San Sebastian Gastronomika-Euskadi Basque Country, the doyen of international gastronomic congresses, will be back from the 14th to the 17th of November at the Kursaal and has been adapted to meet the new situation created by the Covid-19 crisis. Its 23rd congress will be looking at France and will propose opening a fresh dialogue between French and Spanish cuisine. It will once again be onsite for congress delegates, although it will have a format that will also allow people to follow the congress from the on-line platform used for the first time in 2020 that makes it possible for anyone who has registered to connect up live from any corner of the world.

The main theme of this year’s congress will be the rediscovery of the culinary reality of French cuisine. Its most transformative concepts will be addressed and the latest up-and-coming chefs and the great figures from both sides of the frontier who were so close at one time will be attending. 

It will be combining presentations and live activities, with an on-site audience, with events streamed from restaurants from all over the world through the new digital platform. At the Kursaal, there will once again be an exhibition area where companies will be able to display their products and get in touch with the people attending the congress.

So, the San Sebastián congress will be back in its usual setting after the successful experience in October 2020, when it managed to bring some of the most prestigious cuisines on the culinary scene into the homes of thousands of congress delegates from all over the planet through the event’s digital platform. This was a historic congress that was held for the first time over five days and gave a key boost to these kinds of events during the pandemic. 

In a context marked by the covid-19 crisis, which not only impacted especially on the event sector but also on the hospitality industry and restaurant and bars, the veteran congress reinvented itself with a digital proposal that was able to bring together over five days more than 23,000 people from 108 countries, with dozens of experiences and didactic talks that took place in various TV studios, some of which were located in some of the best restaurants in San Sebastián. Altogether, 50 hours of top-quality audiovisual broadcasting, that managed to raise the expectations of the 'chefs', businessmen, workers and the entire value chain of a thriving activity that the coronavirus brought to a sudden halt, and which, after the event in Guipuzcoa, looked more optimistically towards the future.

The synergy of the 'on-line' and 'off-line' worlds is here to stay and meant a change in the paradigm as it reconsidered the future of congresses and professional connections. This was a more accessible model, enriched by the diversity of scenarios with a pioneering worldwide format. In fact, the congress is still available on the web site: www.sansebastiangastronomika.com and many users continue to sign up to watch it even though it is over. It had more than 70 presentations broadcast from nine TV sets. In actual fact, the kitchens of some of the most prestigious restaurants and cooking schools in the Basque Country become genuine television studios whose in-situ work was streamed to the rest of the world. The work and lessons provided by the chefs helped to draw attention to the reality of their everyday activity in the kitchen.