"Rome Future Week". Young people at the center of the 2025 edition

Until September 21, 2025, Rome Future Week returns, the widespread event that has been transforming Rome into a living laboratory to anticipate the future for three years. The event continues to grow year after year in numbers and content: over 300 events already scheduled; 200 locations activated throughout the city; already 500 speakers expected and more than 50 partners among institutions, media, and private entities.

This year's theme is “Mutations”: an invitation to read the future as a flow and movement of natural and cultural transformation that traverses bodies, languages, technologies, cities, and relationships. Thus, life. From the Latin mutatio – to change – the term does not refer to a simple superficial renewal, but to a deep process of becoming. In biology, a mutation rewrites the genetic code; in society, it is the signal that we are learning to rewrite ourselves, questioning identities, paradigms, and worldviews.

Rome Future Week, in fact, was born to anticipate the multiple futures that already inhabit the Capital. Technological futures, certainly, but also cultural, social, and human, as emphasized by Michele Franzese, founder of the event. “Rome Future Week was born to connect the opportunities that coexist in this city: technological innovation, but also cultural, social, and human changes. After the surprise of the first edition, and a second one for consolidation, this year we aim to make everything even more readable, engaging, and participatory, with a program structured in thematic hubs and a strong theme that accompanies us everywhere: mutations. Rome, with its hybrid and vibrant nature, is the perfect place to observe these transformations under a microscope. And to traverse them together”.

Rome Future Week is an excellent example of collaboration between public and private sectors, as it arises from a co-design between the Department of Productive Activities, Equal Opportunities, and Investment Attraction of Rome Capital and Scai Comunicazione, an agency organizing events and formats throughout Italy.

"Rome Future Week has become, in a few years, a concrete space where innovation meets people. We do not speak of technology as an end in itself, but as a tool to generate impact: cultural, social, economic. This is what we are building, as an administration and as a city: with the House of Emerging Technologies we have opened a place where businesses, universities, startups, and citizens meet to think together about new solutions. And with projects like Impresa Comune, technology transfer, and work on the territories, we are demonstrating that even a great capital can innovate in an inclusive and sustainable way, holding together past and future. And becoming the right place to observe the mutations of the present and try to orient them.” declares Monica Lucarelli, Councillor for Productive Activities, Equal Opportunities, and Investment Attraction of Rome Capital.

The symbol of the 2025 edition is a butterfly, emblem of transformation. A three-dimensional version will be created as the official pin of the event, becoming the focal point of visual communication. Not just a graphic element, but a sign that recalls change in its deepest form: an evolution that traverses bodies, habits, and society. With this symbol, Rome Future Week proposes a new grammar of change – made of metamorphoses, freedom, and renewing visions.

A novelty of the 2025 edition is the introduction of thematic Future Hubs, designed to guide the public through the major areas of change. Each hub will tell, with dedicated languages and formats, a different dimension of the ongoing mutations: Ethiopia Lab, curated by EFI (Ecosystem Training Italy), to tell about changing education; Casa Futuro, for a reflection on the new dimensions of living, with an exhibition and a whole day of talks; Alchemy Maker, at Industrie Fluviali, a day dedicated to the study of artificial intelligences; House of Emerging Technologies of Rome Capital, at Tiburtina Station, already a leading location in past editions, but this year reimagined as an ideal place for conversations, hackathons, and moments of co-design for the future. In short, Rome changes and reinvents its spaces to make them available for innovation.

"Rome Future Week reminds us that the future can be born here too, if we truly believe in it. Translated is a proudly Roman and globally ambitious company. And it is precisely in Rome, where we were born and deliberately remained, that last month we gathered over 70 of the best European researchers in artificial intelligence to develop foundational models of a new generation, capable of learning from direct experience. With this project, called DVPS, we are building a useful, transparent, and deeply human artificial intelligence. Right here, where innovation and vision meet.” says Isabelle Andrieu, co-founder and Chairwoman of Translated.

A great deal of space will be dedicated to young people. Those under 25 will not only be the audience but also active protagonists of the narrative: speakers, volunteers, videomakers, but also “shadows” within the organizing team: selected through a call, dozens of girls and boys will share their visions during the key moments of the week.

This edition of Rome Future Week has also been realized in collaboration with ROAD - Rome Advanced District, a network that aggregates companies (in addition to Eni, Ferrovie dello Stato, Cisco, Nextchem, Autostrade, Acea, and Bridgestone), universities, startups, research centers, and institutions, with the aim of creating a sustainable innovation hub in the Gazometro area of Rome. Located in an urban quadrant of the Capital dating back to the early 1900s, of absolute historical industrial relevance, the District hosts Joule, Eni's School for Business and the ZERO accelerator (a node of the National CDP Network dedicated to the best clean tech startups).

Together with ROAD, many partners and sponsors have decided to support this new edition and have embraced the theme, building content around the mutations, including RINA, Ferrovie dello Stato, Lazio Region, IUL (Telematic University of IUL Studies), Little Genius International, MSD Foundation, National Cybersecurity Agency, Pantheon Institute, SONY Csl, Translated, Telecom, Engel & Volkers, Confcommercio. Official media partners of the festival are RAI and RDS.

The initiative enjoys the patronage of Lazio Region, Tor Vergata University, Rome and Lazio Convention Bureau, Unindustria, and Formez, whose presence represents an important signal to tell the ongoing mutation in the Public Administration.

“A mutation exists where we know how to grasp it - declared the President of Formez Giovanni Anastasi - even better if we know how to anticipate it. That is why we have addressed the issue of change with attention and proactivity from the very beginning. The beauty of mutations is that they are sensitive to further variations, enriching the initial push even more. Today, the Public Administration is aware of the new and its fundamental role in translating it into benefits for businesses and citizens.”

This third edition of “Rome Future Week 2025” aims to confirm itself as a focal meeting point between the changing world and those who change with it. A unique opportunity to observe, receive stimuli, and understand in real-time the mutations of our time, starting from the “eternal” city that has always preserved and reinvented them.