Description
January 2026 marks the 60th anniversary of a pivotal event held in Havana: the 1966 Tricontinental Conference, which brought together more than 500 active participants from over 80 countries and colonies in the Third World (now called the Global South), including well-known leaders such as Salvador Allende, Amílcar Cabral, and Cheddi Jagan.About 200 more people were invited as observers (including large delegations from the Soviet Union and China), most of whom were excluded from active participation, as the event was conceived as something from and for the three Third World continents. At the time, the event was understood as a significant moment for the Cuban Revolution to pioneer a new “Third Worldism,” one that openly supported anti-colonial movements and struggles around the world and offered the post-colonial world a different version of socialism distinct from the hegemonic socialisms emanating from both Western Europe and the Socialist Bloc.
Notably, the event spawned the creation in 1967 of OLAS (Latin American Solidarity Organization) and OSPAAAL (Organization of Solidarity with the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America). The event ultimately followed the approach championed by Cuba, most eloquently summarised in Che Guevara’s famous “Message to the Tricontinental,” with its infamous call for “two, three, many Vietnams.”
This international conference in January 2026, to held in Havana to celebrate the original event and prioritize contributions from the Global South, aims to commemorate the anniversary in several ways and, especially, to stimulate important debates about the original event and its relevance to anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and decolonization.
Therefore, it will bring together a wide range of disciplines, studies, and academic approaches and focus on questions such as:
• What significance did the event have at the time, for Cuba and for the Third World?
• Was it an open challenge to both the Soviet Union’s and the US’s policies toward the Third World?
• What were the roots of Cuba’s revolutionary approach to the Third World? • And what were the antecedents that helped shape the context for new thinking (Bandung, the Non-Aligned Movement, Mariátegui, Mella)?
• What are the legacies of the original conference, and how does its presence live on today?
• Anti-imperialist networks of women and indigenous people in the Global South
• Havana as a centre for the Third World/Global South
• South-South Solidarity
• The legacy of OSPAAAL
• Testimonies (written, oral, or visual) from the original participants
• As witnesses to the horrific events in Palestine, what can we learn about global/South-South solidarity?
As a multi- and interdisciplinary event, we invite panel proposals and individual abstracts from all territories of the original Tricontinental and its new incarnations, along with the rest of the world.
The conference languages will be : English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese.
The event is led by the Centre for Research on Cuba (CRC) at the University of Nottingham, the only research centre outside the Americas focused exclusively on the study of Cuba. The Centre is supported by the Cuba Research Forum (CRF) as its international network of more than 450 scholars and other experts working in or on Cuba, including more than 200 Cuban scholars. Several Cuban institutions are collaborating with the event, including: the University of Havana, ICIC Marinello, Casa de las Américas, the Centro Fidel Castro Ruz (CFCR), ICAP, etc. The event will also have a cultural dimension, which may include an exhibition of OSPAAAL posters and Tricontinental Magazine covers, film screenings, live music performances, etc.
The event will culminate in at least two publications (a CFCR dossier and a book compiling the best papers from the conference). The conference will last three days and will be organized as a series of panels and plenary speakers, with the first evening reserved for the opening and formal reception, and the last day for the formal closing of the conference. We hope to provide small grants to enable participation for scholars from the Global South.
| Period | 12 Jan 2026 → 14 Jan 2026 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | Havana, CubaShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | International |