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The parliamentary summit of the Crimean Platform will take place in Prague from October 23 to 24. It aims to raise awareness of the illegal Russian occupation of Crimea and its wider consequences. Over 40 representatives of legislative bodies...

Learning difficulties, traumas and domestic violence –those are just some of the underlying causes of behavioral problems among schoolchildren. According to the Czech School Inspectorate, the number of children with behavioral problems has...

Academic articles are usually only read by a vanishingly small number of people, but a paper published in mid-May of this year in the journal Heritage Science has already become one of the world’s most-read scientific papers, with 36,000...

Czechia, Poland, Austria and Slovakia have announced they are extending the spot border checks introduced on October 4, by another 20 days. The measure, intended to curb the flow of illegal migrants along the Western Balkans route, has proved...

Czechs know how to make good beer and enjoy it – consuming, on average, over 160 liters per person each year. And they have become increasingly fond of good wine, a fondness that is also driven by the fact that there is no excise tax on still...

The name ‘Zlín’ has been inextricably linked with businessman Tomáš Baťa ever since the beginning of the twentieth century – so much so that, despite the word bearing no resemblance to his name, the town was renamed in 1949 by the communist...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several of his ministers are due to attend a meeting with the Czech government in Prague on Monday morning.

President Petr Pavel, in a speech before members of the European Parliament on October 4, 2023, supported the expansion of the European Union to include the countries of the Western Balkans or the so-called Associated Trio (Ukraine, Moldova...

Exactly four months ago, two scaly turtle hatchlings hatched in the Prague Zoo. These mushroom-eating reptiles were bred by the Prague Zoo as the first zoo in Europe. Both delicate cubs thrive and transform significantly.

Column written by Miroslav Bobek, Director of Prague Zoo.

The President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, received the credentials of the new ambassadors to the Czech Republic on Thursday, October 5, 2023 at Prague Castle

A region of enterprising people. This is where the Bata company was founded and today its shoes are famous the world over. It boasts the town of Kroměříž, with the most beautiful castle gardens in Czechia, and the pilgrimage site Velehrad. See...

Today Karlovy Vary International Film Festival is the region’s premier cinema showcase. But practically half of its long history took place under communism – and the event in that period is the subject of a new book, Proplétání světů...

New data from the Czech Statistics Office show that one fifth of students on Czech campuses are internationals, and nearly half of those foreigners wish to stay on in Czechia after completing their studies. To understand these numbers and the...

The Thália Awards are an annual ceremony that honours artists in the performing arts in Czechia. Awards are presented to both men and women in four categories – drama, opera, dance, and musical and operetta. This year, American-born performer...

The cult of St Wenceslas is ever-present in Czechia, not least in the field of music. The best example of this is the St. Wenceslas Chorale. The Saint Wenceslas Chorale is a church hymn and one of the oldest known Czech songs, which is part of...

September 28 is St. Wenceslas Day, a state holiday marking the death of the nation’s patron saint. Many of the masses celebrated in his memory will take place in churches dedicated to St. Wenceslas. Wenceslas was born near Prague in 907...

Exactly 150 years ago, Prague Archbishop Bedřich Schwarzenberg laid the foundation stone for the completion of Prague’s famous St. Vitus Cathedral in neo-Gothic style. The Cathedral of St. Vitus, Wenceslas and Vojtech at Prague Castle, a...

Škoda has unveiled its next generation SUV Kodiaq. At its world premiere in Berlin on Wednesday evening, the car manufacturer presented the new car’s design and technological enhancements in a never-used subway tunnel under Potsdam Square. The...

President Petr Pavel, in a speech before members of the European Parliament on October 4, 2023, supported the expansion of the European Union to include the countries of the Western Balkans or the so-called Associated Trio (Ukraine, Moldova...

September seems to have unofficially been sustainability month in Czechia, with Zero Waste Week, European Sustainable Development Week and Czech Radio’s “Don’t Bin it! 7 Days for the Planet” all taking place within that period. While many of...

