access to academic resources, mentoring, and peer support, reaching more than 72,000 individuals across 177 countries. During the year, IBlieve launched three new initiatives: an online community for peer connection, an IBDP Starter Kit to support incoming students, and a student-led YouTube advice channel.
Youth Ambassador Program
In partnership with HundrED, the IB supported two global cohorts of the Youth Ambassador Programme in 2025. The programme received 1,915 applications, with 600 Youth Ambassadors selected from 91 countries.
Across the year, participants engaged in 96 workshops, with a 62% completion rate. Of those who completed the programme, 73.5% were developing or scaling their own social impact projects by the end of the experience. The programme continues to support peer connection, learning, and experimentation across diverse contexts.
Generation Global
In 2025, the IB acquired Generation Global, strengthening its work in dialogue based learning and intercultural understanding. Generation Global delivered the COP30 Youth Dialogues in partnership with the UN Youth Climate Champion Presidency, engaging over 1,200 young people from 20 countries during the COP climate conference. The team also launched new resources to support responsible use of AI in dialogue, including an AI in Dialogue framework, an IB Exchange webinar, a new Artificial Intelligence topic on the Ultimate Dialogue Adventure, and an AI Companion Tool to support structured written participation.
UN and Global Engagement
The Youth Initiatives team participated in the United Nations ECOSOC Youth Forum in April 2025. The team also hosted the IB’s first UN General Assembly side event at the 80th UNGA, titled Youth Agency, Access and Action for Flourishing. Held at Education House in collaboration with Teach for All, the event convened cross-sector and intergenerational participants to highlight youth participation and collaboration.
IB youth initiatives also contributed to Learning Planet Festival workshops in January 2026 and co-authored a blog with Teach For All for UNESCO’s International Day of Education, focused on young people as partners in shaping education.
