FESTO (Esperanto meeting)

It is held in a different city every summer and serves as a venue for cultural exchange, offering an occasion for Esperantists from many lands to improve their facility in the Esperanto language.

With as few as 36[2] or as many as 145 attendees from 25 countries,[1] the youth meet is renowned both for its rich musical program organized in partnership with the EUROKKA rock music collective and for its deliberately anarchic spirit: FESTO is an acronym for Franca Esperanto-Semajno Terure Organizita, ("French Esperanto Week, Terribly Organized").

FESTO first occurred in Lyon in 1996, then was held every summer except in 2001 — when the International Youth Congress of Esperanto, a worldwide meeting of young Esperantists, took place in France — and in 2008, when the Espéranto-Jeunes group experienced a decline in membership numbers.

[3] The university did not disclose the reason for cancelling the reservation, but with the help of EUROKKA and the independent Vinilkosmo record label, the meeting was hastily relocated to Donneville, 15 km from Toulouse.

[1] Despite the confusion over the venue, the event was attended by 145 participants, and ten bands from Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Catalonia and France performed.