Future Leaders Forum & Gala will bring Belarusians from around the world to Warsaw on November 14

On November 14, Competence School and BFLA will hold Future Leaders Forum & Gala in Warsaw. The daytime programme replaces panels and talks with short stories, Q&As and conversations that anyone can join. An invitation-only gala for the Next 35 honourees follows in the evening. Attendance is free, but registration is required.

The organisers launched Next 35 this summer as an annual list of 35 young Belarusians building careers and launching projects internationally. Applications opened in July. The list spans seven categories — Rising Stars, Impact, Innovators, Builders, Creators, Artists and Science & Thinkers.

The organisers describe Next 35 as a snapshot of a generation at work around the world. The list is unranked and was put together with advisers from several fields, including EPAM Systems co-founder Leo Lozner, music producer Mikalai Skrobat, Verv co-founder Liuba Pashkouskaya, Harvard Medical School associate professor Yury Popov and film director Darya Zhuk. Forum attendees will be able to meet honourees and advisers in person.

On the main stage, Next 35 honourees will share experiences across industries and present projects in business, science, technology and the arts. The Relax Zone will host informal conversations and performances, including a session on the personal brands of Belarusian public figures and founders with brand and communications specialist Alena Kozub, and a live show with Max Parshuta and Nastya Rahatko. Breaks will give guests time to meet one another and explore activities run by event partners.

Film director and Next 35 adviser Darya Zhuk will open the daytime programme. Near the end of the forum, Perplexity co-founder and CTO Denis Yarats will join by video to answer questions from the audience about life and technology.

Main-stage speakers include videographer Darya Zahorskaya, research engineer Rita Kurban, architect Roman Levoshka of Vienna-based trans_city, Fands co-founder Alesia Shcharbina, Terra Group founder and Tech Race co-organiser Vitaly Krivko, and Deel engineering director Mikita Manichau. They will share how moving abroad early shaped their careers and how they rebuilt their professional lives in a new setting.

Physician-scientist Vlad Tereshenko, photographic artist Sasha Velichko and other Next 35 honourees will present their projects. Dzmitry Bahdanau, a researcher at Periodic Labs who co-authored an early paper on neural attention, will join the main stage remotely from Canada.

In the evening, the forum will become a private gala for those on the Next 35 list. The programme includes a tribute to the honourees, a live music set and an afterparty. Walks exploring Belarusian Warsaw, informal meetups and opportunities to meet new people are also planned around the forum. For the latest updates, visit the project website.

Competence School is an educational project and community for Belarusians developing skills for work and social change. It runs courses, intensive programmes, hackathons and mentoring, and works with more than 100 experts and mentors.

The Belarus Future Leadership Award (BFLA) recognises young Belarusian leaders, entrepreneurs, researchers and people developing new ideas. The award has grown into a forum and a community of young Belarusian professionals around the world.