Berliner Festspiele

The Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of the 10 most remarkable productions for the 2026 Theatertreffen. The programme will be published on 2 April, advance ticket sale will begin on 18 April, 10:00.

Tickets for ten selected concert highlights of the Musikfest Berlin, which in 2026 will also mark the 75th anniversary of the Berliner Festspiele, are already available. The programme includes György Ligeti’s grotesquely humorous anti-opera Le Grand Macabre and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

6 and 7 March 2026

How does the bourgeois longing for revolt take shape, when the faith in progress and reason is unsettled? Berlin-based artist and director Leila Hekmat explores this question in her newly commissioned performance Roses Rising – The Movement, premiering in the Gropius Bau’s atrium. Moving between concert and ballet, the piece transforms the space into a landscape hovering between bunker, rehearsal room and dreamscape and invites the audience to witness a dinner party unravel into a happening.

19 March to 28 June 2026

Working in New York City between the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the onset of the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, Peter Hujar captured a pivotal cultural moment in piercing black-and-white photographs. In the exhibition Persistence of Vision, Hujar’s photographs are interspersed with contemporary works by New York City-based artist Liz Deschenes, opening up an intergenerational dialogue on photography. 

Reopening on 15 March 2026

Playing, laughing, making noise, letting off steam, doing nothing – all in an exhibition venue! With BAUBAU, the artist Kerstin Brätsch designed an admission-free play space for kids, where more is allowed than forbidden. On Gropius Bau’s ground floor, colourful wallpapers, structures, objects and open-ended material called “loose parts” configure flexible spaces that are shaped by children’s activities.

14 April to 23 August 2026

One of the most influential performance artists of all time, Marina Abramović presents Balkan Erotic Epic. The Exhibition at Gropius Bau in spring 2026. The show traces her ongoing engagement with ritual, eroticism, death and the body as a site of political resistance.

In interviews Eun-Me Ahn, Akram Khan and Ligia Lewis discuss their artistic practice and the creation of their recent works, which were presented during the Performing Arts Season 2025/26. Essays and a lecture also offer insights into the significance of dolls in Gisèle Vienne’s work, as well as into the rehearsal process for Thorsten Lensing’s Dancing Idiots.

Through diverse choreographies and forms of expression in contemporary and urban dance, young dancers explored what constitutes their own identity and how it asserts itself in interaction with others. The recordings of the productions invited to the Tanztreffen der Jugend 20245 are available in the media library. 

In conversation with music journalist Peter Margasak and Nadin Deventer, artistic director of Jazzfest Berlin, trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith looks back on more than half a century of “Creative Music”. Also in the Media Library: two films invite viewers behind the scenes of the Jazzfest Community Film Lab.

Find out more about some of MaerzMusik’s 2025 artists, including Joan La Barbara, Laura Bowler and Pamela Z: talks, interviews and a portrait have been published in the Berliner Festspiele Media Library.

Watch the four 3sat “Starke Stücke“ from the Theatertreffen 2025 in the media library. In addition, statements from the Theatertreffen jury as well as various discussions from the “Forum Theatertreffen 1965–2025“ are available online.

On the future of debate culture: The videos of the second edition of “Reflexes & Reflections with lectures, discussions and a late-night programme are available in the Media Library.

The central theme in the productions of the Theatertreffen der Jugend 2025 is fear: fear of the events and catastrophes that come thick and fast, fear of war, poverty and failure, fear of manipulation and being overwhelmed by social media. Recordings of the productions and the opening ceremony are available in the media library.

Discover background information on Musikfest Berlin 2025, including interviews with selected composers and performers, stories related to the hidden object picture, and audio recordings of selected concerts, which will be available shortly after each event.

The Treffen junge Musikszene 2025 presents a rather young line-up of surprisingly mature, accomplished and experimental musicians, including numerous strong female artists. Recordings of the concerts are available in the media library.

In their 2025 texts, the young authors write about very personal situations and relationships, from issues of social and emotional integration to family histories and everyday observations, to questions about the global situation, politics, the climate, and social or economic injustice. The readings and other events are available in the media library.