Romania set a new Guinness World Record on November 7 when 2,512 volunteers planted trees simultaneously at a reforestation event outside Bucharest, breaking a record set in India just 16 months earlier.
The attempt took place in Cărbunari, a village in the Poienarii Burchii commune of Prahova County, as part of an annual event called "Pădurea Prieteniei" — the Friendship Forest. More than 3,000 volunteers registered for the broader planting day, according to pre-event coverage, though only the 2,512 counted within the official attempt window qualified toward the Guinness record. A Guinness World Records adjudicator, Richard Stenning, oversaw the count on site and confirmed it broke the previous mark of 2,055 simultaneous planters, set in India in July 2025.
More than a stunt
The event was organized by the nonprofit Act for Tomorrow together with retailer Kaufland Romania, with Romsilva, the state forestry authority, supplying the saplings. Unlike many record attempts built purely for the title, organizers used the gathering to pursue a broader reforestation goal: volunteers kept digging well past the official record count, aiming to plant 35,000 saplings across the site by the end of the day, according to local reporting on the event.
Act for Tomorrow has run reforestation drives in the Prahova region for several years, and this year's event drew considerably more volunteers than in previous years, when turnout numbered in the hundreds. Organizers framed the record attempt as a way to draw wider public and media attention to Romania's reforestation efforts, as the country continues to grapple with the loss of old-growth forest to logging in recent decades.
Guinness World Records has seen a broader surge in attempts at mass-participation titles in recent years — tree-planting, hand-holding chains, synchronized dancing — as organizations use the record format to drive turnout for causes that might otherwise struggle to draw a crowd. India's forestry sector, which lost the record it set last year, has not indicated whether it plans another attempt.
