In Short
🧭 What: Participant-driven Working & Community event for people ambitious to reduce and prevent suffering for all sentient beings, near and long-term.
📅 When: 27-31 August 2026 (arrival possible from Thursday 10 am, official program runs from 3 pm to Sunday evening).
📍Where: Berlin, Germany, Sterntal-Havelland
Update 8 August: As we still have plenty of spots available, we've decided to extend the application deadline once again—until all places are filled!
If you are in doubt whether you should apply feel free to reach out. We'd be happy to have a call before you apply.
Apply Here
In Detail
About the Event
This participant-driven Working & Community event is for people ambitious to reduce and prevent suffering for all sentient beings, near and long-term.
The event serves as a supportive accountability framework where participants prepare
their contributions thoroughly in advance, and the summit itself becomes a milestone - a deadline and a reward for that work, as well as a new jumping off point after being able
to get feedback and new inspiration from presenting and discussing their work and from
learning and engaging with other people's work.
Attendees will work on their contribution to impact, while acknowledging their different
stages in their development and ways they want to contribute. They can work out and
present new education and career strategies, earning-to-give and effective giving
strategies, or project ideas and project developments.
New this year: our Content Contribution Form (CFS 2026) — an in-depth impact
questionnaire to be answered by all participants.
Content will be developed with the following questions in mind:
- What are Crucial Considerations for impact of your project, donations, career plans or content development?
- What are your considerations in regard to near-term impact, including importance, tractability, neglectedness (ITN), risk-benefit trade-offs, and counterfactuals?
- What is your SMART Theory of Change for your involvement? Please include consideration in regard to outcome robustness and implementation robustness.
- What are plausible long-term trajectories (evolution, obstacles, risks, benefits, and counterfactuals) over 10, 50, and 200 years?
- And what are your personal fit, motivation and development plans?
Program and Focus Areas
Arrival day (Thursday): Registration opens at 10 am. Informal games and community-building activities will run throughout the day until the official opening session at 15:00.
Sunday: The impact-focused program will run until dinner (6 pm). After dinner, we will have the closing session and continue with more community focused activities into the evening.
Departure day (Monday): We'll share breakfast and clean up together Monday morning. Check-out is by 10 am.
Attendees are warmly encouraged to spend the day (or more) in Berlin together after the summit. It's a great opportunity to keep connections and conversations going before heading home. We'll be using Slack well in advance of the event to coordinate logistics, travel, and anything else that comes up.
Focus Areas
The program will include content contributions from all participants, focusing on impact opportunities with near-term applications and great scalability and sustainability potential for the long-term future. Cause areas may be:
- Global Health & Wellbeing
- Incl. Compassionate Genomics
- Farmed and Wild Animal Rights & Wellbeing
- Institutional Decision-Making & Global Peace
- Incl. Safeguarding Democracy
- Artificial Intelligence - Risks & Opportunities
- Moral Philosophy & Moral Psychology
- Effective Giving & Earning-to-Give
In addition to these and other topics, the summit will feature sessions that promote personal growth and community, such as Circling, playful activities, and self-reflection sessions using participation-promoting workshop tools like Liberating Structures.
Accommodation and Catering
The venue provides space for up to 55 participants - purposefully limited to foster a nurturing community culture.
You will enjoy all-vegan full-board catering and accommodation in two spacious, barrier-free guest houses, with shared rooms ranging from doubles to six-bed dormitories.
A limited number of participants may also join as day guests - for example, if they prefer or require a more private sleeping arrangement.
How to Get Involved
The event organisers will be reaching out directly to some particularly exciting project representatives to invite them to the event.
However, you are also warmly encouraged to contact the organising team if you would like to present your own project, or if there are specific individuals or organisations you believe should be represented and align with the impact-focused reasoning outlined above.
Please feel free to contact the organisers via event.orga [at] compassionate-future.org.
Please apply if…
…you think this event could increase your impact!
Our community and Diversity Goals:
- Growing a diverse and resourceful community
- Identifying applicants with strengths in fostering an inclusive, positive & healthy community atmosphere
The organisers are committed to making the application process valuable and a connecting experience for all applicants, while ensuring the event's maximal impact.
Excited to contribute to ambitious projects aimed at preventing suffering at scale?
Then we'd love to hear from you! 🤗
Apply by 26 July
Two more contributor highlights 🎉
Hey everybody,
📣 Application deadline now extended to Friday, 07 August 2026!
To all those who have RSVPed, please also fill out the application form, if you haven’t done so already.
Note, new this year is our Content Contribution Form CFI 2026, with our in-depth impact questionnaire to be answered by all participants.
As inspiration, content highlights from last year:
Screwworm-Free Future · WHO Youth Council work & International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War · Breaking the Cycle of Trauma and Tyranny - How Psychological Wounds Shape History · Organisation for the Prevention of Intense Suffering - Insights from OPIS’s Suffering Survey · Scalable Suffering-reduction Tech to Benefit Sentient Beings · Sentient Futures Strategy Session · Machine Learning: Mental Health Pre-screening · Space Governance and Preventing Cosmic Suffering
Excited to contribute to ambitious projects aimed at preventing suffering at scale?
Then we'd love to hear from you! 🤗
A selection of this year's content highlights so far:
FYI: To facilitate travel planing I added the following details:
Program and Focus Areas
Arrival day (Thursday): Registration opens at 10 am. Informal games and community-building activities will run throughout the day until the official opening session at 3 pm.
Sunday: The impact-focused program will run until dinner (6 pm). After dinner, we will have the closing session and continue with more community focused activities into the evening.
Departure day (Monday): We'll share breakfast and clean up together Monday morning. Check-out is by 10 am.
Attendees are warmly encouraged to spend the day (or more) in Berlin together after the summit. It's a great opportunity to keep connections and conversations going before heading home. We'll be using Slack well in advance of the event to coordinate logistics, travel, and anything else that comes up.
Looks interesting, but I am actually not fully sure what this is? A hackathon? A conference with presentations of the projects?
Hi Richie, thanks for your interest and question!
It was indeed not easy to label this event.
At its core, it's an accountability & working retreat. Participants prepare their contributions thoroughly in advance, and the summit itself becomes a milestone - a deadline and a reward for that work, and a new jumping off point after being able to get feedback and new inspiration from presenting and discussing their work and from learning and engaging with other people's work.
And it's not that everyone has to have a project in the classical sense. Attendees will work on their contribution to impact, while acknowledging their different stages in their development and ways they want to contribute. They can work out and present new education and career strategies, earning-to-give and effective giving strategies, or project ideas and project developments.
I drew from many different event formats, keeping only the elements that best stimulate impact-driven development while creating a nurturing environment for sustainable ambition and growth.
I moved away from labels like 'conference,' 'retreat,' or 'unconference', and never considered ‘hackathon’ because each carries connotations that don't quite fit. It’s not a programming event, conferences feel less nurturing and save to experiment, while retreats and unconferences in my experience don’t focus enough on impact. Community and fun absolutely have a place at the summit, but in service of the work, not instead of it.
I hope that answers your question. :)