International Haiku Competition 2026
Through this school year, students from schools in three countries worked on pieces of haiku which were put forward to be part of this year's International Haiku Competition. As well as Gimnazija Vič, we were delighted to have our partner schools of Državni znanstveni licej Franceta Prešerna in Trieste, Italy and Gimnazija Pula in Pula, Croatia involved in this project for another year.
This competition has been coordinated by our school for well over a decade now with different schools taking part in different years. In the past, we have worked alongside educational institutions in countries such as Sweden, Belgium, Hungary, and Turkey, so finding out which schools are able to join us in the project every year is always a happy surprise.
With all of the countries having different national languages, the entire project is held in English. From all the organising work behind the scenes to the final publication which is shared among all participants, there's plenty to be done by our team of mentors and we would like to thank them from the very start for all their hard work.
On 22nd May, a special event was held at Gimnazija Vič to mark the end of this year's project. Although plans had been made for the other schools to join us for the occasion, it was unfortunate that some last-minute hitches meant that this was impossible. Some things simply can't be planned for and we very much look forward to welcoming them to our school again very soon.
The event began with a short musical performance which led us into a very interesting presentation by Edin Saračević on the haiga form of expression which involves uniting haiku with visual imagery. As a highly-respected writer of haiku and the coordinating judge of Slovenia's national haiku competition, as well as a teacher of philosophy at Gimnazija Vič, he was able to guide us through different ideas linked to this type of creativity which was entirely new to most of the audience.
With plenty to think about after the presentation, it was time for a discussion about what we had just heard and the creative process of some of the young writers who were in the audience. From finding moments of inspiration to working out making sure they choose exactly the right words to get their ideas across, there were many useful and interesting themes covered.
We then had the chance to hear the works which had received commendations in this year's competition. The judges had hundreds of pieces of haiku to read and remark on, with about thirty being selected to feature in the final publication. During the process, the judging team had plenty to say about how original some ideas were, how well particular concepts were captured by the students, and the clever use of language.
The certificates and prizes were then given out. For the first time, the commendations were divided up into three different levels with those given the gold-level award receiving an extra book prize chosen to encourage them on their creative path.
We would like to congratulate those who received the highest level of commendation in the 2026 competition:
- Maria Beltrame,
- Matteo Fabris,
- Maro Koroman,
- Julija Bajec,
- Tisa Ravnikar,
- Žiga Podobnikar,
- Izak Roderik Štemberger,
- Ondina Puš,
- Danial Doustmohammadi.
Finally, we would like to thank the team of mentors who worked so hard through the year to allow this project to be such a success:
- Elena Braini,
- Dejan Pavlinović,
- Edin Saračević,
- Blanka Klobučar,
- Tim Gallagherj.
We are thrilled at how the project has thrived for another year and we very much look forward to working on building on its successes through the next school year.