We wish you a good start in the year 2026 and hope, that you had a joyful and relaxed Christmas season. We would like to share our heartfelt gratitude to all our supporters and friends who have supported us throughout 2025.
Looking back, we were able to conduct our biggest project with the International Student Week in Ilmenau 2025 (ISWI 2025) for the 17th time. From June 12th to 21st 224 students from around 60 countries came to Ilmenau to discuss the topic of "Sharing power, Giving opportunities and Enabling participation". In discussions, lectures as well as cultural events, we could welcome more than 5,400 participants. Along with this, we organised more than 30 campus projects incl. events as Local Erasmus Initiative as well as regular offers like language meetings, radio international, ISWI-music or intercultural dance sessions reaching more than 3,500 participants. Additionally, we contributed actively to the SOrCE-network and refugees' network in Ilmenau and supported a lot of collaborations fostering internationalisation and solidarity on campus, in the city of Ilmenau as well as in Ilm-Kreis county and Thuringia.
We want to thank all the volunteers, who put their time and dedication in making these activities happen. We look forward to continue in 2026 including our next Intercultural Week (ICW) on the topic of Internationalisation from June, 4th till 13th, which you can already mark in your calendar. A more detailed overview on our last year's projects and a small outlook you may find below.
We hope, you enjoy reading. If you have any questions or ideas, feel free to contact us. Else we hope to welcome you at the one or the other event.
Your ISWIs
Preparations for the Intercultural Week (ICW) in Ilmenau 2026
Before we look back to 2025, we are happy to announce, that we are planning to organise the second Intercultural Week in Ilmenau from June 4th till 13th 2026.
From June 4th until 7th we are awaiting around 125 participants from all over Germany for a conference in Ilmenau to discuss with them about Internationalisation at German universities. In lectures and groupwork they will explore the topic and discuss recent trends and best practice to improve life of international students. Additionally from June 7th until 13th, a cultural programme is planned including participation during the city festival of Ilmenau with an intercultural brunch as well as an intercultural game night, an intercultural dance night, a sports night, an intercultural movie night and arts night.
So please mark this period already in your calendars and if you have any ideas or want to support, please don't hesitate to contact us.
International Student Week in Ilmenau 2025
We were happy to host our association’s largest project once again – the International Student Week in Ilmenau (ISWI 2025). Held from June 12 to June 21 on the campus of TU Ilmenau, we welcomed 224 participants from more than 60 countries. Under the theme “Sharing Power, Giving Opportunities and Enabling Participation,” ISWI 2025 created a vibrant platform for dialogue, collaboration, and exchange. Participants engaged in group work, discussions and lectures, and a wide range of cultural events such as the World Food Festival, Intercultural Games Night, Open-Air Concert, Dance Night, Arts Night, Movie Night, and the Thuringian Experience Day.
This unforgettable experience would not have been possible without the incredible dedication of our groupleaders, hosts, alumni, helpers and organizing team and the TU Ilmenau community. Also, we want to thank once again our funders like Thuringian ministry for science (TMBWK), TU Ilmenau, StuRa TU Ilmenau, Studierendenwerk Thüringen, State Chancellery Thuringia, city of Ilmenau, Ilm-Kreis county, DAAD and Ernst-Abbe-Stiftung. The final group presentations beautifully reflected the participants’ enthusiasm, creativity, and teamwork, marking a powerful conclusion to an inspiring week. All in all we could reach about 5,400 participants throughout the whole project.
Thank you to everyone who made ISWI 2025 a space where ideas were shared, connections were built, and participation truly came to life.
Our documentation book you can find via this link:
SOrCE-Network
Directly connected with our biggest project is the SOrCE (Students Organizing Conventions Everywhere) Network, which is connecting students' associations from around the world that organize similar projects like the ISWI students’ conference. This year we welcomed delegates from the other conferences at ISWI 2025 and send 23 representatives to other conferences like ISFiT (Trondheim), SCiM (Maribor) and ISWinT (Timisoara). Also, 2 delegates took part in the in-person meeting in Slovenia in November to discuss about new developments in the network with the founding of more student conferences worldwide. Apart from that we regularly joined the online-meetings. We look forward to continue the fruitful exchange and foster the network.
Campus Projects and LEI-projects
Also in 2025, we were able to organise a lot of projects on the campus of TU Ilmenau and support international students in various ways to make their own cultural events happen, to get to know their campus and Ilmenau and contribute to the cultural life in Ilmenau. All in all, throughout the year, we could welcome around 2.900 participants. At that note, we want to thank the volunteers, who made the projects work, but also the funders and supporters for helping us and the international students, among them TU Ilmenau, esp. we4you, StuRa TU Ilmenau, House of Resources Thüringen, Studierendenwerk Thüringen, IlSC e.V., KuKo e.V., hsf e.V. and KJR Ilm-Kreis, dgb-Bildungswerk Thüringen and DAAD. In the following section we present some of our events. Depending on our capacities we plan to continue with them in 2026.
Intercultural Nights
In 2025 we were hosting three intercultural nights with groups from Italy, Afghanistan as well as with exchange students from Mexico, Jordan and Ukraine in collaboration with bi-club. The groups cooked and served traditional dishes, decorated the club and made a cultural program featuring music, dances, and unique clothing from their region. We were happy to welcome around 130 participants for each night.
