The Poetic Wednesdays Initiative has announced the third edition of the Kano International Poetry Festival (KAPFEST), running October 15 to 17, 2026, in Kano under the theme Reclaiming Languages. The announcement, made at a press conference by Communications Manager Nana Sule, also marks ten years since Poetic Wednesdays began as an online hashtag before growing into one of Northern Nigeria’s most established literary and cultural platforms.

KAPFEST itself grew out of that decade of work, expanding Poetic Wednesdays’ community-led programming into a larger annual gathering of writers, poets, artists, and cultural workers. Its first edition, Kalamai, drew over 500 participants and helped popularize Engausa poetry, with its poetry slam reaching more than a million views across social media. The second edition, Poetry in a Time of Crisis, widened the festival’s lens to ask what poetry and the arts can do in the face of insecurity, climate change, and censorship.

This year’s theme turns attention to language itself. Across Northern Nigeria and the wider Sahel, organizers note, Hausa and English dominate public life while many smaller indigenous languages are pushed to the margins — even as the region’s long history of movement across Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Mali keeps producing new linguistic mixtures, borrowings, and forms of code-switching. For the organizers, “reclaiming” a language doesn’t mean freezing it in the past, but keeping it alive: writing, performing, translating, and experimenting in it. KAPFEST 3.0 will bring together poets and artists working in Hausa, Fulfulde, Kanuri, Nupe, Shuwa Arab, Yoruba, Igbo, Ebira, Tiv, Igala, and other Nigerian languages, alongside Arabic, French, German, and English.

Here’s what’s planned across the three days:

Thursday, October 15 opens the festival with a full day of classes and workshops. Highlights include a Creative Nonfiction Masterclass with Vamba Sherif, a women-only masterclass facilitated by Fatima Bala, and an expanded KAPFEST Clinic covering fiction and Hausa writing, with Mal. Ismail, Abdulrahim Hussani, and Safiyyah Jibril serving as the session’s “literary doctors” for young writers. A workshop for secondary school students, facilitated by Hidaya Mahmud and Hafsat Ismail, rounds out the day’s programming. The evening moves into the Cultural Showcase at Gidan Dan Hausa, an open celebration of traditional music, poetry, drama, and fashion open to the wider community.

Friday, October 16 shifts the festival to its main venue, the Amani Event Center, with an official opening featuring conversations, panels, and performances. The day includes the presentation of this year’s KAPFEST Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Ibrahim Malumfashi, alongside panels on indigenous languages, artist mobility, translation, and literary and cultural exchange, plus a special conversation on Hausa literary and musical expression across generations. The day closes with the Mudi Spikin Poetry Slam, where three young performers will go home with a combined ₦1 million in prize money.

Saturday, October 17 continues with further conversations, performances, and cultural exchange, before closing out the festival with a headline performance from Bash Amuneni.

Running throughout all three days are an exhibition featuring artists including Qalb Salim, Rebi Hueman, Fatima Goni Usman, and Umar Farouq, and the festival’s poetry archive, last year called the Poetry Dispensary, returning in a new form built around gathering and presenting poems in as many languages as possible.

KAPFEST 3.0 is supported by the Open Society Foundations, now sponsoring the festival for a second year, along with the Embassy of the Netherlands and partners including the Kano State History and Culture Bureau, Open Arts, Third Space, CITAD, Bridge Connect Africa Initiative, and the National Gallery of Arts.

Alongside the festival announcement, Poetic Wednesdays Initiative also revealed it has been selected for the Nigeria Youth Futures Fund’s 2026 Development Grant Cycle, which will fund its Arewa Creative Writing and Advocacy Fellowship (ACWAF), a new project training young creative writers to use their work for advocacy and development.

KAPFEST 3.0 runs October 15–17, 2026, across Gidan Dan Hausa and the Amani Event Center in Kano. Register for the event here.