International Live Journalism Festival 2025 | NL
After successful editions
in Finland (2022) and Canada (2023), the International Live Journalism Festival (ILJF) 2025 will be hosted in the Netherlands. Taking place in the cities of Tilburg and Eindhoven, the festival explores, debates, showcases, and reimagines live journalism practices alongside international scholars and practitioners.
The theme for this year is Shaping post-normal journalism practices, coined by Eide and Kunelius (2020). Post-normal journalism responds to the challenges of our post-truth era, where traditional journalistic values – such as objectivity and truth-telling – are under pressure, increasingly so under the growing influence of AI.
Amid these complexities, movements like constructivism and solution-oriented journalism reconnect with audiences both online and offline. Furthermore, Journalists are becoming more openly subjective (Coward, 2013), expressing emotions and demonstrating personal commitment to the topics they cover (Ginosar & Reich, 2022; Snel & Postema, 2024), including a shift toward multi-perspective journalism, which presents diverse viewpoints rather than a single, factual narrative.
We argue that Live journalism is uniquely positioned to attend to these shifts. By bringing stories directly to audiences through in-person performances, immersive experiences, and narrative-driven events, live journalism fosters emotional connection, trust, and transparency. It breaks the fourth wall of traditional reporting, allowing for vulnerability, subjectivity, and co-presence to become strengths rather than limitations. In doing so, live journalism embraces the complexity of post-normal times, offering a space for dialogue, reflection, and collective meaning-making that conventional formats often struggle to provide.
For some inspirational reading, please enjoy our conference white paper: 'Dear Audience, the Journalist is Present: Performing Fairness through Multi Partiality', by Stijn Postema.
October 22-24, 2025 | Tilburg + Eindhoven
Hosted by Fontys Journalism and the readership Designing Journalism Realised thanks to the financial support by Stimuleringsfonds voor de Journalistiek
Programme
DAY 1, WED OCT 22 | The Live Journalism Turn | Tilburg | MindLabs + Theatre
The first day of the festival marks keynotes by scholars in the fields of arts and media, and gives room to news ideas and practices. In the afternoon, we will break up into smaller groups for guided co-writing sessions.
Day 1 - programmeDAY 2, THU OCT 23 | New Horizons Tilburg | MindLabs + Factorium theatre
Today, professionals from the fields of journalism, research and education will be diving into four varying topics around live journalism. In the afternoon, collectives and journalists linked to the network will take the stage!
Day 2 - programmeDAY 3, FRI OCT 24 | Curtain Call | Tilburg + Eindhoven | MindLabs + Dutch Design Week + WE ARE + MU Gallery
On the last day we travel to Eindhoven to visit the renowned Dutch Design Week and see our last two shows of the festival.
Day 3 - programme
Practical Information
Visiting the festival is free of charge, but we have limited availability of seats differing per day, due to the size of our venues. After registration, we will let you know which parts of the program are still accessible. Furthermore, any meals mentioned in the programme will be provided by the organisation for all those who registered before September 1, 2025. Any late registrants are most welcome to join us, but will be asked to cover their own costs.
Travel
For those booking flights to the festival, the nearest airports are:
- Eindhoven Airport (and then bus + train to Tilburg)
- Rotterdam The Hague Airport (and then metro + train to Tilburg)
- Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (and then train to Tilburg)
For those booking an international train, European trains are booked easiest through:
- Omio (app/online)
- Deutsche Bahn (app/online)
- NS International (app/online)
Should you have any questions regarding the festival, reach out to Thijs van den Houdt.