Five student creators from Indonesia and Malaysia are taking part in the 7th Geotourism Festival & International Conference (GEOFest) 2026, held this year across three UNESCO Global Geoparks in the two countries. The event's delegate list includes geopark managers, researchers, and indigenous community representatives, alongside a group of young content creators.
The creators come from Good Creators Academy (GCA), a program GNFI (Good News From Indonesia) runs with Unilever Indonesia to train young people in content creation. Fahry Wiranata Sadlir, Nicole Sugiharto, Priska Wulan Ramadhani, and Muhammad Gusti Hibatullah, who placed among the Top 15 of GCA's 2025 cohort, are attending on behalf of GCA Indonesia. Luqman Al-Hakim is attending on behalf of GCA Malaysia.
Following the GEOFest Route Across Southeast Asia
GEOFest 2026 was held in three parts. Raja Ampat UNESCO Global Geopark hosted the pre-event from 8 to 10 June 2026. The main event followed at Toba Caldera UNESCO Global Geopark in Medan, North Sumatra, from 1 to 5 July 2026.
Lenggong UNESCO Global Geopark in Ipoh, Perak, is hosting the post-event and closing activities from 21 to 24 July 2026, organized by Lenggong UNESCO Global Geopark with support from the Global Geoparks Network, National Geoparks Malaysia, and Tourism Perak.
Within the Toba leg, an International Conference was held on 4 July at Taman Simalem Resort in Karo Regency, North Sumatra, organized with support from the North Sumatra regional development planning agency BAPPERIDA and the provincial government.
Its theme was "Strengthening Global Geopark Networks and Transforming the Toba Caldera into a World-Class Center for Geopark Research and Information."
The Lenggong leg runs under the sub-theme "Tracing Toba Ash Diaspora & Empowering Indigenous Community." Its agenda includes plenary talks and paper sessions on geotourism, workshops, cultural performances, and field visits to Lenggong Valley's Perak Man site and the Kota Tampan palaeolithic workshop site, both part of the Lenggong Valley UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Meeting Point of Nature and Tradition
GEOFest 2026's overall theme is "Where Earth's History and Indigenous Wisdom Intertwine," covering the relationship between geological heritage and indigenous traditions.
The program includes conferences, workshops, field visits, and cultural exchanges built around that theme.
Toba Caldera was designated a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2020. It sits on the site of a supervolcanic eruption that occurred roughly 75,000 years ago, an event estimated to have been about a thousand times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens.
The eruption's ash spread across South and Southeast Asia, and the caldera it left behind now holds Lake Toba, the world's largest volcanic lake at 1,100 square kilometers. The area is home to the Batak Toba people, whose traditional houses feature Gorga carvings and who weave ulos cloth used in weddings, births, and protective rituals.
Meanwhile, Raja Ampat was designated a UNESCO Global Geopark in 2023 and covers 36,660 square kilometers. It contains Indonesia's oldest known rock formation, dated to the Silurian-Devonian period, between roughly 359 and 444 million years old, along with karst islands formed by sea-level changes during the Quaternary Period.
Prehistoric cave paintings have been found on limestone cliffs in Misool, and local communities still apply sasi, a customary marine law governing the use of surrounding waters.