What could be more Czech than drinking beer on an old tram? At Prague’s Bistro Točna, owner Jan Řídký and his business partner have turned a historical tram stop into a thriving business frequented by locals and tourists alike. I spoke with him...

The 50th Czech Ploughing Championship was held in Chrudim at the weekend. Pictured is a participant in the horse-drawn ploughing category. Source:ČTK

Pardubice’s Automatic Mills (Automatické mlýny) building – one of the most famous works by the pioneering Czech architect and designer Josef Gočár – has just been reopened as a multifunctional public space following a CZK 900 million renovation...

Just one month after private firms such as Vodafone and Skoda wrote an open letter to Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala calling for marriage equality, Czech theatres across the country followed suit. The Goose on a String theatre in Brno, is one...

Lasvit, Czechia’s leading exporter of luxury glass and light installations, is one of three prominent design entities currently being showcased at Sketch, a high-end dining establishment in West London. Michelin-starred Sketch in London’s posh...

The Koněprusy Caves, the largest known cave system in Bohemia, are the first in Europe to have a digital map. It was created by a team of scientists using 3D scanning. A special camera allowed them to access places that have never been mapped...

On his way to the European Political Community summit in Granada on Thursday, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala said bolder steps were needed to resolve the growing problem of illegal migration in Europe. Czechia, Austria, Poland and Slovakia...

In today’s edition of Sunday Music Show we‘ll be listening to a new CD created jointly by opera singer Adam Plachetka and jazz and swing musician Ondřej Havelka and his band Melody Makers. Called Nebe na Zemi, or Heaven on Earth, it mainly...

Heathens, a new Czech film set for release next week, centres on the play of the same name by Hanna Yablonska. She was a young Ukraine-born playwright who was killed in a suicide bombing at a Moscow airport. The black and white movie Heathens...

A temporary gallery has opened in Brussels to celebrate architect and designer Josef Hoffmann, who was born in Moravia and rose to fame in Vienna. Over the next six weeks, visitors to Café Hoffmann can sit on chairs based on his designs and...

The Prague City Council recently approved the awarding of a free annual pass for the city’s public transport system, worth CZK 3,650, to volunteer blood donors who have donated at least 80 times. According to the Czech Red Cross there are...

Tributes have been pouring in for Daniel Anýž, the Czech journalist and commentator who died on Saturday at the age of 59. Mr Anýž, who served as a Washington correspondent and was known as an expert on US affairs, worked for a number of Czech...

Exactly four months ago, two scaly turtle hatchlings hatched in the Prague Zoo. These mushroom-eating reptiles were bred by the Prague Zoo as the first zoo in Europe. Both delicate cubs thrive and transform significantly. “They slowly...

The Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Markéta Pekarová Adamová, led a parliamentary delegation and attended the conference of the Speakers of the Parliaments of the Council of Europe in Dublin.

The authorities have tightened the rules for the roughly 45,000 veteran and vintage cars in Czechia. As of September 2023, they are required to undergo a classic vehicle inspection every five years and will be entered into the national car...

South Moravia is a region of wine, beautiful UNESCO-listed castles and the Moravian metropolis Brno. Check out some of its beautiful landmarks in our photo gallery. Source: CzechTourism

President Petr Pavel and First Lady Eva Pavlova ended a two-day trip to the South Moravian Region today. During the visit, the president met with representatives of the region and Brno, held discussions with representatives of technology...

The head of the Czech Counterintelligence Service (BIS) Michal Koudelka on Monday highlighted the activities of Russian agents in the country in connection with the war in Ukraine. He said efforts to disseminate Kremlin propaganda in Czechia...

Just trailing Tokyo, Japan, Czechia’s capital city has been ranked the second best destination in the world for solo travellers by travel operator Planet Cruise. The ranking was based on safety, accommodation costs, available attractions, and...

The Dvořák Prague International Music Festival, currently taking place in the capital’s Rudolfinum concert hall, will have its closing concert on Monday evening – and it will be performed by none other than Czech Radio’s own symphony orchestra...