Intercultural celebrations
We were also able to support international student groups to celebrate and show festivities from all around the world on the campus of TU Ilmenau. The biggest of these events with about 90 participants was Nowruz (Persian New Year) on March, 20th and 22nd. But also smaller gatherings like Masleniza and Baba Marta (March, 1st), German Carneval (March, 2nd) and our small Easter program (April, 20th) were well received by the participants.
ISWI game nights
Getting students together and getting to know each other by playing games, we again organised several game nights. Especially new students took part and our game masters could teach a lot of different games. With sometimes more than 100 participants, the events were very well received. We want to thank esp. bc-club for the collaboration.
ISWI sports’ afternoon
Im Laufe des Jahres haben wir drei Sportnachmittage organisiert, bei denen verschiedene Sportarten wie Tischtennis, Badminton, Basketball und Volleyball in freiem Spiel angeboten wurden. Außerdem wurde über internationale Sportarten, die Angebote des Sportzentrums der TU Ilmenau sowie das studentische Gesundheitsmanagement informiert. Die Veranstaltungen waren mit jeweils rund 75 Teilnehmern gut besucht. Unser besonderer Dank gilt neben den ehrenamtlichen Unterstützer*innen dem Universitätssportzentrum sowie dem Gesundheitsmanagement und dem we4you.
LEI-events
As Local Erasmus Initiative (LEI) in Ilmenau in collaboration with the International Office of TU Ilmenau, we were organising events that help outgoing Erasmus students to prepare for their stay abroad. Next to LEI-parties in January and June incl. speed-friending with homecomings and get-to-know activities, we organised a public viewing of this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Switzerland in May as well as a kitchen run in May and game nights to get old and new Erasmus-students together and advertise the Erasmus programme. Also, we organised three Wanderlust lectures, where students could inform about the experience of outgoers and travelling. With these events and e.g., taking part in association presentations we contributed also to this year's special topics of "homecomings", "diversity" and "volunteering". We want to thank DAAD and the International office for the support and to continue our work as LEI in 2026.
Language Meetings
An essential basis for enabling mutual understanding is to speak a common language. To provide a platform, where people who are currently learning a language can exchange ideas with native speakers, we organize language meetings. We were happy, that we could provide regular meetings in English, German and Spanish throughout the year. The French language meeting stopped after summer term as the conductor graduated. The meetings were well received with about 600 participants in total. We hope also to be able to host language meetings in 2026. We want to thank the language center of TU Ilmenau and we4you for the continuous support.
International dancing and ISWI music
Music and dance are two ways to bring people together and enable them to express themselves. The International Dance sessions offered tutorials in different dance styles without pre-knowledge or registration and that way provided an opportunity to try out and meet people. In January we were hosting the Dance Night with L'express Dance community on the campus of TU Ilmenau with about 110 participants.
The ISWI Music project was going on for the whole year with new people joining and bringing themselves in. Throughout the year, they collaborated on performances at various venues within the university and across the city, e.g. “Miteinander stärken” by House of Resources Thüringen or the Christmas party of we4you. The group also participated actively in ISWI 2025.
Erstiwoche at TU Ilmenau
Just like last year, we again welcomed first-semester students during winter by supporting the Getting-to know barbecue along with FeM, hsf e.V., ILSC e.V., Bergfest e.V. and bi-Club by organising our international buffet, where freshers can get to know the diversity of the campus by tasting snacks and finger food from around the world. We prepared Bingo as well, and it was very well received by the students since it enabled them to get to know other students and also members of the different student associations who were there with a stand. Along with it we also had a stall during City Rallye engaging participants in intercultural games.
Profs reading Christmas stories and exchange and event program "Colourful Christmas"
As one of our last events in 2025 we again organised our traditional Profs reading Christmas stories on Dec, 9th in bc-café to bring students into Christmas mood. This time we could welcome Prof. Köhler, Dr. Streitferdt and Dr. Cao-Riehmer. Donations were collected this time for Red Crescent Sudan.
Also, we offered again our colourful Christmas exchange and events programme in cooperation with we4you, so that the international students who stay in Ilmenau did not need to stay alone at home and get an opportunity to know Christmas traditions. The program was again well received. We were able to send 14 students to 8 hosts in and outside Ilmenau. Also, in our Christmas events group we had about 114 participants, of whom several took part in events organised by us like cookie baking, ice skating, potluck or hiking.
Radio International
In 2025 during the lecture time, we were able to run biweekly our Radio International show in collaboration with radio hsf. Here international students were able to share and talk about their intercultural experiences, their country, culture and music as well as politics.
Refugee Network
Also, in 2025 we contributed to the refugee's network in Ilmenau. Regular language meetings were taking place in the community center of house of ressources Thüringen as well as at TU Ilmenau. Also, during ISWI 2025 in collaboration with UNHCR the movie "The swimmers" was shown and we could welcome the main protagonist Sven Spannekrebs for a discussion at TU Ilmenau. In the end of the year, members of our group took part in the discussion after the movie screening of "Kein Land für Niemand". In all cases we want to thank hfc e.V. for their support.
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