STATE INSTITUTE FOR CULTURE TURNS 20: 2025 IN REVIEW
As we bid farewell to an anniversary year marking 20 years since the establishment of the State Institute for Culture, we look back at 2025 as a period rich in events, achievements, new partnerships, and horizons.
On 29th May, the State Institute for Culture at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs celebrated twenty years since its establishment. At an event held at the Regional Center for Contemporary Art "Toplocentrala", the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Georg Georgiev presented our team, headed by our director Ms. Snezhana Yoveva-Dimitrova, with an honorary diploma in recognition of our successful and longstanding work. The event was of particular importance to us, not in the least for the high appreciation we received on behalf of colleagues, partners, and friends of the Institute. The anniversary was also marked with the group exhibition "Standing Voices" curated by Vladiya Mihaylova - a large-scale project that combines contemporary art, historical memory, and engagement with the current crises of our time.
As with every year, in 2025 our team took part in a number of international cultural forums, organised a series of cultural events, exhibitions and conferences in our country and abroad, and held a number of bilateral meetings with local and foreign partners.
As a member of the European Network of Cultural Institutes EUNIC, in 2025 our team attended three meetings of the European organisation, in London on 14th-15th May, Amsterdam on 18th-19th June and Brussels on 9th-10th December. The State Institute for Culture was also represented at the General Assembly of the Public Diplomacy Network GPDNet on 25th February in Doha, Qatar. Our Director Ms. Snezhana Yoveva-Dimitrova held official talks with the Director General of GPDNet Ms. Mariam Al Saad, as well as representatives from Romania, Moldova and Georgia.
The State Institute for Culture plays an active role in the process of preparing our embassies’ cultural programs abroad. This year, we assisted in the organising of several mobile exhibitions and installations, in Prague, Oslo, Brussels, Madrid, London, Islamabad, Bratislava, Warsaw, Budapest, Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt and Bucharest. We also had the opportunity to bring a number of Bulgarian films to film festivals across the world, in Helsinki, Amman, Skopje, Delhi, Ankara, Beijing, Islamabad, Hanoi, Riga and many other places.
Our local partners here, in Bulgaria, are no less important to us. It is they, as leading figures in our country’s cultural life, who provide us with the opportunity to play a role in its development. In 2025, the State Institute for Culture partook in the commemorative program celebrating 1170 years since the creation of the Glagolitic alphabet, initiated by the National Library of Bulgaria “St. Cyril and Methodius”. We participated in the International Francophone Festival “Soleil” in Sozopol, in the tenth edition of the initiative of the Polish Institute “Poetry in the Metro”, and were institutional partners of the second edition of the Sofia Art Fair contemporary art exhibition, the Asian Festival “United in Diversity”, the SofiaDocumental International Film Festival, as well as the Master of Art Film Festival.
Our team is actively expanding its network of local contacts. In the past year, our list of partners has expanded to now include the Pancho Vladigerov House Museum, the International Foundation “St. Cyril and Methodius” and the Regional Open-Air Ethnographic Museum – Etara.
As many of you know, the State Institute of Culture manages the "Mission" art gallery, which has been providing an opportunity since 2009 for Bulgarian and foreign painters, sculptors and artists alike to present their art here, in Bulgaria. Over the past year, we organised exhibitions for multiple artists, including French artist Marion Safrioin, Bulgarian artists Valentin Bakardzhiev and Elsa Artamontzeva, the collective exhibitions "Return", "Trilogy of a Friendship", "Energy of Discovery", as well as the international exhibition "Vibration" and the exhibition "Mythological Transformations" as part of Sofia Paper Art Fest.
The State Institute for Culture continues to organise training and informative courses in the field of cultural and public diplomacy. In 2025, we implemented a program of working visits and discussions for a new energy of cultural cooperation in the Western Balkans with the participation of representatives from the respective countries, as well as a cycle of training courses on cultural diplomacy for employees of state and regional administrations from across the country.