Opera singer Adam Plachetka has teamed up with jazz and swing specialist Ondřej Havelka and his band Melody Makers on a unique new CD. Nebe na Zemi, or Heaven on Earth, mainly features classic interwar songs composed by Jaroslav Ježek and the...

The Ukraine crisis has provided an opportunity to revive a European Union that had lost its way. That is one of the assertions of Benjamin Tallis in his essay collection To Ukraine With Love, which got its Czech launch last month. The Berlin...

The Consulate General of the Czech Republic based in New York City has jurisdiction over ten states across the eastern part of the United States. On a visit to Prague, Consul General Arnošt Kareš spoke with Amelia Mola Schmidt about the work he...

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, addressed Czech entrepreneurs and business owners at a Green Deal summit in Prague on Tuesday, telling them the potential of Czech industry to be a European leader in the green...

Entomologist Kateřina Sam is on the 2023 Forbes list of top Czech female scientists. She has been working on an experimental study aimed at mapping the interdependence of birds and insects and how their disappearance may affect the landscape...

The Karel Čapek Memorial, at the famous Czech writer’s former home in Central Bohemia, is this weekend celebrating 60 years of existence. Karel Čapek and his wife Olga received the villa in Stará Huť as a wedding present. They fell in love with...

Vlasta Černý and his wife Michaela describe themselves as an “almost” normal heterosexual couple. However, when the two of them step outside, they almost never fail to attract attention because of Vlasta’s weakness for women’s dresses. The...

Czechia’s premier event in its field, Designblok, is about to take place for the 25th time. The showcase runs from October 4 to October 8 at a number of top Prague venues, including the city’s Trade Fair Palace and, for the first time in years...

The small town Město Touškov in Western Bohemia held its fifth annual festival of bread at the weekend. In addition to baking bread in the parish oven, the program included a presentation of a hospice project and a small farmers’ market. Baker...

I preferred not to talk too much about it, not to jinx it and waited patiently until Saturday. Then I went to congratulate Pieta with a handful of mealworms. Pieta is our aardvark female. Last Saturday, on September 16, 2023, she reached age of...

Czech scientists, together with a small experimental brewer, have come up with the country’s first “Celtic beer”. Called TauriALE, the recreation of the ancient alcoholic beverage was achieved using laboratory analysis of pollen from an early...

Czech Egyptologists working between the pyramid fields of Abusir and Saqqara have announced a major discovery. They have located and explored a lost tomb that belonged to an ancient Egyptian official called Ptahshepses, who lived during the...

The results of the Green Roof competition, which has a ten-year tradition, were solemnly announced yesterday at the Great World of Technology in Ostrava-Vítkovice. The winner of the competition was the green roof on the new gorilla pavilion...

On Saturday, September 23, the Prague Zoo will celebrate World Gorilla Day together with the 60th anniversary of the breeding of these largest primates in the world. Visitors can look forward to an extraordinary program in both pavilions – in...

On Tuesday, September 12, the Olga Havlova Foundation Goodwill Run charity race took place for the fifth time in the Hvězda nature reserve in Prague 6. More than 500 male and female runners took part in it, thanks to which they managed to...

The northern town of Žatec and surrounding hop-growing landscape have just been granted UNESCO World Heritage status, becoming the 17th Czech entry on the list. Žatec is called Saaz in German and its distinctive Saaz hops are what have earned...

Czech scientists have developed a small weather station for space. The gadget tracks streams of charged particles moving in space and the first is already in orbit. Differently charged particles, which scientists call “space weather”, stream...

The village of Ostrožská Lhota in the Zlín region has been named “Village of the Year” for 2023, ahead of Hrádek from Moravia-Silesia and Dolní Poustevna from the Ústí nad Labem region. The winner was announced this past weekend at a folk...

Martin Tlapa will begin his new posting as Czech ambassador to Canada in Ottawa on September 25th. The agenda items he wishes to tackle during his posting range from boosting tourism and student movement between the two nations, driving further...

