Global Psychedelic Week has rolled out the first wave of in-person events in cities around the world to complement the main online program, November 3-9, 2025. This inaugural worldwide celebration of psychedelics and the communities who congregate around them is taking aim at connecting the numerous and diverse hubs of psychonauts who, until now, have largely operated independently of each other.
42 events celebrating the science, culture, and policy reform around psychedelics will take place in various venues ranging from an art gallery in Berlin to the Entheogen Expo in Los Angeles to forums in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Goa, India, with many more taking shape in the remaining months leading up to the main Global Psychedelic Week programming agenda.
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As one of the founders of Global Psychedelic Week, it’s been remarkable to see the outpouring of community spirit and support for this unprecedented initiative. There’s an old adage that says ‘If you build it, they will come’; what started as a grandiose vision of uniting the global psychedelic community over almost a year and a half ago has now evolved into a structured and logistically sound reality that continues to pick up momentum and draw participants from across the globe.
Over 85 speakers have been confirmed for ‘GPW’, including internationally renowned heavyweights like Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplianry Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) and TIME 100Next honoree Robin Carhart-Harris of University of California, San Francisco, alongside many largely unheralded contributors coming from the Global South and pockets of the world that have not been swept up in emergent psychedelic industry hype over the last decade.
“During Global Psychedelic Week, over 100 in-person events will take place around the world. We’re decentralizing the conversation and meeting people where they are, in their own communities,” says Global Psychedelic Week co-founder Milica Radovic Mandic of Bizdelics.
“Rather than gathering in a single location, we’re fostering the space for local connection, reflection, and dialogue,” Mandic added. “These gatherings feature deeper engagement rooted in local culture and relationships. This is how a truly global movement grows, from the ground up.”
Global Psychedelic Week events blur psychedelic borders
The psychedelic movement has reached a critical mass globally, thanks to all of the positive topline data and mainstream media coverage about these long maligned and misunderstood molecules over the last decade. While this scientific legitimacy and primetime coverage helped turn the tide of public opinion largely in favor of expanded research and access to psychedelics, it was always a decentralized network of communities across the planet that has carried the culture forward in spite of draconian and unjust prohibition laws enacted in the 20th Century.
As someone who has been fortunate to travel to over 70 countries and connect with psychonauts in many of them, it dawned on me years ago that psychedelics are a universal human interest.
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From mom and pop psilocybin mushroom vendors in the hills of Laos to Ayahuasca retreat centers in the Peruvian Amazon Basin and from novel psychoactive molecule research in California in the United States to mescaline-containing cactus cultivators in the Netherlands, the umbrella term ‘psychedelic’ means many things to many people. Attempts to hierarchicalize this research and translate it into a legal and regulated industry in the United States have so far been futile outside of the precious few state-regulated systems in Oregon and California, but legal psychedelic industries have a precedent and active expression in numerous places around the globe.
Speaking of which, Shontelle Pinch of Choose Happy Jamaica is one of our speakers for Global Psychedelic Week and is also set to be a host for one of our in-person GPW events on the island. Dutch retailer Happy Tea will also host one of the Global Psychedelic Week in-person events in the Netherlands.
Alongside the legal jurisdictions where certain forms of psychedelics are regulated and available, we are deeply committed to fostering dialogue and advocating for regulatory change and policy reform in places that have historically prohibited psychedelic consumption. For example, one of the GPW speakers is Sebastian Williams Foster, one of South Africa’s most prominent Drug Law Reform academics and Attorney of the High Court of South Africa. Though we don’t currently have any events scheduled in South Africa, we are in talks with multiple GPW participants to organize a community event as we approach the conference.
In the United States, we have confirmed in-person events in over a dozen cities, including Los Angeles, Austin, Denver, and Chicago, with numerous others slated to be added by the launch of the conference in November. Denver is a prime example of a U.S. district that allows for community use models of psychedelics; the passage of Proposition 122 allows people 21 and over to cultivate, possess, consume, and share five different natural psychoactive substances under a ‘Grow, Gather, Gift’ model.
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While Global Psychedelic Week encourages adherence to and compliance with local laws in the various global cities where our in-person events will take place, we strongly advocate for education and advocacy to advance the culture and science of psychedelic research worldwide, with the intention of combating stigmas and evolving regulations surrounding these powerful molecules globally.
Global Psychedelic Week is more than a psychedelic conference; it’s a flagship model for cross-border diplomacy initiatives centering psychedelics, which have been shown to be powerful agents for fostering connection and dialogue around historically charged subject matter where traditional means of engagement have largely failed.
By building a global coalition of advocates grounded in real-world pragmatism and cultural awareness, we aim to take psychedelic science and culture out of the siloed pockets of privilege and hierarchy that have traditionally gatekept these molecules and empower a decentralized global community of interconnected changemakers.
*This article was submitted by a guest contributor. The author is solely responsible for the content.
