SF’s “Night of Ideas” Free Late Night Festival at the Main Library (2025)

Villa Albertine, San Francisco Public Library, KQED and Circuit Network announce the full program for San Francisco’s 2025 Night of Ideas on April 5, 4 p.m.– 1 a.m. Free to the public, the Night of Ideas features programming on all seven floors of the Main Library.

Night of Ideas returns this year with nocturnal arts and culture marathons in cities across the U.S. The theme of Night of Ideas 2025, “(Un)Common Ground,” invites us to consider the values and resources that bind us together. In an increasingly digital world, how can we foster authentic interpersonal connection? Given a polarized political landscape, where are our opportunities for dialogue? As extreme weather threatens our planet, how can we preserve the land beneath our feet?

This year’s theme explores the vital role of civil society in mediating our differences and charting a shared destiny. It challenges us to reconsider the values that form the foundation of our communities—whether territorial, social, or emotional—and how we can repair our social fabric amid increasing polarization. How can we rebuild a sense of the common good and what is necessary to realize it in a time of deep division? In an era dominated by AI and social networks, how do we forge meaningful interpersonal connections and preserve the essence of shared values? How can we find common ground, if there is any?

Night of Ideas 2025
April 5, 2025, | 4p – 1a
San Francisco Main Library, 100 Larkin Street
FREE – Rsvp

Family Programming: 4pm-6pm
SF Public Library (Only adults accompanied by children and teens will be admitted before the Night of Ideas programming starts at 7pm.)

Evening Programming: 7pm-1am
Asian Art Museum and San Francisco Public Library.

We also welcome back Afternoon of Ideas, a family program ahead of the main event inviting younger generations to participate in crafts, performances and workshops with popular children’s book authors, artists, performers, and educators.

Join Villa Albertine San Francisco, KQED, the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco Public Library, along with artistic curating partner Circuit Network, for another inspiring marathon of talks, live performances, workshops, food, art and collective imagination!

Villa SF is excited to announce that this year is larger than ever, with events taking place at the Asian Art Museum, Fulton Plaza, and the San Francisco Public Library, and that we are welcoming back Burning Man as special curatorial partners.

Details on participating presenters to come shortly.

Night of Ideas 2025 is presented by Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation thanks to the leadership support of the Judy & Peter Blum Kovler Foundation, and with the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is coordinated worldwide by the Institut Français.

About Night of Ideas
Initiated in 2016 during an exceptional evening that brought together in Paris foremost French and international thinkers invited to discuss the major issues of our time, Night of Ideas has quickly become a fixture of the French and international agenda. Every year, the French Institute invites all cultural and educational institutions in France and on all five continents to celebrate the free flow of ideas and knowledge by offering, on the same evening, conferences, meetings, forums and round tables, as well as screenings, artistic performances and workshops, around a theme each one of them revisits in its own fashion.