Valuable paintings, stained glass windows in Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral, the first official portrait of President T. G. Masaryk and a series of postage stamps – these are just some of the works by Max Švabinský, one of the most important...

The Prague Castle Administration has prepared a new exhibition called Windows of the St. Vitus Cathedral, which will present the craftsmanship of breathtaking stained glass windows in large-format photographs. Visitors will thus be able to view...

On Tuesday, September 19, 2023, President Petr Pavel delivered a speech in the general debate of the UN General Assembly. In it, he criticized Russia for violating the UN Charter and international law in connection with its invasion of Ukraine...

Yvonne Přenosilová, a popular 1960s Czechoslovak singing star who later became a radio presenter, sadly passed away last week. The dark-haired Yvonne Přenosilová appeared as a teenage singer in Miloš Foman’s 1963 film Audition and a couple of...

At the end of the summer, Czech diplomats stationed around the world traditionally come back to Prague for a week of consultations about their individual agendas and global affairs. This year the meeting was inevitably overshadowed by the war...

Tens of thousands of people attended the annual NATO Days at Ostrava’s Mošnov Airport at the weekend. The big attraction this year were US F-35 Lightning II aircraft piloted by the US Air Force Demo Team. Source:ČTK

Nestled at the foot of the Pálava Mountains in the south of Moravia, the picturesque town of Mikulov is one of Czechia’s most attractive destinations. While the town is best known for its wine cellars and historical monuments including an old...

The newly established Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) held its first inaugural player draft this past Monday, where the six teams set to play in January 2024 selected their top player picks. Among them were Czech women who will head...

Traditional fishing has taken place in the waterways between Jindřichův Hradec, Tábor and České Budějovice for over a thousand years. This area is primarily where Czechia’s annual 20,000 tons of fish are caught, almost 90% of which are carp –...

The powerful narcotic fentanyl has had a devastating impact in the US, contributing to record overdose numbers. Just last week the first fentanyl-related deaths in Czechia were reported in the media. So should the authorities be worried about a...

Envirofest is the only festival in Czechia focusing on environmental issues and awareness – and it is organised not by professional ecologists, but by ordinary people who want to motivate others to lead a more sustainable way of life. Through...

A group of nine young people from mainly Eastern European states – including Georgia, Albania, Ukraine and Serbia – are currently in Czechia at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under a scheme to establish ties with high-flyers...

A new exhibition marking the inclusion of Antonín Dvořák’s Archive on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register got underway this week. Among other thing, visitors to the Dvořák Museum in Prague will have a rare chance to see a manuscript of his...

51% of Czechs plan to spend their autumn holidays in the Czech Republic. This follows from a survey by the Institute of Tourism of the CzechTourism agency. According to him, people would like to take an average of 8 days off in autumn, which is...

Ice hockey players across Czechia are lacing up their skates for another season as the Extraliga returns. But who are the favourites to take the top flight title in 2023–2024? And how do hockey games here compare to, for instance, in the NHL? I...

Czechia has the third lowest share of university graduates in the European Union, after Italy and Romania, according to a recent study published by the OECD. Only 26.67 percent of Czech residents between the ages of 25 to 64 have a university...

Soon it will have been two years. Each day then I snorkelled in the Red Sea trying to see (and possibly also take a photo of) as many animals as possible. Every evening I wrote a note about what interested me the most. Hawksbill sea turtle, a...

The beautiful weather at the end of summer offers ideal conditions for visiting the Prague Zoo. In addition to the usual guided feedings, the Prague Zoo has also prepared a special program for the following Saturday and Sunday afternoons (i.e...

A three-day wine festival, or vinobraní, has just taken place in the Moravian town of Znojmo. Highlights included a “march of John of Luxembourg”, complete with fire show. Source

The annual Vinohradské vinobraní festival is taking place in Prague 3 this Friday and Saturday. The event, which has a curated theme each year, is celebrating the wines of Bohemia and Moravia, highlighting the rich wine making history in...

