We presented the main highlights of the II ASETT International Forum, which will take place from 10 to 13 November, with Brazil as the guest country, at our headquarters at the Miramar Palace in Donostia-San Sebastián.
Co-organised with the OECD and the United Nations Local2030 Coalition, the event aims to broaden the conversation around the Social Economy and examine its contribution to transforming the economy as a whole.
What is the Social Economy already contributing, and what can it contribute to the transformation the economy needs?
This will be one of the central questions of the II ASETT International Forum, presented this week at Miramar Palace in Donostia-San Sebastián. In November, the Forum will bring together representatives from businesses, institutions, Social Economy organisations, academia, cities and international networks.
The second edition takes a deliberately broad perspective: rather than presenting the Social Economy solely as a sector or social policy, it seeks to explore it as an economic and business model capable of providing responses to some of today’s major challenges.
A world looking for answers
The Forum takes place against a backdrop of profound economic, social, technological and demographic transformations.
How can we generate prosperity without increasing inequalities? How can we keep businesses competitive while ensuring they remain rooted in their territories? How can we respond to technological and demographic transformation without leaving people behind? How can we combine innovation, sustainability, cohesion and a more balanced distribution of value?
In response to these questions, ASETT proposes not to focus solely on the future of the Social Economy, but on what the Social Economy is already contributing—and can contribute—to the future of the economy and society.
Four days to move from challenges to solutions
The programme will begin on 10 November in Gernika, with a day dedicated to Peace and the Social Economy, exploring the role of economic activity, cooperation and community ties in processes of reconstruction and social cohesion.
On 11 November, Donostia-San Sebastián will host eight thematic forums covering competitiveness, finance, the legal framework, international cooperation, inclusion, health, housing, and research and foresight.
These will not be eight independent conversations. Each forum will examine a different dimension of a common question: what is the Social Economy already contributing, what needs to evolve, and what conditions are needed for it to respond more effectively and achieve greater scale?
On 12 and 13 November, the plenary sessions at the Kursaal Congress Centre will broaden the perspective to businesses, public policies, cities and territories, and international experiences.
The Forum will address issues such as the role of cities as spaces where solutions demonstrate their real capacity to work; the transformations that foresight anticipates in business, employment, technology and inequalities; the role of businesses in building more widely shared prosperity; and the lessons that can be drawn by comparing experiences developed in different contexts.
A conversation with an international dimension
Brazil will be the guest country for this second edition, strengthening dialogue between Europe and Latin America.
The II ASETT International Forum is not conceived as an endpoint. The knowledge and insights generated over these four days will subsequently feed into the work of the ASETT Think Tank, Foresight and Social Laboratory.
The sequence proposed by the Forum captures this ambition:
From challenge → to solutions → from learning → to the future.
Because the question does not end with how to grow the Social Economy. The conversation ASETT is proposing is broader: how can we harness its experience, business models and the solutions it is already developing to contribute to the transformation the economy needs?
II ASETT International Forum
📅 10–13 November 2026
📍 Gernika · Donostia-San Sebastián
🇧🇷 Brazil, guest country
Registration is now open → https://event.meetmaps.com/IIFOROASETT/en/registration?utm_source=Klaviyo&utm_medium=email&_kx=EfVC3jLBOwArT3LW5txacQ.Yr98nH
