Burners Without Borders

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2026 BWB Solstice Summit Report Back  

July 16, 2026

“Forty years ago, on the Summer Solstice, an effigy was set aflame on Baker Beach.

A simple act became a ritual. That ritual became a culture.
The invitation is no longer only to ignite, but to nourish.

This gathering invites us to steward seeds and systems that may not bear fruit until long after we are gone.

An act of deliberate patience.”

This Summer Solstice, 299 people gathered on the ancestral lands of the Northern Paiute (Numu) at Fly Ranch for the Burners Without Borders Summit—a weekend where past, present, and future converged. It marked the 40th anniversary of the first burning of the Man on Baker Beach. The largest gathering on the land since Burning Man was held there in 1997. The first permitted BWB Summit and more children and families than we’ve ever had at once. 

Our theme, Living Ritual, asked what practices our culture is being called to cultivate next. As the Burning Man community enters its fifth decade, this moment invites us to deepen our practice of stewardship: caring for one another, the land, and the systems that support a more regenerative future.

This year we tripled in size. For the first time, the Summit included large-scale sculptures, an art car, and more stages for talks and performances than ever before. While the event was bigger, we held onto the tight-knit community and village energy. We keep asking what a ‘Green Regional’ could look like: this year we ran the entire event on solar power, composted all of our food waste, served produce grown in the Fly Ranch garden, and turned waste into resources through biofiltration toilets.

This Summit draws an unusual mix: BWB members and Fly Ranch stewards, Artists, Theme Camp organizers, Rising Sparks, sustainability partners, as well as outside networks like the Rotary and National Vehicle Residency Association. On paper, we’re all working on different problems: disaster response, humanitarianism, ecovillages, permaculture, urban activation, mutual aid. But there’s a pattern: it’s the same work, seen from different angles. Following BWB’s narrative arc of Response, Resilience, Regeneration, we keep returning to a simple order of operations. First we resource ourselves. That’s Me. Then we connect with our communities, and that resourcing becomes a shared strength. That’s We. Only then do we carry it back out into the larger work we’re each called to. That’s Us.

Throughout the weekend: hands in soil, tools passing from person to person, meals cooked and shared. Fly Ranch wasn’t just a venue, but a partner. Its land already doing its own work of regeneration, and this is our invitation to a larger community to work alongside it. That’s what prototyping the future actually looks like: compost, seedlings, solar panels, and people slowly working towards something we can’t name, but know the feeling of. What that looked like in practice is what follows: what we served, what we learned, what we celebrated.

Serve

The “Serve” element continued to anchor us in tangible contributions to the land, the bioregion, and the wider web of mutual aid. Projects included:

  • In the Garden: Sowing Seeds & Transplanting: Participants worked alongside the Fly Ranch team to sow seeds, transplant seedlings, and care for gardens amended with compost from Black Rock City. Demonstrating what a closed-loop food system could look like. 
  • Horno Build w/ Eric Linnert: Community members came together to continue building an earthen horno (inspired by the Pedacito de la Tierra project), learning natural-building techniques while creating lasting infrastructure for future gatherings. 
  • Black Rock Food Systems Initiative w/ Charles Michel, Thomas Owen & Sarah Kraut: Participants explored how regenerative food systems, composting, and local agriculture can help build a greener Burn and strengthen food resilience in Black Rock City.
  • Rotary International × BWB: A conversation exploring how these two organizations can work together. Want to get involved with a collaborative project at the Gerlach K-12 school? Learn more here. 

