A shot from the 2024 Folklife Competition. {Photograph} courtesy of the Smithsonian.
In an period the place practically 41 p.c of the worldwide inhabitants is 24 years outdated or beneath, the 2025 Smithsonian Folklife Competition will return with a brand new theme: “Youth and the Way forward for Tradition.”
The free annual occasion is working by a vacation week—from Wednesday, July 2, by Monday, July 7—and can as soon as once more invite Washingtonians to the Nationwide Mall for a sequence of artwork installations, on-theme actions, and night performances.
All through the pageant, you’ll be able to count on over six hours of programming every day. Notable points of interest will embrace dwell units by teenage DJs, brief movies by youth empowerment teams throughout the DC space, and hands-on demonstrations by younger stone-carvers, painters, and different craftspeople.
A central focus of this yr’s Folklife Competition will likely be a collaboration with the Museum of the Up to date Teenager, a pop-up based and run completely by adolescent college students in Maryland’s Montgomery County. For the pageant, they’ll be showcasing a sequence of constructed settings from teenage life—together with bedrooms and highschool hallways—in addition to performances about social media, youth shorthand, and psychological well being.
Exterior of the pageant’s predominant theme, programming will function a “Language Lodge,” the place attendees can be taught extra about Native Language Reclamation by demonstrations and performances. Moreover, the 2025 Folklife Competition has as soon as once more set a waste diversion price aim of over 90 p.c, and can station trash-sorting volunteers throughout the Nationwide Mall.
For extra info on the historical past of the Smithsonian Folklife Competition, in addition to up to date details about this yr’s programming, click on right here.
