World Social Forum

The WSF started in Porto Alegre in southern Brazil in 2001 with an estimated 15000 participants as a parallel forum to the World Economic Forum in Davos. The first time the meeting was held outside Brazil was the fourth time in Mumbai, India in 2004, this time with 150,000 participants. Since then, the meeting has been held in Venezuela, Mali, Pakistan, Kenya, Senegal, Tunisia twice and several times again in Brazil. The first and so far only meeting held in the Global North was in Montreal, Canada in 2016 with 35,000 participants. The 2021 virtual meeting attracted an estimated 78,000 participants over the course of a week and began with a 24-hour broadcast from time zones around the world at midnight, starting in Samoa and ending in Hawaii, as an alternative to the traditional demonstration during the opening ceremony.

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