By Our Editorial Staff
The Festival will be held in Lucca from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 October 2025 and will see among the guests Patrizia Caraveo, Giuseppe Cederna, Javier Cercas, Carlo Cottarelli, Lucy Jones, Elisa Palazzi, David Quammen, Mauro Varotto.
Also this year Lucca is preparing to welcome a new edition of Pianeta Terra Festival, directed by Stefano Mancuso, conceived and organized by Editori Laterza and promoted by the Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca Foundation.
The appointment is from Thursday 2 to Sunday 5 October 2025, in the most evocative places of the city: the Church of San Francesco, Palazzo Ducale, the Botanical Garden, Auditorium del Suffragio, Libreria Civica Agorà.
The title of this fourth edition will be ‘Unstable Systems’: never before have we witnessed such an acceleration in changes, a comparable instability, not only of the Earth system, but of any complex system – economic, geopolitical, technological, just to give macroscopic and current examples. “We can consider the Earth as an inherently unstable system in which any change in initial conditions, however minimal, can have enormous consequences on its future. When the changes are by no means minimal but substantial, such as the increase in the average temperature of 1.5 °C, in a handful of years, predicting what the future of our planet will be like becomes completely impossible,” says the director of the Festival, Stefano Mancuso. “No one can know what will happen and those who dare to make predictions – which, however, are never prudent to do – have the same chances of getting them right as a fortune teller or oracle of past times. It’s a new normal where previously unimaginable things become commonplace. We will have to get used to it and start understanding how to navigate a world that we can no longer read“.
During the days of the Festival, national and international guests will embark on this navigation through direct comparisons, lectio, meetings, interviews, shows. Over 90 events in four days to spend together with scientists, philosophers, psychoanalysts, economists, geopolitical experts, writers, journalists and artists. With them we will investigate the fragilities of our time: global warming, extreme weather phenomena, the transformation of landscapes, the energy issue, political, geopolitical, economic and even existential instability. Among the first names announced: astrophysicist Patrizia Caraveo, president of the Italian Astronomical Society; the Spanish writer and essayist Javier Cercas, one of the most influential voices in contemporary European fiction; the actor and writer Giuseppe Cederna; the economist Carlo Cottarelli, director of the Italian Observatory on Public Accounts; the English writer and journalist Lucy Jones, an expert in science and ecology; climatologist Elisa Palazzi, professor at the University of Turin and CNR researcher; the American essayist and science populariser David Quammen; the geographer Mauro Varotto, professor at the University of Padua and scholar of environmental geographies.
“Never before have we needed a plurality of voices and the most diverse skills – says Giuseppe Laterza – only in this way can we hope to face the problems coming from unprecedented scenarios“.
“The Planet Earth Festival – declares Massimo Marsili, President of the Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca Foundation – is now in its fourth edition and confirms the objective that the Foundation expected at the time of its conception: to provide Lucca with an event of high cultural and scientific profile on a topic of strong attention to people, to the business system and to public institutions with a wide participation of the city and the territory. The instability of systems is not a distant stretch. Geopolitical transformations, climate change, the fluidity of social change are phenomena that can also be read and found around us. Understanding and interpreting them is an act of responsibility that the Festival helps us to carry out in order to respond by building and not passively suffering their effects“.
Pianeta Terra Festival is designed and organized by Editori Laterza and promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca. The City of Lucca and the Representation of the European Commission in Italy are institutional partners of the event. The event is also made possible by the co-participation of the Chamber of Commerce of North-West Tuscany / The Lands of Giacomo Puccini and Confindustria Toscana Nord.
The patronage of the Tuscany Region and the Province of Lucca, the Association of Foundations and Savings Banks, ISPRA – Higher Institute for Environmental Protection and Research have conferred their patronage.
The Festival makes use of the collaboration with the IMT School for Advanced Studies of Lucca, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, the University of Pisa, the Territorial School Office of Lucca and Massa Carrara, the Campus Foundation.
The following have confirmed their participation in the project: A11 Venture, the Archdiocese of Lucca, the Lucchese Music Association, the Talea Association, the Agorà Civic Library, the Giuseppe Pera Foundation, Green Cross Italia, the “Luigi Boccherini” Conservatory of Music, the Lucca Film Festival, Lucense, the Botanical Garden of Lucca and Photolux Festival.
The support of numerous sponsors is very important. To date, we would like to thank: Banco BPM, Sofidel, Green Utility, RetiAmbiente, Ricola, Toscotec, Redfish Capital Partners and Alternative Capital Partners.
Giorgio Tesi Group has guaranteed its commitment to the preparation of the rooms where the meetings will take place, starting with the press conference.
For more information and details, consult the Festival website www.pianetaterrafestival.it and the social channels Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, X and Youtube.
From this edition, the new TikTok channel of Pianeta Terra Festival (@pianetaterrafestival) will also be active, already available from today with a series of content that will accompany the public to discover the Festival.