Few regions embody the Festival’s 2026 theme — “running on the edge” — as vividly as the South Caucasus. It is a region where sovereignty, security and development are being renegotiated in real time; where new transport corridors are becoming, quite literally, geopolitical infrastructure; and where the retreat of old certainties is opening space for local actors to write, largely on their own terms, a new chapter of cooperation rather than confrontation.
For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, the South Caucasus is witnessing simultaneous, mutually reinforcing progress toward peace on multiple fronts. Since the White House meeting of 8 August 2025 between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the two countries have moved forward almost week by week, with a seventeen-point agreement to normalise relations after more than thirty years initialled and awaiting formal signature. Encouragingly, contacts between the two societies are multiplying alongside the official process: joint seminars, direct flights between Yerevan and Baku after fourteen years, and initiatives such as the “Bridge of Peace,” bringing together civil society representatives from both countries for the first time in over a decade.
Alongside this, 2025 has been described as the year of Armenian-Turkish rapprochement. Turkey views lasting peace in the South Caucasus as key to unlocking the region’s economic potential, with new transport corridors linking Anatolia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Central Asia positioned as a genuine “win-win” for all parties involved — part of the wider Middle Corridor connecting China to Europe. For Armenia, this opening promises new access to international markets and a more diversified, multi-directional trade profile.
Georgia, meanwhile, remains the region’s most established gateway to the Black Sea and international markets, with a long-standing role as a logistics and transit hub that new corridors will complement rather than replace, as overall trade volumes across the wider South Caucasus continue to grow.
In a world where, as this year’s Festival explores, multilateralism is under strain and power is becoming ever more diffuse, the South Caucasus offers a rare and encouraging case of regional actors taking ownership of their own stability and prosperity. It is precisely in this space that Italy and the European Union — through economic diplomacy, investment in connectivity and energy infrastructure, and support for the rule of law — can play a meaningful role as a partner of choice for the region.
This panel brings together Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to explore this historic moment of transformation: the prospects for a durable and comprehensive peace, the new architecture of regional trade and connectivity taking shape, and the opportunity for Europe to engage with a region increasingly positioning itself as a bridge, rather than a barrier, between East and West.
