The 2025 DataFest Tbilisi festival opened on Thursday without some of its planned media participation, in a last-minute decision by the organisers following the publication of a smear piece by pro-government media.
DataFest, which claims to be the largest data festival in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, has been organised annually by Tbilisi-based creative studio ForSet. This year marked its ninth edition.
It brings together professionals from various fields who work with data — including designers, developers, and journalists. This year’s festival includes several events aimed at helping journalists, such as a talk by an adviser to the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media titled: ‘Safeguarding media freedom in the age of big tech platforms and AI’.
Several weeks before the festival, DataFest reached agreements with several media organisations, including OC Media, to set up booths at the event to showcase their work, including crowdfunding activities. In return, they would use OC Media’s advertising services.
On Monday, several, if not all, were informed this would no longer be possible.
Sinatle, a crowdfunding campaign launched in the summer of 2025 by 22 online media outlets, was also due to display a banner and deliver a speech at the event, which were also cancelled by the organisers.
In their explanations to several of the organisations affected, ForSet cited security concerns arising from a report by the pro-government TV channel Imedi on 23 November. The report attacked online media outlets critical of the government, claiming, without evidence, that they were operating as an interconnected shadow network controlled by foreign intelligence services, which was seeking to secure funding by circumventing the law.
In one of the conversations shown in the report, Imedi also targeted ForSet itself.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
The report was followed by a series of attacks on online media by government officials.
ForSet initially presented the last-minute cancellation as an attempt to protect the organisations themselves from further attacks by government-aligned media.
‘Initial concern sounded like this: since Imedi has targeted online media and is talking about the “informal network of alternative ways of receiving money”, your presence would be potentially interpreted as such. They also followed up with a hypothetical of someone potentially snapping a picture of all of us together, which could be seen as an extra validation for their hypothesis’, an OC Media representative who was involved in communications with ForSet said.
In subsequent communications, they cited concerns over the safety of participants from non-democratic countries at the festival.
Following the pushback, the festival organisers offered some media organisations reduced roles in the festival, which they said could allow their participation without appearing together and thus avoid drawing the attention of government-aligned media.
OC Media, iFact, and Sinatle Media rejected the offer.
In a statement explaining the festival’s decision, Forest director Nino Macharashvili said: ‘in response to recent developments and safety alerts, and as a precautionary measure, we have decided to adjust and temporarily scale back some planned activities to ensure a secure environment for everyone’.
‘The safety and well-being of our attendees, speakers, and partners remains our highest priority’, she added.
Macharashvili also reaffirmed what she said was ForSet’s ‘full support and solidarity with Georgian independent media’.
‘We deeply appreciate their work and remain committed to continuing our successful and meaningful cooperation in the future’, she concluded.
‘State repression is already having a chilling effect’
Several of those due to be involved in the festival expressed disappointment over the cancellation. ‘The communication was neither direct nor transparent, so we couldn’t understand why that decision was necessary’, said Nino Bakradze, founder of iFact.
Bakradze said she believed the decision was likely taken to protect the festival organisers themselves. ‘Panic arose because of the Imedi report, and it seems the decision was made very quickly. They didn’t consider it necessary to consult us about it’, she said.
This, Bakradze said, was particularly ‘disheartening and unexpected’ from an organisation with which iFact had collaborated multiple times before.
The same sentiment was echoed by Irma Dimitradze, communications manager at Batumelebi, whose founder, Mzia Amaghlobeli, is currently in prison in a case widely condemned as politically motivated. Batumelebi is a member of the Sinatle Media initiative.
‘To this day, I have not heard a solid or legitimate explanation for this cancellation. What I feel instead is deep disappointment and regret’, Dimitradze told OC Media.
The decision was ‘especially painful’ amid the ‘unprecedented pressure and persecution’ Georgian media were currently facing, she said.
‘What do they stand for, if not for using every possible opportunity to support this cause? What is the purpose of any festival or organisation if there is no freedom of speech or the press?’ she added.
‘The government is trying to make us appear pariahs, to turn everyone against us, and to marginalise us’, iFact’s Bakradze said. ‘Our own ally should not contribute to this. Someone we considered an ally should not fall under this influence and propaganda’.
OC Media editor-in-chief Robin Fabbro noted the incident was ‘obviously fairly minor’ against the backdrop of the current press challenges in Georgia and the wider region. However, he said he saw it not as an isolated inconvenience, but as an example of ‘how state repression is already having a chilling effect in Georgia, even from the most unexpected quarters’.
‘This is not the first time we have experienced this’, he added. ‘This year we were evicted from our office on similar grounds. During our search for a new space, we were turned away time and again because of the work we do. In one instance, as with DataFest, this was by someone who told us openly that they supported our work, but were afraid of being associated with us.’
‘OC Media planned to attend DataFest to promote our membership programme, something we consider vital to our survival, so if anything, I hope incidents like this highlight how important it is to support the media you rely on — before it’s too late’, Fabbro said.
