To make 2026 victorious in Georgia, these three things are needed9 min read
Let’s be honest – if Georgia’s democratic resistance movement continues to operate the way it currently does, we are in for a long and unequal struggle. Victory is a long way off. If we want to win, things have to change, and 2026 could become the right year for such changes.
In this article, I will not dwell on what the harmful patterns of the past actually are, as lots has already been written on this. Rather, I am focusing on three major aspects of Georgia’s resistance that must be won in 2026 – attention, time, and vision. I believe that if small civil groups of people converge based on these three principles, forming a decentralized unit that grows and recreates the unified majority is entirely possible. Even more so, it’s the only way to win in a fragmented political reality.
It’s all about attention
Political actors near the political center have to learn from radical movements if they want to keep their politics centrist. How did radical parties in developed countries manage to attract mass support, especially among young people? The simple answer is that they kept winning the battle for attention.
In a convoluted world full of long texts, short reels, and other forms of non-stop information streams, far-right parties manage to scream the boldest things. They break through boring news cycles and reach the emotional brains of their potential supporters, often bypassing cognitive filters.
Attention is as valuable a currency as gold. More politicians now understand that in order to defeat authoritarianism, the battle for attention has to be won. During election campaigns, politicians often pick three simple promises and talk about nothing else for months. That’s what New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, did. In Georgia, many people dislike him for being a ‘democratic socialist’, but you can dislike someone and still learn something from them (perhaps another lesson to be learned). Attention is a limited resource, so it’s better to focus on three simple, unifying themes in a world where everyone is trying to be heard and to divide. By pushing three unifying themes, Mamdani beat far richer and more influential candidates and went from a politician polling in the single digits to becoming New York’s mayor.
Capturing attention is important and happens quickly. Some studies claim that it takes just 0.1 seconds to form an impression based on politicians’ faces. Retaining attention is equally, if not more, important. This is where Georgia is facing a real problem. Last January, Zamir Kvekveskiri, an IDP from Abkhazia, set himself on fire, yet even those most actively engaged in politics no longer remember his name. There are countless tragedies in Georgia, but because attention is limited, we struggle to keep people focused even on the most upsetting events. This causes frustration within the protest movement, and when the next tragedy occurs, the majority of the population is expected to get angry and revolt. There is simply not enough attention and resources left in the country to do so, however.
To do: Attention is a double-edged sword. Picture it like a currency – our brains were not designed to sustain 12-hours’ worth of Facebook scrolling. Even the most politically active people don’t remember all the important details. Like with any other currency, attention is limited. Every time we choose to mindlessly engage with a Facebook post, we diminish our balance. Similarly, every time we post online, we are asking others to spend their “money” on us. With persistent internal disputes and endless Tbilisi drama, by the end of the day, most people end up attention-broke. Remembering this simple truth can help activists recenter their narrative around important issues such as chemical poisoning, educational ‘reform’, and poverty caused by oligarchy.
Time is money
Other resources can be converted, just like attention. Time is money, and money is time. We pay babysitters so we can free up time to work or rest, and we work to earn money so we can buy food for our families. Depending on the situation, exchanging money for time and vice versa can make complete sense.
Over the past year, continuous daily resistance has shown us how quickly energy, money, and time become depleted. In a sprint, you can afford to push everything else aside, but when a protest stretches on this long, you have to think about resource distribution. Many people involved in the protests live busy lives as seasoned marketers, teachers, doctors, and mothers of multiple children. Every day, they wake up and decide how many hours they can devote to protesting (largely unconsciously), and those hours can be converted directly into money and energy.
In 2026, we must learn that for sustained resistance, each of us needs to define how many hours per day or per week we can set aside for the common cause. This is necessary so that we don’t burn out and so that we don’t give up. We can donate our time just like we donate our euros. Some days we will donate one hour, and some weeks we will give five hours. Where can that time be spent most effectively?
This is especially important for people who are no longer able to participate in daily protests on Rustaveli. If it takes two hours a day to protest, that’s 14 hours a week – a significant time investment, equivalent to a part-time job, which can be used to strengthen the resistance in other ways. What can we do with this time? Perhaps we can go to a village or two and distribute the People’s Gazette or organize a yard sale to help online media in Georgia.
To do: Think about organizing a group of 10 people where each person contributes at least four hours a week. If 10 groups like this are created, this is equal to 1 600 hours of volunteer time a month (more than two months of volunteering). This is a huge time resource that, if used in coordination with other groups, could transform the direction of the current resistance.
Only those with vision win
Maybe by this point, you have been convinced that reprioritizing time and attention resources is key for the resistance in 2026. But, without the last component (vision), time and attention alone aren’t enough to change the power balance. Even the careful distribution of our own resources can’t oust a regime that l possesses more manpower and money than us. Another resource on their side is complacency – they have persuaded enough people that the status quo isn’t bad. The other side has failed, unfortunately, to provide an alternative vision of Georgia’s future.
In democracies and autocracies alike, when political parties or civil society want change, they must persuade the majority of the population that it is not only necessary, but that their vision of change is the right one. That is the battle for vision – a vision that the future will be better than the present reality. Today’s regime rests on the belief that 2026 might not be great, but that 2026 without the regime would be much more unstable.
Once the resistance movement understands this and acts to create a vision, wonderful things can happen. Venezuela’s democratic opposition understood this, too. María Corina Machado, a Nobel Prize winner, created a vision called “Venezuela, Tierra de Gracia“ (“Venezuela, Land of Grace” – there is also a song with the same name). In this vision, she describes how she would go about transforming a place riddled with poverty into a country of prosperity and stability. She describes it so convincingly that she managed to win over the majority of people in Venezuela, making the regime illegitimate from both inside and outside.
What could a similar vision be for Georgia? Could it be something alluding to the First Democratic Republic, which was the fortress-sanctuary of its time? Perhaps it’s a new kind of fortress, with bolstered defence spending, secure borders, safety nets, respect for teachers and nurses, and protected cultural monuments? Maybe it’s a high-tech garden: a tech-oriented economy that produces enough to feed Georgians and export abroad, attracting top talent from startups across the world? Which vision appeals to you, and, more importantly, which is the vision that will unite the most people, even typical Georgian Dream supporters?
A vision in writing is a good first step, but not enough. It should traverse people’s minds and be present when people close their eyes. The modern nation-state is an imagined community where most people won’t ever meet, but for some reason, these people believe that they have more in common with each other than with citizens of China or Norway. This is the vision – something that unites.
Only when a vision leaves the page and moves into a person’s imagination does it become possible to persuade regime loyalists that we aren’t demanding change for the sake of change. We want to build a new republic.
To do: Our task is to create a vision so vivid that a person can close their eyes and imagine a different, better Georgia. When our relatives and loved ones can do this, it means there is no space left for the regime even in the imaginations of its loyalists.
We saw a lot of disappointing actions from people making the same mistakes throughout 2025. We also saw that it’s impossible to break the Georgian nation. In the end, we have survived too many invasions to give up now – we are a fortress that doesn’t break, even with different empires battering its doors (as you can see, I quite like the idea of Georgia as a fortress).
In order to keep this fortress functional, we need to reboot. What I hear most from supporters of the movement who no longer attend protests is that the protest is not projecting enough power. In 2026, it is entirely possible to change that by achieving a few small wins early on. It’s the small victories that will bring us to eventual triumph, but to achieve these small victories, three things are needed: attention, time, and vision. If enough people realize that, 2026 can be victorious, and Tbilisi can finally become a city full of victories.
This article was originally published in Georgia on 29 December 2025 by Batumelebi.
