A Debrief on the Diospi Youth Festival 2026

Saturday 09 May 2026

With the festival over now, here are the final numbers for “Luz en los Andes” as it happened in 2026...

There were 4,515 paid registrations and 4.362 million views on social media! Added to this is the live broadcast via our 12 FM radio towers in five Peru states with a coverage of over 2 million people, 24 x 7. The festivalgoers came from every Peru state and many other countries in North America, South America and even as far as Europe.

The band "Funky" was the last to play at the 2026 festival and a highlight for many

There was Christian music and church services, workshops and devotions. In fact, “Luz en los Andes” was a real church service the whole time. Until the end of this incredible event, young people took advantage of the talks offered by pastors and countless young people entrusted their lives to God and received a free copy of the Gospel of John. And will now carry the "fire" they experienced back to their towns, villages, churches and homes.

Here is a 4-minute YouTube reel of a day in the festival (click on the image to view):

Dr Klaus spoke on night 3 delivering his powerful and now more expansive testimony of the miracle of Diospi Suyana – built on faith without ever asking for donations. Humbling for us we realised this included a segment on the Welch family being mobilised to Peru, against all odds, which was without question a miracle (as this blogsite stands to testifies in more detail). It's one our family will always be in awe of and grateful to God alongside those who helped make it happen.

Unsurprisingly, this 4^th Diospi Suyana youth festival ended with such excitement for the next one in 2027. The expectation is it will be even bigger and further reaching. Luz en los Andes – translated light in the Andes, was not just a catchphrase. Faith in Jesus Christ was heard by millions. The festival will undoubtedly go down as one of the most significant events for Peru in 2026.

Thank you for supporting us as we continue to support Diospi Suyana Media to reach those that need to hear the best message in the world.

Solomon and I fly out on 24 June which is just under 7 weeks away. We have a full work plan for our 3 weeks in Peru to attend to all 12 FM radio sites for a general transmission overhaul including reinstating the satellite telemetry system for each. This will help save on Diospi Suyana resources in the future by avoiding many unnecessary and often risky trips by the Diospi Centro de Medio staff to these remote locations, some of which are up to 12 hours’ drive from Curahuasi. As always, we will rely on God’s hand of grace and provision to give us success.

Please continue to pray for us.

Blessings, Chris

Diospi Suyana Youth Festival 2026 - Light in the Andes

Monday 13 April 2026

For the 4^th year running the Diospi Suyana Youth Festival continues to grow in popularity and for 2026 the expected turnout is 5,000! The theme this year is “Luz en los Andes” (translation: Light in the Andes) and it runs for five days from Sunday 26 to Thursday 30 April. There are 10 Christian bands arriving to play from all over the Americas including: Peru, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Columbia, USA, Argentina and Ecuador. They also include Bible teaching sessions. See Figure 1 below for the official flyer.

For interest, here is a link to the Diospi Suyana radio promo being run at the moment (in Spanish): Click here to listen

Figure 1:  The official 2026 youth festival flyer

 One artist of note, Sarai Rivera, has racked up 204 million clicks on YouTube with her song “Suelto” and she is on tour performing in 16 major cities in the USA and Mexico including: New York on 17 April, Chicago on 18 April, Houston on 25 April but then a detour to Curahuasi, Peru on 27 April! Then onto onto San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and the list goes on.

See the Diospi Suyana post for her flyer and YouTube music video: Click link here.

The auditorium capacity is being expanded to accommodate 5,000. Some 30 construction workers have a tight deadline to complete the upgrade by midnight on 25 April. The tarpaulins on the roof trusses are yet to be laid.

Figure 2:  The Diospi Suyana auditorium expansion underway

Overnight accommodation for 4,000 young people is being created on Diospi Suyana campsites in Curahuasi. Visitors will find a further 1,000 beds in Curahuasi’s hotels and guest houses, thus contributing to the local businesses. When setting up the large tents, Diospi will draw on the experience of three festivals with a number of employees from local church congregations. Volunteers also come to support the festival from all over the Americas and beyond. 

