BEING HUMAN FESTIVAL
Led by Faculty of Arts, The University of Hong Kong
Being Human Festival at HKU is an international festival exploring the humanities through public events — helping people understand themselves, their relationships with others, and the challenges we all face.
This year, the Faculty of Arts at HKU will spearhead the festival’s inaugural Asian edition. Bringing together university researchers and collaborators from Hong Kong’s local arts and culture communities, the festival brings humanities-led engagement to the wider community.
Festival Period: 5–15 Nov, 2026
Hear from Our Festival Director
2026 Theme: Crossroads
Where Worlds Meet
Hong Kong is itself a crossroads as a city where trade routes, cultures, and ways of life have long converged.
To stand at a crossroads is never a neutral act. It is where different histories brush up against each other. It is where knowledge travels and changes in the travelling. It is where communities shape, and are shaped by, the ideas, objects, and practices that pass through them. Hong Kong knows this well — a city that has absorbed and transformed everything that has moved through it, and sent it on its way changed.
A crossroads can also be an opportunity for chance encounters. A craft tradition and a curious stranger. A poem and the moment it finds its reader. A contemplative practice and a new technology — perhaps even an artificial intelligence that asks us what it means to be human. It is where something is passed on, or changed, or discovered. It asks us to pause, and to pay attention.
Join Us
This year, our events span the city and the senses: workshops, walks, conversations, performances, and shared meals. Whatever form they take, they share a common curiosity about the places where human lives, ideas, and knowledge intersect — and what becomes possible there.
Events take place at venues across Hong Kong, both on and off campus, and we want everyone to be able to take part. Accessibility provisions vary by venue — please check individual event listings with any questions about access.
Being Human Festival welcomes you to the crossroads.