Join us for the Up Collective Testing Event, where refugee entrepreneurs share their early-stage business ideas and invite your feedback.

We’re so excited to kick it off with all of you! We will come together to explore Culture as Resistance and Radical Hope. From reflections on memory and identity to discussions about collective artistic work, the day invites us to listen, question, and allow ourselves to imagine new possibilities. The evening closes with sound and visual performances that embody resilience and the power of radical hope in motion.

Join Amnesty International for a powerful conversation about human rights—yours, mine, and ours all together. We believe everyone deserves the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but many are under threat. That’s why we host Human Rights Talks: open, honest chats where people share stories, ideas, and different viewpoints. These aren’t debates—they’re about listening, understanding, and seeing human rights in a whole new way. Come be part of the conversation!

This role-playing card game will reveal how global events, whether political decisions, international aid, or conflicts, ripple across the globe and shape your future.

This evening explores the power of storytelling, not only as a personal act, but as a political tool, legal testimony, and collective memory.

Discover the hidden stories you won't find in textbooks. On a tour of The Black Archives, you will be taken on a journey through a hushed history of Black emancipation and resistance using the unique collections in the archive.

This special premiere of We Dare to Dream is part of the inaugural edition of Refugee Welcome Week in the Netherlands. The evening brings together community, cuisine, and cinema to honor resilience and the right to dream.

Connect with fellow runners of WERQ Run Club and explore the outdoors with an easy long run. This running feature a mix of fast-paced intervals—ranging from 200m to 800m—with slow recovery runs in between.

In a world full of borders and barriers, community is our superpower and our strategy for change. At the Forward·Inc Festival, we celebrate the strength, creativity, and impact of newcomer entrepreneurs building new futures. This year, the festival takes place during the first ever Refugee Welcome Week NL, both grounded in Radical Hope and the belief that real change starts when we come together.

We warmly invite you to Queer Unlimited an inspiring evening dedicated to the voices, talents, and resilience of queer refugees, artists, and organizers. This special gathering takes place on the forth day of the first Refugee Welcome Week in the Netherlands. It is initiated by Sajad Salmanpour, founder of Queer Work and researcher, in close collaboration with the community and Refugee Academy at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Together, we aim to shine a powerful light on the experiences of LGBTQIA+ refugees through storytelling, creative expression, and collective care. Join us for a vibrant celebration of art, identity, and solidarity that reaches across borders.

A high-energy sweat sesh where kicks fly, fists pump, and your whole body gets in on the fun. We mix punchy combos, strength moves, and cardio bursts that’ll leave you feeling powerful. Think fierce footwork, vibey playlists, and a space where queer, trans, and allied bodies move loud, proud, and together.

This 90-minute session invites everyone — refugees, allies, and local community members — into an open and participatory conversation about community building.

How do we speak up when we’ve been silenced? How do we reclaim our bodies, our voices, and our boundaries in a world that often denies us space?

In her lecture, Ghorashi will draw on both her personal and academic experience to explore the importance of refugee narratives in reimagining democratic engagement.

How do we move beyond symbolic allyship and create real, lasting change, led by those directly impacted by displacement?

A powerful one-day experience of collective imagination, embodied storytelling, and radical futurism led by displaced communities. What if we could dream beyond borders, beyond displacement, beyond extraction?

On the psychic and political violence of borders. Join us on the 20th of June at Felix Meritis for a critical interrogation of the sanctity of borders. We discuss how (neo)colonial ideology, biometric control, surveillance technologies, and global inequality all intersect at the border.

Militarised Masculinities and Demilitarised Futures: Conspiring Conversations through Film, Dialogue and Music.

QueerCity will be an interactive theaterprogram, where we will discuss about colonial and capitalist powerstrcuctures that plays a role inside and outside the community. We will ask questions and interact with the audience and take a deep dive on decolonizing community and center care and love.

What does it mean to be — and to become — a refugee artist in a city like Amsterdam? In this intimate and reflective afternoon, we invite visitors into the vibrant and urgent space of No Limits! Art Castle, a space for art, community, and resistance.

Multilingual | ⁠Art materials and Sudanese food will be available for all participants

Many queer and trans refugees face huge barriers in accessing safe and affirming care. At this panel talk, we’ll talk about navigating the Dutch Healthcare System as/for queer and trans refugees.

Voices and visions of undocumented Amsterdammers! Through film, art, and live music, we confront the systems that deny people status, safety, and uplift those building resistance in its place.