Six Important Indonesian Speakers You'll Meet at Ubud Food Festival 2026

Across Indonesia's vast and varied archipelago, there are those protecting and nurturing the nation’s natural environment. From rice paddies to coffee plantations, cacao groves, and the blue expanse of coastal waters, this protection is being led by farmers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and cultural advocates who understand that food is not simply sustenance. It is heritage, identity, and the thread that connects a community to its land.

This May, some of these remarkable individuals will gather in Ubud for one of Southeast Asia's most celebrated culinary events. The Ubud Food Festival 2026, running from 28 to 31 May, has placed these everyday heroes at the centre of the conversation with its theme: Farmers: Guardians of the Land and Sea. The festival will bring together chefs, growers, artisans, and food lovers for four days of food talks, cooking shows, food tours, and extraordinary dining experiences, with its heart at Taman Kuliner.

"We are placing farmers firmly at the centre of the table," says Festival Founder and Director Janet DeNeefe. "They are not simply suppliers. They are protectors of biodiversity, carriers of knowledge and custodians of culture. Every dish begins with their work, their care and their commitment to the land and sea."

Here are five Indonesians heading to Ubud who embody that spirit — each doing their part, in their own way, to protect and preserve the country's agricultural and culinary future.

What sets Prof. Kartini apart is that her work has never stayed within the walls of the university. She works directly alongside farming communities, translating research into real-world solutions. Her contributions have been recognised with the "Women Who Inspire Women" Award in 2010, the Environmental Pioneer Award from the Indonesian Ministry of Environment in 2017, and the Bali Mandara Parama Nugraha Award that same year.

At Ubud Food Festival 2026, her presence will serve as a reminder that healthy soil is the foundation of everything on our plates.

The result was Ulian, a brand built on high-quality, fully washed Kintamani coffee beans, grown in the cool volcanic highlands of Bali. Arca brought his hospitality instincts with him — understanding that storytelling, presentation, and community networks were just as important as the beans themselves. As one of the few English speakers in his village, he became a connector, building relationships within the wider coffee community and advocating for sustainable production practices.

At the Ubud Food Festival, Arca will lead the Arca Coffee and Kintamani Farm Tour, taking visitors on a sensory journey through the coffee and citrus orchards that thrive in Bali's volcanic highlands — a chance to understand the land that gives the coffee its character.

Helianti did not stop there. She founded Sekolah Seniman Pangan to nurture grassroots food entrepreneurs, and later initiated Pasti Collective, a multistakeholder co-operative that allows ethical, biocultural food enterprises to grow through shared resources and market access. Her most recent endeavour, community-based Bioculture Gastronomy, goes a step further — curating immersive food experiences that celebrate biodiversity, seasonality, and the cultural landscapes of Indonesia's many regions. She writes for NOW! Jakarta with a dedicated column, Nusa Gastronomy.

Her work has attracted international recognition from the Skoll Foundation and the Schwab Foundation, and coverage from global media including Channel News Asia, DW, NHK, and The Guardian. At the Ubud Food Festival, she brings a vision of Indonesian food that is as forward-looking as it is deeply rooted.

Through her collaboration with Koperasi Kakao Kerta Semaya Samaniya (KSS), she has helped producers improve fermentation techniques to meet international standards, and supported the cooperative in earning a Silver Award at Cacao of Excellence in Amsterdam in 2023. She has spoken at the International Symposium on Cocoa Research in Montpellier, France, and initiated the Bali International Cocoa Festival, placing the island on the global map for premium, community-grown cacao.

Through Toko RASANUSA, Mei actively promotes Indonesian artisanal products, creating market pathways for producers of traditional goods. Through SOKOLA RASA, she develops culinary education programmes that connect the next generation to the knowledge of their ancestors. At the Ubud Food Festival, she will explore the humble banana through the session Banana Across the Archipelago: One Ingredient, Many Stories — a fitting illustration of how a single ingredient can carry an entire world of meaning.

The Guardians Gather in Ubud

What connects these five individuals is a belief that the way a society grows, harvests, trades, and eats reflects its deepest values. Whether it is a professor restoring the health of Balinese soil, an entrepreneur opening global markets to smallholder farmers, a coffee producer honouring his father's legacy, a cocoa advocate lifting women farmers into the global value chain, or a researcher preserving the recipes of a thousand islands – each is, in their own way, a guardian.

The Ubud Food Festival 2026 offers a rare opportunity to hear these voices together, to eat the food they represent, and to understand what is at stake when the knowledge, the land, and the traditions they protect are left unguarded. From 28 to 31 May, Ubud becomes not just a destination for food lovers, but a gathering place for those who believe that the future of what we eat begins with the people who tend the earth.

For more information, visit ubudfoodfestival.com.