Jubilee of Youth 2025: Dates and Full Programme

Jubilee of Youth 2025: A Week Dedicated to the Pilgrims of Hope Who Will Change the World

As summer takes hold, making our days increasingly sweltering, Rome is preparing to welcome the vibrant heart of the world’s youth. From 28 July to 3 August 2025, Rome will open its arms to a multitude of young people on the move, ready to transform into a city-symbol of faith, encounter, and future. Streets, squares, and basilicas will come alive with different languages, songs, footsteps, and questions demanding answers—with young, passionate lives insisting on a future for the world. The Jubilee of Youth intertwines with the greater celebration of the Jubilee 2025, sharing its theme: “Pilgrims of Hope.” But in the young, this hope becomes momentum, intuition, urgency. It is a call addressed to all, certainly—but in the boys and girls arriving in Rome, tired, emotional, full of life, it takes on the force of a promise. A promise of a new world, still to be built.

If all believers are pilgrims, young people are so in a radical, almost ontological way. For within them lies the seed of restlessness, of expectation, of a desire that cannot be satisfied. They are wanderers by vocation: they are not merely looking for paths to follow but horizons to invent. They are the ones who still believe—even when the world around them seems to have stopped. The ones who won’t stop, not even in the face of ruins. For them, being pilgrims of hope is not a devotional exercise—it is an act of faith in the future. An act of courage. It is the daily choice to not give in to cynicism, resignation, or apathy.
In them, the Church sees not only the future—but a present that can already change the world. A present made of fresh ideas, sincere questions, hands ready to build. Because hope is not passive waiting. It is a force that makes its way forward, that stirs and pushes ahead. It is the song of those who keep walking even with worn-out shoes, because they know the destination is worth the journey.
During Jubilee 2025, the young will be the light of dawn, that which precedes and heralds the day. They will be prophets in jeans and with a smile, imperfect but persistent saints, disciples of joy—even when everything around them seems to shake.
They are, and already are, pilgrims of hope, not because they know the way, but because they believe it is worth searching for it together.

The Dates of the Jubilee of Youth 2025

The Jubilee 2025 dates have already been marked in the hearts of thousands of young men and women, written in the ink of anticipation for many months. From 28 July to 3 August, seven days that promise to be a suspended moment in time, during which Rome will speak the languages of the world and its alleys will be filled with backpacks, guitars, songs, and tired but radiant steps.
The Jubilee of Youth 2025 is designed for young hearts, for those who dream big, for those searching for something worth living. In a summer when everything might feel like a holiday, the Church offers an alternative: a holiday of the soul, in which the encounter with God and others becomes the most authentic experience.
And Rome—with its millennia-old basilicas, with its stones that speak, with sunrises over bridges and jasmine-scented nights—will be the perfect setting for this spiritual journey. Every day a message, a sign, a calling.

World Youth Day

The Jubilee of Youth does not come out of nowhere: it is the heir and continuation of World Youth Day, the well-known WYD which for decades has gathered the new generations around the Pope. It is the ripe fruit of the dream of Saint John Paul II, who saw in young people not a problem to be managed but a promise to be embraced.
World Youth Day has crossed oceans, defied crises, united faces and flags, and forged bonds that have overcome borders and wars. Today, at the heart of Jubilee 2025, that same energy is renewed with a new light.
Because young people are not spectators of the Church: they are the living, moving, vibrant Church. The Jubilee will not be an event to follow—but an experience to embody. They will be protagonists, witnesses, healthy bearers of hope. And in a world torn by uncertainty and loneliness, it will be their voice—joyful, rebellious, in love—that reignites the future.
The Jubilee events connected to WYD 2025 will be a laboratory of peace, a workshop of beauty, where together they will reflect on social justice, integral ecology, and intercultural dialogue. Because holiness today has the face of concrete solidarity.

Jubilee of Youth Programme

The Jubilee of Youth 2025 programme will be like a great journey in stages—a widespread pilgrimage through the living heart of Rome, which will take shape day by day through gestures, words, and encounters.

It will begin on Monday 28 July, with the arrival of the pilgrims. Stations, airports, and terminals will become places of greetings, hugs, and waiting. The city will begin to change face, filling with backpacks and songs, with smiles and mingled languages.

On Tuesday 29 July, the Jubilee will burst into celebration with the Welcome Mass in St Peter’s Square: a powerful, communal moment in which the hearts of the youth will unite with the voice of the Church of Rome to say: “We are here. We are ready.”

Wednesday 30 and Thursday 31 July will be two special days: “Dialogue with the City,” when young people will spread through neighbourhoods, museums, hidden courtyards, and ancient churches. Rome will open like a book, offering its most beautiful pages: artistic workshops, spiritual encounters, cultural initiatives, personal testimonies. Every corner of the city will become a space for listening, dialogue, and wonder.

On Friday 1 August, time will slow down and turn inward. It will be the Day of Reconciliation, with the Circus Maximus transformed into a vast space of mercy and forgiveness. Here, the young will be able to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation, embrace silence, and let the heart speak. It will be a day to put right what is disordered inside, to release what remains unresolved.

Then, on Saturday 2 August, the youthful multitude will set out on foot towards Tor Vergata, a symbolic place where time will seem to stand still. Here, under the stars, they will participate in the Vigil with the Holy Father—an intimate and immense moment at once. The young people will sleep outdoors, like true pilgrims, keeping vigil together through the night that prepares the dawn.

On Sunday 3 August, the culmination: the encounter with the Pope and the final Mass. An epiphany of youth gathered under one sky—teary eyes, raised hands, open hearts. The loudest “Amen” ever uttered by the world’s youth. A celebration that will carry within it all the voices, the tears, the dances, and promises of those days.

Then, slowly, the return will begin. But it won’t be a farewell—it will be a missioning. A “now go” whispered with strength. Because whoever has lived this Jubilee, never truly returns the same.

Art will be everywhere: performances, exhibitions, testimonies—because beauty is one of God’s names and speaks even to those who haven’t yet learned the language of faith.
There will be space for service, practical and quiet—among the poor, in parishes, in listening centres. Because hope that doesn’t become action remains just a word.
And also, meetings among ecclesial movements, diocesan realities, diverse charisms—together forming a mosaic of living, active faith.
At the heart of it all, interreligious dialogue: a space to learn to listen, to understand, to reach out. Because the future is not built with walls, but with bridges.

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