Shroom Sabha: India's Leading Fungi Festival Gathers Mushroom Enthusiasts for 3rd Edition
- Marc Violo
- Jul 29
- 4 min read
Shroom Sabha is a community-founded, community-led, non-profit festival dedicated to fungi and the many worlds they connect. Conceived by a group of mycophiles who wanted to share their fascination beyond specialist circles, it has grown into India's first and only festival devoted entirely to fungi.
More than an annual event, Shroom Sabha is an attempt to cultivate a fungal culture in India—one rooted in curiosity, ecological literacy, creativity, and care. The festival is simply its
most visible fruiting body.
Part field school, part cultural gathering, and part celebration, Shroom Sabha brings together researchers, foragers, cultivators, artists, chefs, musicians, photographers, educators, conservationists, farmers, entrepreneurs, local knowledge holders, and complete beginners. Here, professional mycologists kneel beside first-time mushroom hunters, chefs forage with taxonomists, artists learn alongside cultivators, and conversations flow as freely around campfires as they do under microscopes.
Fungi underpin life on Earth. They build soil, nourish forests, recycle nutrients, ferment food, produce medicines, and sustain entire ecosystems, yet they remain largely absent from conversations around biodiversity and conservation. Shroom Sabha invites people to encounter fungi not only through science, but through food, music, storytelling, art, and shared experiences outdoors.
Guided forest walks become opportunities to understand ecological relationships rather than simply identify species. Workshops range from mushroom cultivation and microscopy to ethnomycology, fermentation, conservation, photography, and creative practice. The festival encourages participants to look beyond mushrooms as organisms and begin seeing fungi as threads that connect landscapes, cultures, food systems, and communities.
At its heart, Shroom Sabha asks a simple question:
What changes when we begin to notice fungi?
A Festival Rooted in Community and Sustainability
Shroom Sabha is built on the belief that community and ecology cannot be separated. Every edition is organised as a leave-no-trace, zero-waste gathering, with careful attention given to waste reduction, composting, reusable infrastructure, responsible sourcing, and respectful engagement with the host landscape.
Rather than moving to a new destination every year, each host landscape welcomes the festival for two consecutive editions. This slower approach allows organisers and participants to build meaningful relationships with local communities, growers, artists, educators, and knowledge holders while developing a deeper understanding of the region's fungal diversity. The goal is to leave behind collaborations, ecological awareness, and stronger local networks—not footprints.
Shroom Sabha 2026
The third edition of Shroom Sabha will take place 4–6 September 2026 at Varanashi Organic Farms, near Mangaluru, Karnataka.
Set within a 100-acre organic farm, Varanashi Farms offers an extraordinary diversity of habitats—from cultivated fields and orchards to forest patches, wetlands, ponds, and river edges. During the festival, the landscape itself becomes classroom, laboratory, kitchen, gallery, and gathering space, allowing participants to experience the relationships between fungi, forests, farming, food, and people firsthand.
This year's programme continues Shroom Sabha's interdisciplinary approach while introducing explorations into primitive mycology—low-tech, low-impact approaches to encouraging fungal life within living landscapes.
Alongside guided mushroom forays, cultivation workshops, microscopy, fermentation, culinary experiences, and discussions on fungal ecology and conservation, participants will explore ethnomycology, citizen science, mycomaterials, functional mushrooms, and contemporary wellness through evidence-informed conversations and collaborative experiences.
Evenings will feature folk traditions from coastal Karnataka, immersive music, storytelling, artistic performances, and shared meals—creating opportunities to experience fungi not only intellectually, but culturally and emotionally.
Festival Highlights
Participants can expect:
Guided mushroom forays through forests and farmland
Hands-on workshops in cultivation, microscopy, identification, and citizen science
Sessions on fungal ecology, ethnomycology, conservation, biodiversity, and mycoremediation
Explorations of primitive mycology and regenerative approaches to cultivating fungi within living landscapes
Mushroom tastings, fermentation workshops, and collaborative culinary experiences
Conversations around functional mushrooms, traditional knowledge, and contemporary wellness
Photography, art, storytelling, and creative practices inspired by fungi
Folk music, immersive performances, and evening community gatherings
Opportunities to learn directly from scientists, growers, chefs, artists, farmers, and local knowledge holders
Building India's Fungal Community
Across its first two editions in Wayanad, Kerala, Shroom Sabha welcomed more than 300 participants from across India and around the world.
Together, participants documented over 100 species of fungi, contributing valuable observations of the local fungal biodiversity through guided forays and citizen science initiatives. Beyond documentation, the festival created space for researchers, cultivators, artists, chefs, educators, and nature enthusiasts to exchange ideas across disciplines, helping establish one of India's most diverse communities centred on fungi.
Each edition has expanded the conversation—from taxonomy and cultivation to fermentation, mycomaterials, photography, music, indigenous knowledge, medicinal fungi, conservation, and ecological restoration—demonstrating that fungi can be understood through many different lenses.
A Community-Powered Festival
Shroom Sabha is made possible through a growing network of organisations, researchers, artists, growers, businesses, educaors, and volunteers who share a commitment to fungi, ecology, and community.
The festival is supported by many of the organisations shaping India's emerging mushroom movement. These include the Fungi Foundation India Chapter, alongside pioneering enterprises such as Nuvedo, featured on Shark Tank India and among the companies helping bring functional mushrooms into the mainstream; Shroomery, recognised for cultivating one of India's broadest selections of gourmet mushrooms; Planet Mushroom, the first company to commercially cultivate morels in India; OG Mushrooms, whose chefs continue to redefine how mushrooms are experienced through food; and Grow the Funguy, which has pioneered pelletised substrate systems that make mushroom cultivation more accessible across the country.
Additional collaborators have included Mycotrix MycoMaterials, On The Move, ReScript, Beco, Auora Kombucha, Mossant Kombucha, Atom Eats, Jungly Delights, the Mycopreneur Podcast, and many others.
These partnerships extend far beyond sponsorship. Community partners contribute workshops, field expertise, culinary experiences, educational sessions, wellness programming, artistic practice, and collaborative activations throughout the festival. Previous editions have featured mushroom extract-infused kombucha created by Auora Kombucha and Nuvedo, mushroom-led tasting menus by OG Mushrooms, functional mushroom discussions, hands-on cultivation experiences, microscopy labs, artistic installations, and citizen science initiatives.
Together, they reflect the remarkable diversity of India's growing fungal movement and reinforce Shroom Sabha's belief that fungi are best understood not through a single discipline, but through many ways of knowing.
