19–23 August 2026 · Hostačov, Czech Highlands
Five late-summer days at the edge of festival, retreat, and lucid dream.
Vision
A gathering that holds contemplative, philosophical, embodied, musical, and ritual threads together without belonging to any one of them.
Mornings that begin with breath and movement. Days of salons, workshops, and practices, often several at once. Long tables, fires that go late, and a dance floor that keeps opening while other things are still going. In the middle of it, one day when the château slips its usual order entirely.
Alive enough to be genuinely playful, grounded enough that a child or a grandparent is equally at home. Serious about its questions and unserious about itself, in roughly equal measure.
Five days and four nights in a Renaissance château about seventy minutes from Prague. It is going to be very good company.
a room that remembers every celebration it has held
Program
The gathering is made of what people bring. These are the five streams it flows in, and some of the people carrying them. Not everything is settled. Some offerings are already forming, some are waiting for the right people, and some will only appear once everyone arrives. We care a lot about careful curation and strong facilitation. We care just as much about leaving room for surprise.
There are things we know before we know that we know them. Sometimes the body gets there first.
Every morning begins here, and the thread runs quietly through the whole week: practices that start from the body and work outward, for anyone who needs them.
Questions becoming conversations becoming friendship becoming more questions.
Researchers and mystics, historians and founders, people who would not normally find themselves in the same room, changing their minds gently. Salons by day, and the conversations that outlast the candles.
Places where thought loosens a little and people remember they are not alone.
Drums by the fire. Instruments appearing unexpectedly. And the dance: three long anchored floors across the five days, opening while other things still run, so the gathering always has somewhere to move.
Ritual is the power of collective attention. When presence is shared, something larger emerges.
The gathering opens with a ceremony and closes with one, and the days between are marked with smaller thresholds. Ritual here means care and form, not doctrine: ways of holding together what the days bring up.
True knowledge comes through experience. Making, playing, failing, discovering together.
Spaces where you try things rather than hear about them: rehearsing difficult realities before meeting them outside, stepping into other shapes, building small worlds and seeing what they teach.
The circle is still forming. If your work belongs in one of these streams, or someone you know does, read the contributor call.
Contributor call→Schedule
Every day keeps the same bones: practice in the morning, offerings through the day, the long table, and a night that goes where it goes. What changes is how loose the frame is. Each day it loosens a little more, and the trust built the day before is what makes it safe to. Times stay soft on purpose. The days will tell you.
The detailed schedule will be published in early August.
Wednesday
Settling in, finding each other.
Morning
still on the road
Afternoon
Doors open; arrivals, first walks, the place catching you.
Evening
✨ Opening ceremony, then the welcome feast and the first fire.
Thursday
The most prepared day.
Morning
🫧 Practice at eight, then the week's strongest prepared offerings.
Afternoon
🕯️ Several rooms at once — dialogue, movement, voice, ritual — and long breaks for the conversations that matter.
Evening
Dinner at the long table, then a slow evening.
Friday
The turn toward play.
Morning
🫧 Practice, then 🕯️ offerings with looser edges, some made on the spot.
Afternoon
🎭 Sessions run on, and the dance floor opens alongside them 🥁 — the first of the three great dances.
Evening
Fire and fun, and the night runs later than it should.
Saturday
The peak.
Morning
The wardrobe opens; becoming whoever you're becoming, and at midday, ✨ the parade.
Afternoon
🕯️ 🎭 The unconference — salons across centuries, encounters between worlds, 🥁 with the dance running through it all.
Evening
Barbeque, then ✨ carnival night, 🥁 dancing to late.
Sunday
Landing, then release.
Morning
✨ A soft closing; gathering what the days were.
Afternoon
🥁 The closing dance, a long daytime floor to end on, then the last shared meal and long goodbyes.
Evening
the world gently untied
Fixed points: the opening ceremony, the Saturday parade, and the three dances. Everything else fills in from what people bring, and some blocks hold several offerings at once.
Saturday — the day out of time
The wardrobe opens, and for a day you can step into anyone or anything, from any time. A figure you carry. A self you might become. A century not your own. As much or as little as you like; a single object and a hint of manner is enough to be in it.
At midday we cross over together, so no one has to be the first. The afternoon runs as a world of its own: salons across centuries, story circles, encounters between times that wouldn't usually meet. By night it comes back to fire and dancing, and everyone returns to themselves.
The older reference is the carnival, the old fair. A licensed day when ordinary roles loosen, with a clear way in and a clear way out.
The Place
Hostačov is a Renaissance château in the Czech Highlands, about seventy minutes from Prague. A courtyard, a library, a ballroom with a painted ceiling, grounds that run into woodland, a pond that holds the moon, fires that go late.
It has spent the past year as a quiet home for residencies and retreats. Echoes is the moment it steps out.
Practicalities
* About the ranges: we work trust-based within them. The lower end is for people for whom cost is a real consideration; the upper end helps carry others and supports the work. Organising something like this takes real care across many layers, and we trust people to read their own situation honestly. If even the lower end is a genuine barrier and you still want to be here, write to us. There's a low-friction path, no questions beyond a sentence or two.
The whole arc is the way we'd recommend coming. The days build on each other, and Saturday lands differently when you've been there since the first fire. The weekend door is open for those who need it.
Who's holding this
Initiator and lead host; steward of Hostačov.
Operations and kitchen; the reason the long tables are worth sitting at.
Music and movement; a French fairy who brings joy and presence into every room she enters.
The dance thread; keeper of the three great floors.
Echoes is held by the Hostačov team with a working circle of contributors and friends.
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