Global Web Marathon Concludes Decade of Silence Following Umberto Eco's Death

The year 2026 marks a significant cultural juncture, concluding a decade-long moratorium on public events requested by the late Italian semiologist and writer, Umberto Eco. Eco, who passed away in Milan on February 19, 2016, at the age of 84, stipulated that no formal conferences or commemorations should be held for ten years. This period of mandated quietude was intended to permit his extensive legacy to organically permeate cultural discourse, allowing only what merits preservation to remain and fostering new interpretations of his work, themes central to Eco's own essays.

To formally break this self-imposed silence, a 24-hour non-stop web marathon, titled “Eco Eco Eco – A World-Wide Talk for Umberto,” was executed from February 18 to February 19, 2026. Organized by the Fondazione Umberto Eco in concert with the Fondazione Bottega Finzioni ETS, this global digital dialogue aimed to transform the memory of the professor into a collective conversation. The initiative received support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and promotion through the worldwide network of Italian Cultural Institutes.

The symbolic starting point for the marathon was Taveuni, Fiji, a location intrinsically linked to Eco’s literary output. This island, traversed by the 180th meridian, was where Eco conducted research for his novel *L'isola del giorno prima* (The Island of the Day Before), using the time-change line as a narrative device for temporal exploration. The event commenced at 12:00 PM Italian time on February 18, coinciding with midnight on February 19 in the Fiji archipelago, the first place on Earth to greet the new day. The broadcast traversed all time zones, moving from East to West, concluding at 12:00 PM Italian time on February 19, 2026.

The planetary chat featured a diverse array of participants reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of Eco’s intellect, who moved between academia and popular culture. Scheduled participants included scholar Luciano Canfora and Professor Jeffrey Schnapp, who planned a dialogue with an AI simulation of Umberto Eco. International figures contributing also included translator Eshkol Nevo, journalist Maziar Bahari, and members of the Académie française like Pierre Rosenberg. The event was designed as an open invitation, encouraging readers and students to contribute video tributes to a dedicated email address, ensuring his concept of *Opera aperta* (Open Work) endures.

Eco's foundational theoretical contributions include *Opera aperta* (1962) and *Lector in fabula* (1979), establishing him as a significant figure in semiotics. His novelistic breakthrough, *Il nome della rosa* (The Name of the Rose) from 1980, demonstrated his capacity to weave complex philosophical ideas into fiction, a skill informed by his study of how people embrace flawed ideologies after growing up in Mussolini's Italy. Further initiatives marking the tenth anniversary include planned events at the Festival della Comunicazione in Camogli and a scholarly conference at the University of Bologna, where the new library housing his 44,000 volumes is slated to open in May 2026. The global marathon served as a living testament to an intellectual whose influence continues to shape the deciphering of modern communication complexities.