In brief
- From September 9 to 13, Girona, Spain, hosts the first World Ayahuasca Forum, with more than a hundred Indigenous spiritual leaders from the Amazon and other biospheres.
- For the first time, it is the native peoples who set the agenda: what gets researched, how it is regulated, and who benefits from a plant they have safeguarded for generations.
- There will be no ceremonies or consumption: the gathering is a space for scientific, cultural, and legal dialogue, neither religious nor therapeutic.
From September 9 to 13, the Palau de Congressos and the Fira de Girona will host an unprecedented gathering: the first World Ayahuasca Forum, where more than a hundred Indigenous spiritual leaders from the Amazon and other regions will sit alongside scientists, health professionals, legal experts, and activists to decide together—not on their behalf—the future of this plant.
Who Sets the Agenda This Time
Ayahuasca has already had several international gatherings—Ibiza in 2014, Rio Branco in 2016, Girona itself in 2019—but they were almost always organized from outside the communities that originated it. This one is different at its root: it grows out of the Fifth Indigenous Ayahuasca Congress held in Brazil in 2025, and it is organized by the Council of Indigenous Spiritual Leaders together with the Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute, the Nixiwaka Institute, and the Barcelona-based ICEERS. Confirmed speakers include Benki Piyãko, Ninawa Pai da Mata, Biraci Brasil Yawanawa, and Daiara Tukano, alongside Western researchers such as Dennis McKenna, Paul Stamets, Monica Gagliano, and psychiatrist Pamela Kryskow.
Regulating Without Repeating Past Mistakes
The program is organized into five simultaneous spaces—plenaries, global dialogues, thematic panels, research presentations, and a maloca devoted to the arts—and pursues something very concrete: building intercultural regulatory frameworks, legal support networks, and research protocols that recognize Indigenous epistemological sovereignty, rather than simply studying the plant from the outside. The backdrop is the growing pressure on ayahuasca and its active component, DMT: the scarcity of Banisteriopsis caapi and Psychotria viridis plants in some areas of the Amazon, expanding psychedelic tourism, and the commercialization of knowledge that has so far rarely benefited its keepers. The organizers insist there will be no ceremonies, sales, or consumption: it is, deliberately, a space for learning and negotiation, not a religious one.
What It Means
Spain is one of the few European countries where these ceremonies operate today in a legally ambiguous zone, and ayahuasca retreats have been booming there for years, which makes it especially fitting that the forum is held here. The stated long-term goal is to consolidate, in 2027, that Council of Indigenous Spiritual Leaders as a permanent body of dialogue, with real decision-making power over research, regulation, and benefit sharing—not just a symbolic or advisory role, the same underlying debate that Gabon opened when it shielded iboga as a national heritage, which is what these negotiations tend to offer. From a harm reduction and respect for autonomy standpoint, the forum does not by itself resolve the tensions between growing demand and the sustainability of the resource, but it does change who sits at the table where those rules are decided.
Source
- ICEERS / Yorenka Tasorentsi Institute. Press release: World Ayahuasca Forum 2026. Ayahuasca2026.com, 2026.
Educational content written from a harm reduction perspective and with respect for individual freedom. It is not a substitute for advice from a healthcare professional and is not intended to encourage or condemn any drug use.
