Prague Shibari Festival (PSF) is a multi-day rope event in Prague that brings together workshops, performances, rope jams and an international community of practitioners. It is organised twice a year and is designed as a meeting point for people interested in shibari and kinbaku in all their different forms — from technical rope and suspension to communication, sensation, creativity and exploration.
The festival is not just a collection of workshops
Prague Shibari Festival has been bringing the international rope scene to Prague since 2016. Workshops are a big part of the festival, but so are performances, rope jams and, perhaps most importantly, the opportunity to spend several days surrounded by people who approach rope in many different ways.
Every day, several workshops run in parallel, covering different levels and subjects. The programme is deliberately varied: traditional kinbaku alongside less traditional approaches, technical skills alongside communication, creativity, body awareness, sensation, connection and play.
You don’t have to find the one perfect teacher.
You can choose what speaks to you that day, try something completely outside your usual practice, or discover that a subject you thought wasn’t for you actually is. And if a workshop doesn’t feel right, you can simply leave and do something else.
That freedom is part of the experience.
But the best parts aren’t always on the schedule
A festival gives you things a regular workshop weekend simply cannot.
You meet people you would probably never meet otherwise and tie with someone new. You see different bodies, genders, relationships and styles of practice. You watch another rigger approach something familiar in a completely different way. You sit down with someone from another country and discover that you have different ideas about what rope can be.
And then there are the evening jams.
The atmosphere of a festival jam is different from an ordinary local rope jam because everyone brings something from their own community, country and experience. You might arrive intending to watch and end up tying, spend the evening talking, or discover a new person or idea without learning a single new knot.
That is not a side effect of the festival. It is part of it.
Get out of the Czech bubble
This may actually be our favourite reason to come.
The Czech rope scene is wonderful. We have talented riggers, models and teachers and plenty of opportunities to learn. But staying exclusively inside one community can also make your own practice feel smaller than it really is.
For one weekend, Prague becomes a meeting point for the international rope scene. The presenters and participants come from different countries and backgrounds, giving you a chance to see what people are doing outside your usual circle.
Sometimes you discover a new technique or philosophy. Sometimes you simply realise that something you thought was the way shibari is done is actually just one way of doing it.
You come home with new ideas rather than just another technique to practise.
You don’t need to know exactly what you want to learn
The festival is designed for different levels of experience, roles and genders, so you don’t need to arrive with a perfectly defined educational goal.
Maybe you are still figuring out whether you are more interested in kinbaku, communication, sensation, suspension, aesthetics, movement, power exchange or simply having fun with rope.
Maybe you have been tying for years but feel stuck in one particular approach. Maybe you are a model who wants to understand more about what happens on the other side of the rope. Or maybe you simply want to spend a weekend surrounded by people who are equally fascinated by this strange, beautiful thing we do with pieces of dry grass called rope.
There is room for all of that.
And you might discover that you’re better than you think
There is another benefit we have noticed, especially for people from the Czech scene: going to an international festival can change your perception of your own practice.
You may meet a teacher whose approach is completely different from yours and suddenly realise how much you already know. You may watch an international performer and recognise concepts you have been working with at home. You may take a class and discover that you are not struggling to keep up at all — you are already somewhere in the middle of the conversation.
Sometimes you need to leave your own scene to see how far you have actually come.
So why don’t we announce the presenters first?
Because the festival is not built around one particular teacher.
We deliberately create a varied programme rather than designing the entire weekend around a single name or style. And yes — this means that tickets are sold (and sold out) before the full lineup is announced.
We know that can feel strange. But you are not buying a ticket because you have decided that this one presenter is worth travelling for. You are buying a ticket because you want to spend three days exploring what the wider rope scene has to offer.
And we think that is a much more interesting promise.
And yes — we’re the people behind it
If you know Subspace Studio, you may already know us as the people organising workshops, jams, events and other activities around shibari in Prague. What you may not realise is that we are also the people behind Prague Shibari Festival.
The festival grew out of the same desire that drives Subspace: to create a place where people can learn, experiment, meet others and develop their own relationship with rope.
Subspace is our home base. Prague Shibari Festival is our way of opening the doors much wider — bringing teachers and practitioners from the international scene to Prague and giving the Czech community a chance to meet the world outside our own bubble.
Come for the workshops, stay for everything else
If you already know exactly what you want to learn, there are plenty of excellent weekend intensives where you can choose a teacher, book your spot and focus on one particular subject.
Prague Shibari Festival is something different.
You may not leave with the one technique you were looking for.
You may leave with something much more valuable: a new idea, a new connection, a new perspective — or a better understanding of where your own practice already is.
Future dates
Tickets for future editions will be sold through lottery system, where everybody has a chance to get to the event. Both editions of 2027 will be sold at the same time around end of August 2026.
- Spring 2027: 28.-30. May 2027
- Autumn 2027: 10.-12. September 2027 – this edition will be a little bit different, more information coming soon
Follow Prague shibari website for information about tickets availability.
