After years of fundraising, design work and construction, the new organ for St. Vitus Cathedral is finally complete. Built in Spain, inspired by a Czech natural landmark and funded by public donations, the instrument will be inaugurated with a ceremonial service and concert at Prague Castle.

For nearly 25 years, Libuše Salomonovičová has been piecing together the stories of Jewish families connected to Ostrava in the northeastern Czech region of Moravia-Silesia. Now the 89-year-old researcher has donated her life's work, a unique archive containing records on some 33,000 people, to Ostrava's City Archive.

The Czech Entomological Society has named the praying mantis Czechia’s Insect of the Year for 2026. Once found mainly in southern Moravia, this striking predator has spread across much of the country and is now turning up in places where people would hardly have expected to see it a few decades ago. Researchers are also asking the public to help track its spread, while keeping an eye on other mantis species that may soon reach Czechia.

People around the country can now experience a trip into space through virtual reality. A special rocket-shaped simulator called SpaceBuzz is touring the country, offering visitors a chance to embark on a virtual space mission and view Earth from the perspective of astronauts aboard the International Space Station.

Czechs are famous for their love of cottages, cabins and weekend retreats. But while this tradition has often been explored as a social phenomenon, far less attention has been paid to the architecture behind it. A new exhibition at Prague’s Museum of Applied Arts, called The Modern Cottage: An Architectural Phenomenon , aims to change that, tracing the evolution of cottage architecture from the interwar period to the end of socialism. I sat down with its curator, architectural historian Adam Štěch, to find out more.

The Babiš government is preparing a major tightening of the country’s drug policy, marking a significant departure from the more liberal approach pursued in recent years. The proposals on the table include a clamp down on kratom sales, tightening regulations on cannabis growers and users, and expanding the powers of municipalities and police.

Zdena Mašínová, whose family played a major role in modern Czech history, has died at the age of 92. Her father was a WWII resistance hero, while her brothers dramatically escaped from communist Czechoslovakia – leading to Mašínová and other family members suffering serious repercussions.

A sound designer trained at FAMU in Prague, Victoriia Kralko spent months collecting phone calls and messages from Ukrainians separated by war - soldiers, refugees, families waiting for news. Born in Prague to Ukrainian parents, she turned this material into Hovory (Calls), an audio series that recently won Czech audiobook of the year 2025. This interview was recorded last Friday. A few hours later, one of the main character of the first episode, Serhiy - the Azovstal defender whose wife Mila had been leaving him daily voice messages for over four years - was freed in a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine.

The Czech Republic boasts one of the densest library networks in Europe. But who exactly uses these libraries, and what do their reading habits look like? Drawing on data from roughly 17 million loans made over three years at Prague's Municipal Library, data journalist Michal Kašpárek uncovered a number of intriguing patterns. At what age do men and women read the same books? Who are the library's ‘super-users’? And how do readers' interests change over the course of a year? Ruth Fraňková spoke to Kašpárek about what the data revealed.

Eighty-four years ago, on June 10, 1942, the Nazis annihilated the Central Bohemian village of Lidice in retaliation for the assassination of Acting Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich by Czechoslovak parachutists. In one of the most brutal reprisals of WWII, they shot 173 men, deported the women to concentration camps, and murdered most of the children or took them away for Germanization. The village was razed to the ground.