Cape Town
Climate Week
31 Aug-05 September 2026
A week of city-wide, grassroots climate action
WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?
Cape Town Climate Week, now in its fifth year, is a city-wide celebration of the grassroots solutions that already exist to our most urgent crises: climate change, spatial injustice, food and water insecurity, a broken energy system, migration and gender injustice.
These are not your regular boardroom talks or workshops. Over six days and eight events, activists, community leaders, students, and citizens get together to take practical action while exploring how climate change, and the need to build climate resilience, is deeply connected to social justice in South Africa.
Tapping into South Africa’s history of change catalysed by grassroots action, participants will journey through different areas of the city and witness how climate change is a threat amplifier to existing social ills, and what can be done to take action.
Citizens, and the youth, can’t wait for governments to waste time at conferences and talk shops – we can and should be bringing adaptation and resilience to our own communities, now.
WHAT IS THE AIM?
Sometimes, these problems feel too big to tackle. But, by learning about alternative forms of transport, housing, urban planning, energy systems, food growing, water resilience and gender-inclusive policy, overwhelm can be turned into collective grassroots action.
That’s why we aim to create a sense of curious, active citizenry and prove that there are many ways to care for our planet, communities, and generations to come.
2026 THEMES
ENERGY JUSTICE | WATER JUSTICE | FOOD JUSTICE | SPATIAL JUSTICE | GENDER & MIGRATION JUSTICE | GLOBAL SOLIDARITY
By exploring the 6 thematic areas, Cape Town Climate Week 2026 will aim to promote dialogue, collaboration, fun, and dynamic action towards building a sustainable and just future in South Africa. This will be done through workshops, teach-ins, tours, screenings, and gatherings across the city.
Download our 2025 Climate Week educational resource booklet below to learn more about these themes and how they are connected to climate justice.
2026 PROGRAMME
MONDAY, 31 AUGUST
TRAIN OF THOUGHT
Join us for a train ride from Cape Town Station to Khayelitsha, exploring how transport shapes everyday life in the city. Along the way, fellow riders from different corners of Cape Town will share stories and lived experiences that reveal how housing, infrastructure, and inequality are deeply connected.
Together we'll reflect on spatial inequality, the need for accessible, low-impact public transport, and why a working rail system is central to climate justice.
Date: 31 August 2026
Time: 09:30 - 11:30
Meeting Point: Cape Town Station
UNDOING SPATIAL APARTHEID
Join Ndifuna Ukwazi and Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU), in two interactive parallel sessions, to explore community organising, climate-resilient housing, and how communities are influencing the policies and decisions that shape where and how they live. Through collective discussion and participatory activities, we'll reflect on organising and building power within spatial policy processes.
Date: 31 August 2026
Time: 11:30 - 15:00
Venue: Isivivana Centre, Khayelitsha (transport back to Bertha House, Mowbray available)
TUESDAY, 1 SEPTEMBER
CLIMATE CAFE - ENERGY JUSTICE
The fossil fuel industry has driven the climate crisis while shaping energy systems that continue to impact marginalised communities.
Join us for a Climate Café which explores energy justice and the power behind South Africa's energy system through an interactive exhibition, lino-cutting, collective discussion, and creative activities. Together we'll unpack industry influence, explore victories in regulation, litigation, and grassroots resistance, and consider what energy sovereignty and a just transition could look like in the face of the current energy landscape.
Date: 1 September 2026
Time: 10:00-15:00
Venue: Guga S'thebe, Langa
The energy crisis has a cost, and it isn't paid equally. Join us for a screening of “We Can't See the Sunset”, followed by a panel discussion exploring energy justice, extraction, and community resistance. Together we'll reflect on the stories, struggles, and pathways for a just energy future.
About the film: This Open Secrets documentary reveals the climate costs borne by communities living at the margins. The film documents how South Africa's energy crisis, one built on extraction, power, and profit, carries the weight of both an unjust past and an uncertain future.
Date: 1 September 2026
Time: 17:30–19:30
Venue: Bertha House
‘WE CAN’T SEE THE SUNSET’ SCREENING
WEDNESDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER
SOWING SEEDS FOR SYSTEM CHANGE
Join us for a food justice gathering and planting experience exploring how environmental racism and unequal food systems shape life in Cape Town. Together we will: engage with a seed library exhibition, watch short films on food sovereignty and climate justice, and hear from local voices in a panel discussion.
Along the way, we'll reflect on what it will take to rethink food security and imagine more just, resilient food futures in the face of the climate crisis.
Date: 2 September 2026
Time:10:00 - 13:00
Venue: Bertha House
THURSDAY, 3 SEPTEMBER
RIPPLES OF CHANGE
Who has water, and who waits for it? Ripples of Change grounds that question in the Philippi Horticultural Area (PHA), home to the aquifer that helps sustain Cape Town's water future.
Together, we'll engage in a water mapping workshop, explore the PHA, and examine the intersecting pressures of development, climate change, and growing resource demands. We’ll also reflect on what water justice means in practice. Join us to learn, connect, and co-create visions for a just water future.
Date: 3 September 2026
Time: 10:00 - 14:30
Venue: Vegkop Farm, Philippi
Meeting point: Bertha House, transport leaves 09:30
FRIDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER
BORDERS AND BELONGING
As the climate crisis drives forced movement across our region, women, queer people, and migrants bear the greatest burden, shaped by patriarchy, xenophobia, and colonial dispossession. Join us for a walking tour and teach-in exploring these intersecting realities through histories of land dispossession, forced removals, and migrant and refugee organising.
We’ll share lunch, reflect together, and close with a collective action session focused on rights, resistance, and solidarity.
Date: 4 September
Time: 11:00-14:30
Venue: Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation
SATURDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER
SOLIDARITY PICNIC
After a week of conversation, learning, and organising, join us at Arderne Gardens for a Solidarity Picnic.
Together we will take a moment to gather in community, share food, stories, and spoken word, and imagine intersectional justice across borders.
Our struggle for climate justice in Cape Town is connected to every fight against oppressive systems across the continent and the world. Come listen, learn, and imagine everyday strategies of resistance against all systems of oppression.
Date: 5 September 2026
Time: 11:00–14:00
Location: Arderne Gardens, Claremont
READ ABOUT PAST CAPE TOWN CLIMATE WEEKS
2026 PARTNER ORGANISATIONS
PAST ORGANISERS & SUPPORTERS
