The final event for the 2026 Slamovision global poetry slam will be held at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, at the James Theater in Iowa City. The event is produced by the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature organization, Iowa City Poetry, and the Mic Check poetry festival. The event will also be livestreamed on YouTube. The livestream begins at 1:30, with videos of the 11 poets who did not make the top 10 streaming before the live program starts.
Slam poets from 21 UNESCO Cities of Literature will compete. The event will include videos from the top 10 finishing poets, judging videos from all 21 participating cities, live performances by Iowa-based poets, and music from the Blake Shaw Trio. The event is free and open to the public.
Iowa City is hosting the finals because the city’s representative, Henry Morray, won the 2025 competition. The winning city hosts the next year’s competition. This year, a record 21 cities are taking part. Videos of each city’s poet were shared the the participating cities. Each city judged and ranked every performance but their own, and the scores have been aggregated. These scores will be shared on Sunday and the winner revealed.
Iowa poets who will perform are Morray, Iowa Poetry Innovator Kelsey Bigelow, National Youth Poet Laureate Daniel Umemezie, and Iowa Poet Laureate Paul Brooke.
Iowa City’s representative in the 2026 competition is Quad Cities-based poet Christopher Britton, who won a special qualifying slam in September. He will face poets from Angoulême, France; Bremen, Germany; Dublin, Ireland; Edinburgh, Scotland; Exeter, UK; Gdansk, Poland; Gothenburg, Sweden; Heidelberg, Germany; Hobart, Australia; Iowa City; Krakow, Poland; Kutaisi, Georgia; Lyon, France; Manchester, UK; Nottingham, UK; Odesa, Ukraine; Quebec City, Canada; Taif, Saudi Arabia; Tartu, Estonia; Vilnius, Lithuania; and Wroclaw, Poland.