Figure 3:  Diospi Suyana tent city for 4,000 being erected in their camping grounds

For me, it would be amazing to volunteer at this event next year! Anybody else interested in coming from Australia? (just a crazy idea at this stage 😊)

A new satellite and our 2026 return to Peru

Thursday 19 February 2026

Great news! We have booked tickets for Solomon and I to return to Peru. Not unlike our first trip to Peru back in 2016, Sandi noticed some great deals ahead of time and she jumped on those to lock in our travel for 3 ½ weeks away. We depart Perth on Wednesday 24 June and return Saturday 18 July which is during school holidays in WA.

Solomon is now 15 and has been making huge progress with his Spanish learning - it is definitely all coming back to him. I have no doubt that his language will be far superior to mine as being 15, age and a sharp mind is on his side. And he will be an invaluable help and company for me on this trip.

It is amazing having such a supportive wife in Sandi who is 100% supportive of this work.

In writing this I realise now I did not provide an update on the satellite change we did over the weekend back on 22 to 23 November. So here following is a summary. It was a 22-hour literally no-break effort by the team in Peru and me from my home office in Perth. Sandi kept me going with food and drink. It was not meant to take anything like this long – we ran into a number of issues with the commissioning, which for the first half (at least 15 hours), was caused by some inexperienced operators in the Network Operation Centre (NOC) in the US.

They also had an internal administration issue where the NOC operators thought we were a week early to move to the new satellite lease and were denying us permission to proceed. By that time, we had already repointed the main uplink antenna (losing the previous commissioning) and there was no going back! ☹ Being the weekend, it was hard to get hold of their management to sort that out. Then they had technical problems with one of their (large) monitoring antennas in the US that they were using to align our small carrier uplink from Peru on the new satellite (SES IS-34).

Countless adjustments were made, each measured, then adjusted again and the cycle repeated over and over - sometimes with as little as half a degree at a time whilst communicating all this in Spanish to the team on the ground in Peru. We persevered without ceasing as all the time the radio in Peru was off the air and we could not simply come back later. Eventually we were passed over to some very experienced NOC operators and significant progress was made where we were able to successfully pass the commissioning.

There were more details to this ordeal, but I think you get the picture. It did add an amount of fatigue to our small team who after a night’s sleep spent the remainder of the week travelling 1000s of kilometres repointing all 11 of our other remote satellite antennas to SES IS-34. It is a good thing we will not need to do this again for another 8 years when the SES IS-34 satellite we are on now reaches its end of life.

Back in Perth Sandi said it was like watching a scene from one of our family favourite movies “The Dish” with NASA “talking technical” with American accents whilst I relayed the adjustments in Spanish to the team in Peru. 

"The Dish" scene at my home office in Perth 😊

This work got the radio signal working again over the satellite to all our FM transmission sites which reaches over 2 million in Peru 24 x 7. And potentially to 636,000,000 Spanish speaking in all of the Americas and Europe direct from satellite to home - see previous blog post.

So why our return to Peru mid-2026? This is to complete the job by getting the telemetry uplink working on all the Diospi Suyana satellite antennas. What does that do you might ask? This sends data back from the remote sites (some over 12 hours by road away from the Diospi Suyana studio) to report back to the studio on the equipment at the sites so problems can be identified quickly and the right action taken to sort them out. In some cases, avoiding many days of travel on the treacherous, unpoliced Peruvian highways.

The airfares are mostly covered by our previous mission funds, but then we still need to cover the remainder such as renewal of passports, travel interconnects, food and accommodation etc.

There you have it. We are counting down the days trying to cram Spanish refreshers. Thank you for your prayers and support of this good work. As the Diospi Suyana Centro de Medios team motto goes, “it’s the best message in the world” as it contains the Gospel message of Jesus Christ who is the one and only hope for all.

Chris 

Web browser link to this post: https://welchesinperu.blogspot.com/2026/02/a-new-satellite-and-our-2026-return-to.html