Learn

The “Learn” element focuses on peer-to-peer, land-to-person, and idea-to-action conversations and skill sharing. Highlights included:

  • Minerals and Geology of the Great Basin w/ Kayla Wieczorek: An exploration of the geological history that shaped the landscape surrounding Fly Ranch.
  • Sagebrush Balm Making: Harvesting local plants and beeswax, participants crafted balm while learning about the relationships among native plants, pollinators, and people.
  • Nature Walk & Plant Walk with Scirpus: Guided experiences that deepened participants’ relationships with the ecology, native plants, and living systems of the high desert.
  • Mesh Networking w/ BWB-San Francisco: A hands-on introduction to decentralized communications and community resilience technologies.
  • Regen Bridge w/ Raman Frey: Participants were guided through practical approaches to connecting regenerative principles with real-world action, strengthening the bridge between vision and implementation.
  • Building the Man w/ Alexander Rose + Jeremy Crandall: A discussion about the future of Burning Man’s iconic centerpiece and the work underway to make it more sustainable.
  • AI Reckoning: Now What? w/ Joy and Aza: Exploring the opportunities, challenges, and human implications of rapidly evolving artificial intelligence.
  • Vision Train w/ Amanda Sage: The Vision Train is a global creative community and evolving co-creative project.
  • Dreamwork as Collective Imagination w/ Adam Elmaghraby: Investigating dreams as a tool for collective creativity and cultural imagination.
  • BWB Design Futures & Immersive Art and Impact: Conversations about designing resilient futures through participation, creativity, and civic engagement.
  • Honey Tasting w/ Big Chris: Learning about pollinator health, hive dynamics, and the essential role bees play in regenerative ecosystems.
  • Sunday Art! Earth Pigment & Origami: Participants created art using pigments from the land, exploring creativity as another form of learning. 
  • Foundation Training w/ Laura Burkhardt: Simple yet challenging postures that promote a unique combination of strength and flexibility.
  • Jedi Alliance Game w/ Jonah Lion:  The DJedi journey is a path of service, responsibility, and conscious leadership.
  • Supporting Others in Grief w/ Chappy Rago: A compassionate space to acknowledge grief in all its forms, share what we’re carrying, and explore pathways toward healing and resilience.

Celebrate

The “Celebrate” element focuses on meaningful ritual and ceremony. Celebration isn’t an afterthought—it’s a vital expression of our values. We celebrate because it’s how we metabolize grief, deepen joy, and remember why we do this work. Highlights included:

Some Last Thoughts:

Something else happened for the first time this year: the Summit doubled as a type of ‘spring training’ for Black Rock City. RAT, Serpent Queen, and Profiles in Dust came out to build and test infrastructure bound for the playa. The Green Theme Camp Community and Rising Sparks came out to plan. We’re exploring how this event and gathering can feed the larger contexts that it sits within.

We believe the rituals that shape our future are already within our communities. They live in the relationships we nurture, the land we steward, the stories we share, and the ways we choose to show up for one another. 

If you feel called to help shape that living ritual, we invite you to express interest in future gatherings by emailing bwbsummit@burningman.org. Stay connected by following Burners Without Borders on social media, subscribing to the BWB Newsletter, and checking out our Community Activation Calendar.

Deep Gratitude

Behind every workshop, shared meal, and late-night circle is a vibrant network of people who show up with their time, talents, and tenacity. It’s thanks to these efforts that the BWB Summit has become more than just a gathering; it’s a living network of people building a better world. Enormous thanks go out to:

Annie Coleman, Christopher Breedlove, Jaymie Braun, Tranquilitea Nuanes, Charles Michel, Wesley Chen, Justin Katz, Saffron Barnett, Splinter (producers); the Fly Ranch team (Zac Cirivello, Matt Sundquist, Big Chris & Griffin); Nevada Operations; and Burning Man Project staff.

Special appreciations to: Babe, Jonah, Greg Fleishman, Myles, G-Man, Ms. Frizzle, David Waterman, Mia Terracotta, our medics and rangers, kitchen and coffee crews, ShadeShifters, Glass House Arts, SquareOne, Ecozoic Resources and all who brought offerings, presence, and wild ideas.

Past Reports:

2025 Spring Summit Report
2024 Spring Summit Report
2023 Spring Summit Report 
2022 Spring Summit Report
2021 Spring Summit Report
2020 Green Theme Camp Summit (virtual) Report
2020 Virtual Spring Summit Report
2019 Fall Summit ‘Sustainability & Regenerative Culture’ Report
2019 Spring Summit Report

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