According to Kanoon General Directorate for Public Relations and International Affairs, the preliminary jury for the international section of the storytelling festival included Ehsan Rezaei: author and the judge for story writing awards; Azam Ghasemi Falavarjani: literature instructor, and the judge of the storytelling festivals and the manager of department of story at Land of Ancient Tales; Bahareh Jahandoost: Head of the International Committee of Storytelling Festival have selected forty storyteller our of 150 participants for the final performance.
Based on this, 21 foreign storytellers, and 19 Iranian storytellers compete at the international section of the festival.
Usha Venkatraman, Devaki Bhujang Gajre, Meher Gehi, Niyati Vaidyamehta, Shalini Bajaj, Hema Subramanian all six from India; Marcela Sabio from Argentina; Nor Azhar Ishak from Malaysia, Shayna Jones from West Africa, Patrick Mohr from Switzerland; Beatriz Quintana Valle from Cuba; Raquel Lopez Cascales from Spain; Veronica Antipolo from the Philippine, Canada; Ruben Corbett from Mexico; Baeletsi Tsatsi from South Africa; Argin Kubin from Turkey; Ahmad Rashedi from Oman; Raideh Al-Gharmazi from Tunisia; Paola Balbi from Italy; Boniface Ofogo from Africa; Haytham Shokry from Egypt are the foreign storytellers who made way to the international section of the storytelling festival.
Kimia Yaghoubi Goudarzi, Farzaneh Sadeghi, Mehdi Mohammadian and Behnaz Mehdikhah all four from Tehran; Marzieh Pouladi Baghbaderani, Mostafa Jafari Khouzani and Maryam Sami all three from Isfahan; Mohsen Sajedifar, Davood Reyhani and Gholamreza Jahanpa all three from Khorasan Razavi, Tahereh Isfahani from Kurdistan; Farideh Mahmoudi from Markazi; Fatemeh Mahmoudi from East Azerbaijan; Leila Ebrahimi from Qazvin, Zahra Etehadi from Yazd; Afsaneh Bazyar from West Azebaijan; Sousan Hayati and Ghamar Gholamian both from Bushehr and Asieh Rahmati from Khuzestan are 19 Iranian storytellers who made way to the international section.
The final stage of Kanoon 23rd International Storytelling Festival is held on Yalda night.
