The International Festival of Youth took place in Ekaterinburg, bringing together more than 10,000 participants from 191 countries around the world. One of the Festival’s key themes was communication: the opportunity to meet people from different countries, exchange experiences, and connect with like-minded peers.
Avito was a natural fit for the Festival’s central theme, as the company is currently developing a dating service powered by artificial intelligence technologies. The new service is designed to make the process of meeting people more personalized and meaningful. In addition to verification, the service will incorporate recommendation technologies that Avito has developed for its main listings catalog. The system analyzes users’ interests, location, and activity in advance to create personalized selections. For listings, this is intended to facilitate transactions; for dating, the company envisions it helping people find more accurate matches.
As a preview of its future dating service, Avito developed a dedicated project specifically for the Festival: the Match Lab. Festival participants provided information about themselves, while matching algorithms analyzed their profiles and assigned each participant to a themed group based on shared interests. Throughout the Festival, each group took part in meetings, including opportunities to meet people with similar interests, attend workshops, and receive career consultations on employment, part-time work, and internships. In addition to group meetings, the algorithms matched participants into pairs based on shared interests, while participants were provided with a platform for continued communication so that their networking could continue after the Festival ended.
“We designed the Match Lab as a way to bring people together. Over 2,000 people from 526 cities and 78 countries took part in the project. In this way, Avito helped turn meeting people at a large-scale Festival into an opportunity to find people who are ‘on the same wavelength’ – for friendship, communication, or joint projects. We wanted participants to leave the Festival with more than just memories, but also with new contacts, ideas, and perhaps even their first job,” said Nikita Chmelev, Head of Strategic Partnerships with Government Organizations at Avito.
At workshops hosted by Avito Services, participants were invited to create their own commemorative merchandise. Guests could customize caps, T-shirts, and even shoelaces using metal pins, patches, and markers. This transformed ordinary merchandise into unique, one-of-a-kind art pieces that participants could take home with them. Approximately 1,000 people took part in the creative activities.
During career consultations provided by Avito Jobs and Avito Part-Time Jobs, participants were able to identify suitable professions and employment formats and take their first steps toward a career. Consultants explained which industries actively hire students and young professionals, what flexible employment means, how much a professional with no prior experience can earn, and what opportunities the services offer for finding jobs and part-time work. Participants were also able to put what they learned into practice: together with experts, they completed resumes on Avito Jobs, while the Avito Part-Time Jobs chatbot matched interested participants with suitable shifts.
International youth festivals have brought together young people from different countries for 79 years, creating a space for friendship, the exchange of ideas, and cultural dialogue. For the 2026 Festival, Avito drew on the legacy of the Moscow festivals of 1957 and 1985 – events that had a notable influence on the country’s fashion and cultural life. At Mayakovsky Park, stylists created looks from resale items inspired by the aesthetics of those eras, including vintage accessories, denim, fitted dresses, collectible pins, and items with a history. The show created a visual bridge between generations and highlighted the cyclical nature of fashion, demonstrating how items from the past can become relevant again and find new owners. After the fashion show, the featured items were available for purchase at Avito’s booth, with all proceeds donated to charity.
Vakhtang Khiklandze, Deputy Director General of the World Youth Festival Directorate, said: “We are grateful to our partners who approach the creation of festival participation formats in innovative and thoughtful ways. The format proposed by Avito was truly vibrant and memorable. I am confident that the system will prove popular and that, after returning home, young people from different cities and countries will be able to continue communicating through the service.”
About Avito
According to Similarweb data, Avito is the world’s most visited online classifieds platform. Today, users can post listings on Avito in the following categories: Goods, Cars, Jobs, Services, and Real Estate. To facilitate convenient and secure transactions, the platform integrates Avito Delivery, with tens of thousands of available pickup points. This allows users to complete transactions across virtually all of Russia, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. One in five transactions on Avito is completed using Delivery. Avito connects sellers and buyers, including individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, and corporations.
Avito currently has more than 240 million active listings and more than 72 million monthly users. More than 10 transactions are completed on Avito every second, and users add more than 2 million new listings every day. Avito employs more than 12,000 people.