The Venus of Petřkovice, a statuette from the late Stone Age period believed to be 23,000 years old is currently being exhibited at the site where it was first discovered in the Ostrava district of Petřkovice 70 years ago. The unique item...

The government has earmarked major investment for Terezín, site of the Czech lands’ biggest WWII Jewish ghetto, and Josefov, another 18th century garrison town. The project is based on two aims – preservation and development. Terezín, known as...

A delegation of the Czech Republic led by President Petr Pavl will take part on September 17-22 in the high-level week within the 78th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Lipavský will also be a...

Vašo Patejdl, who recently passed away at the age of 68, was a leading Slovak singer, keyboardist and songwriter. He co-founded the legendary Slovak group Elán and is considered to be one Czechoslovakia’s biggest hit-makers. In today’s edition...

The Czech Parliament has approved a bill which would allow additional voluntary overtime for workers in the healthcare sector of up to 1000 hours per year. The decision has provoked an outcry from doctors, with some threatening to stop working...

Writer Milan Kundera was one of the most famous sons of the South Moravian regional capital. Best known for his novels weaving intricate tales of love, politics, and exile, Kundera has been celebrated throughout his career for his unique...

Set up by eager but wholly inexperienced young music fans, Prague’s Radio 1 was the first non-state station in Czechoslovakia after the fall of communism. Decades later, the story of the station – which is still going strong – is the subject of...

Museum Kampa, an institution best-known for the works of František Kupka and other leading Czech modern artists, first opened its doors in 2003. Britain’s Guardian has ranked Museum Kampa among the top 10 best little-known museums in Europe...

The case of Leopold Hilsner, a Jewish vagrant convicted in 1899 for the ritual murder of a Christian girl, may be on the path to re-examination. It is the first time since 1900 that a review of the case has been ordered in an effort to reopen...

A new survey from Eurostat indicates that no fewer than 48 percent of Czechs do not eat a single serving of fruits or vegetables every day. What does this mean for individuals – and for the country’s health care system? I discussed the...

Dublin City Council has launched a new augmented reality map that allows users to access a virtual map of the city on their mobile device. The feature can be accessed via the existing Dublin Discovery Trails app. ‘DiscovAR Dublin’ is hailed as...

In the first half of this year, diesel vehicles made up a larger proportion of new cars sold in Czechia than in any other EU country. While in the rest of the EU, sales of diesel cars have been steeply declining over the past few years, in...

Covid-19 has been back in the news cycle in recent weeks, with cases on the rise across the world. On Monday, Health Minister Vlastimil Válek urged Czechs to get their Covid booster and flu vaccines, with priority being given to those in...

This coming Saturday, Prague’s Olšany Cemetery will be hosting a somewhat unusual one-day music festival called Mezi hroby or Between the Graves. The aim of the event is to raise money for the restoration of neglected graves that have a special...

The film ‘Brothers’, a retelling of the Cold War story of the controversial Mašín brothers, has been selected by the Czech Film and Television Academy as the Czech Oscar nominee for 2024. Written by top Czech screenwriter Marek Epstein, the...

New official data shows that one in 10 babies being born here in Czechia have a non-Czech mother. This shift in demographics points to the increasing role that immigration is playing in shaping the population. I spoke to Michaela Němečková, who...

After dropping for three consecutive years, the number of suicides in Czechia increased in 2022. Over 1,300 Czechs took their own life last year and the increase was most significant in younger age groups. I discussed the alarming development...

Prime Minister Petr Fiala has just launched a plan he says will help modernize the Czech economy in key fields – and make the country a European hub within the next 10 years. But what are the chances of his Restart Czechia programme actually...

The head of the Office of the President of the Republic, Jana Vohralíková, decided to split the position of press spokesperson for the President of the Republic and director of the Department of Communications into two separate positions. The...

The President of the Republic, Petr Pavel, distributed the unused funds for the election campaign between social, health, and other public benefit organizations. Among a total of seven organizations based primarily in structurally affected...