The Vatican Leadership Gathering
On April 21, 2026, President Vít Jedlička joined an exclusive assembly of global leaders, thinkers, and innovators at the Vatican Leadership Gathering in Rome — an invitation-only event convening heads of state, entrepreneurs, diplomats, and visionaries committed to shaping a more constructive world order. The gathering brought together a remarkable cross-section of international voices, from statesmen and technology pioneers to philosophers and spiritual leaders, united by a shared interest in what principled leadership looks like in the 21st century.
President Jedlička delivered a formal address on the Free Republic of Liberland — its founding principles, its progress on the ground, and its broader significance as a living experiment in voluntary governance and individual freedom. The speech drew visible engagement from the audience: Liberland's model — a nation built not on coercion but on consent, not on taxation by force but on voluntary contribution — stands as a distinct voice in any conversation about the future of governance.
He also joined one of the event's panel discussions, contributing to a broader dialogue on leadership, institutional innovation, and the reimagining of how human communities organise themselves. The format allowed for genuine exchange with fellow panellists, several of whom expressed genuine curiosity about Liberland's development trajectory and constitutional architecture.
"You can never change things by fighting the existing reality. You only do it by building something new that makes the old stuff obsolete." — Buckminster Fuller, quoted in Rome
Walking the grounds of Vatican City itself — one of the world's oldest continuous governing entities, a sovereign state of fewer than one thousand citizens — was not lost on the President as a point of resonance. The Vatican's existence is itself proof that legitimacy is not a function of territory or population. It is a function of idea, institution, and belief in something larger than any individual.
Sergio Bianchi and the Future of Liberty Island
Beyond the conference stage, the Rome visit served a deeply practical purpose. President Jedlička held a substantive working session with architect Sergio Bianchi, a Rome-based architect with a distinguished international portfolio who has been engaged with Liberland's built environment for some time. The meeting, warm and intellectually rich, focused on the next phase of development on Liberty Island: the evolution of the treehouse settlement into something more permanent, more considered, and more reflective of Liberland's values.
At the heart of the discussion was a shared conviction rooted in architectural history: that the best response to constrained land is not to fight it, but to rise above it. Bianchi introduced the work of Buckminster Fuller and the intellectual lineage of his own mentor, the late Luigi Pellegrin — both thinkers who believed in liberating the ground, in structures that touch the earth as lightly as possible while enabling dense, dignified human community above. It is a philosophy that maps almost precisely onto Liberland's own founding ethos.
The concept being developed is a cluster of elevated modular structures on stilts — light, buildable quickly, capable of meeting basic infrastructure standards (running water, electricity, internet) — that could together house Liberland's first permanent community of 100 residents on Liberty Island. The number is meaningful: reaching 100 permanent residents unlocks commitments from a significant cohort of supporters who have pledged greater investment at that threshold. With several tree houses and a pontoon structure already surviving a full year on-site undamaged, the foundation — physical and institutional — is in place.
Bianchi also raised the possibility of incorporating geodesic dome structures and a civic gathering space — a community centre where residents can meet, deliberate, and create the informal social fabric that no architectural plan can substitute for. "It's not about aesthetics," Jedlička reflected during the meeting. "It's about creating a community and doing it in a very light way." The two will continue to develop sketches and a broader urban plan for Liberty Island in the weeks ahead.
Broader engagement
The Rome visit also included a series of meetings that fall outside what can be shared publicly at this stage. What can be said is that President Jedlička engaged with individuals of considerable standing — across domains that matter to Liberland's long-term trajectory — and that those conversations advanced the republic's strategic position in ways that will become clearer in time. Liberland's diplomacy has always operated on multiple registers simultaneously: the public speech, the private relationship, and the long game. Rome had all three.
What the trip demonstrated, above all, is that Liberland is being taken seriously — in the rooms where ideas about the future of governance, architecture, and human organisation are being genuinely debated.