National Haiku Competition 2026
Friday, 17th April marked the conclusion of this year's National Haiku Competition with the annual event held in Cankarjev Dom, one of Slovenia's most important cultural centres.
The competition is held through the school years and allows students to write pieces of haiku in a language of their choice. For the 2026 competition, the winning entrants included poems in Slovene, English, French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
The event itself was held as part of the prestigious Transgenerations Festival of Youth Creativity which is held in Ljubljana every April as a way of demonstrating the very best of artistic expression among secondary school students in Slovenia.
People got together in one of the centre's main auditoriums to enjoy a specially-created presentation based on the title "We are approaching the station" in which the central theme of a train journey was linked to some of the core ideas of haiku itself. From moments of planning for the future to those times in which we seem to simply be waiting for something to happen, the set of readings and performances gave the audience plenty to enjoy.
There was also the opportunity to hear some of the pieces which were given the highest level of commendation, a performance which was accompanied by a special set of music arranged for the day.
Our thanks go to Edin Saračević, a teacher of philosophy at Gimnazija Vič and celebrated author of haiku at an international level, who had the role of coordinator and head judge for the project. Also, credit must go to Laura Repovš and Andrej Koritnik from our languages department, who were the mentors for the event itself.
Everyone who attended really enjoyed the range of performances and appreciated the opportunity to hear the work of the current generation of talented young writers.