First: thank you. The go/no-go post got real, honest answers, exactly what I asked for. That input mattered, and it helped me make a call I want to own fully as my own.
So, here it goes:
I am not filing the 45k DHF proposal, and ChainCulture 2026 is postponed. Not cancelled. Postponed to a better phase. Three honest reasons:
One: I have little doubt the funds would have come through, there are many people who want this. But I do not want to lean on the DHF for this right now. At 5 cent Hive, a lean and mean year is simply the healthier choice, which you helped show me. And I would rather wait until community money can go in from a position of strength, not strain.
Two: The runway to September is too short for Barcelona. Summer holidays kill sponsor decisions here, and without sponsors lined up first I would be delivering half the idea. I refuse to do that to it. DHF would have been a solid fill here, enabling me to pursue the September edition but with the decision to not usurp DHF this challenge is too much to overcome right now.
Three, very important: This has been giving me crazy amounts of stress, every year, but also energy. But I need to take a bit of space for myself. Ten years of (helping) organizing teaches you (I hope) the difference between quitting and knowing when the timing is wrong. This is the latter, and I have to be honest about this. I already shed a light on it, in the previous post.
The idea itself I still believe in completely: not Hive talking to Hive, but Hive standing in a wider room, a full cultural day with real substance, next door to two days of pure dealmaking.
What happens to the work / my time invested
I started working on it in April. Reaching out and scheming. Then a BCN visit. And scheduled my next one for next week (which I cancelled). Almost nothing is wasted. The venue relationships stays warm, the quotes are archived as the budget baseline for the next edition, the partner conversations will be paused on good terms, and there is even a Catalan cultural grant window in December that fits the new timeline better than it fit the old one. The groundwork keeps.
And when ChainCulture does return, my hope is simple: that Hive and HiveFest can stand behind it as its leading sponsor, in better times. Imagine that for a moment. Hive at 5 cents funds nothing and argues about it, fair enough. Hive in a better season puts its name on a free public day of workshops, art and talks in a major European city, and a few thousand outsiders walk away knowing what this chain actually is.
Until then I will try to keep working on it quietly in the background, on my own time, no asks.
The friction, which is normal, but still:
The little things piled on too. I was a touch late this year. I struggled to get responses. Some catering quotes were, frankly, ridiculous. The venue I had first rights on was mine, then not, then mine again. None of that alone is a reason to stop, but stacked together it was stressing me out. Piling in the previously so solid base of DHF as first support, now no longer an option and it is a done deal.
Beyond the public thread, a good number of you talked this through with me quietly in the background. Thank you, sincerely. Your honesty and your different angles helped me make up my mind.
But ten years is ten years. HiveFest XI.
One thing I am not willing to do is let the streak die in silence. A lot of you said the same thing in the comments: you want to meet, you want a HiveFest for hivers, you just do not want it bankrolled by printing HBD at the bottom. Completely fair. Some of you already booked a trip to BCN!
So that is exactly what happens next. HiveFest XI is going self-organized: community-run, no DHF, no single organizer, and I will publish the vision on it in a separate post in the next days.
Spoiler: it involves city captains, a tip jar, and a word every beekeeper knows.
See you in that post. THANK YOU!
