The Performing Arts Season 2025/26 took place from 16 October 2025 to 25 January 2026.&nbsp;

Performing Arts Season

Upcoming Events

Exhibitions

<h3>With</h3><a href="${link:{uuid:{e08ccce3-8fa1-44e1-92f9-9958bc55b772},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/B/merche-blasco}}}">Merche Blasco</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{ef24a45c-674e-4d42-bbb7-2b07da25b400},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/K/christian-kesten}}}">Christian Kesten</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{6176cabd-4367-475e-ae6d-671f5308e648},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/M/felicity-mangan}}}">Felicity Mangan</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{2b381415-ab3f-4d88-9db6-d23fb52bf008},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/N/Alex-Nowitz}}}">Alex Nowitz</a>, <a href="${link:{uuid:{b4c476ab-d6eb-46f9-98c5-35d4ef1081c2},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/W/ute-wassermann}}}">Ute Wasserman</a><h3>Project-development</h3><a href="${link:{uuid:{814aa11a-dad3-4078-b36c-974ded30b3f9},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/D/pooja-das}}}">Pooja Das</a> – co-researcher &amp; co-writer (publication) <a href="${link:{uuid:{079744bd-7b3a-4e95-9585-de9e2dfe3756},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/R/tim-rutherford-johnson}}}">Tim Rutherford Johnson</a> – publication editor <a href="${link:{uuid:{34122ea7-e81e-4ab6-b532-85c569721e35},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/T/priyanka-tagore}}}">Priyanka Tagore</a> – haiku editor <a href="${link:{uuid:{0ca8da6d-9220-4819-a565-cd1ffb0b2eb3},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/U/shikha-usgaonker}}}">Shikha Usgaonker</a> – graphic desig <a href="${link:{uuid:{cd662624-b598-4e25-b6e9-459e52a65116},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/B/subhadeep-biswas}}}">Subhadeep Biswas</a> – engineer <a href="${link:{uuid:{de9b9b9c-830b-4086-9a57-27a5024bda00},repository:{artists},path:{/bfs-mediathek/G/matt-gingold}}}">Matt Gingold</a> – Pianola code

Nandita Kumar’s installation at daadgalerie is playfully reminiscent of a newspaper-press, stuck in an eternal loop. The work comments on the constant regurgitation of misinformed and manipulative facts by individuals and organizations as they influence public opinion to protect their own interests: a reminder to listen closely to the echoes of history and avoid mindlessly replaying the discordant notes of the past.

As the challenges and environmental consequences of climate change are manifested, Nandita Kumar reflects on the knowledge gap between the scientific community, political spheres, and the populace at large. While fake news has plagued climate and environmental science for decades, slowing or completely derailing “progress,” information overload, complexity, and lack of meaning has left people feeling anxious and powerless to enact real environmental change. Kumar’s work deconstructs political rhetoric related to various environmental issues by collating statements made by influential individuals, politicians, and organizations. Employing the very methods of data manipulation and fake news, the statements were transformed by an algorithmic “haiku” generator in order to produce a poem to accompany each of the untrue statements. Forming a glitching musical code, the resulting ninety-one haikus play out through a forty-foot pianola score. The accompanying digital publication allows the viewer to connect each of the poems to its original statement, alongside expanded essays detailing the truth behind these falsehoods.The sound installation has been collaboratively developed during Kumar’s DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program residency and comprises five sonic journeys representing the elements – earth, water, fire, air, and void – and will culminate in a performance that includes voicing the haikus alongside the pianola player, a collage of found sound and live foley with refuse and recycled objects.“History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme” – Mark Twain

Ausstellung

Exhibition

Highlights of MaerzMusik 2023

MaerzMusik 2023

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Nandita Kumar: From Paradigm to Paradigm, Into the Biomic Time

Lakbayan is a “protest tactic, an organizing tool, propaganda machinery and a lobby mechanism.” (Mong Palatino) This involves the mobilization of mass organizations of peasants, indigenous peoples and other sectors of Philippine society across the country to march to the capital and present their demands to the national government. Inspired by this tradition, Dang A Dang Radio will present a collection of protest music and sonic expressions of dissent from the Philippines. Through a sampling of the archive through “listening stations” with audio recordings, text and visual materials, it will highlight the country’s history and tradition of protest.

In a Lakbayan, masses of organized peasants, indigenous peoples and agricultural workers travel from the peripheries to the capital to present their demands to the national government. It highlights the displacement of indigenous peoples by domestic and foreign plunderers, issues of food security and local struggles, the call for the resumption of peace talks and the militarization and attacks of rural communities. It counters and brings to the fore the government’s callous attitude towards these issues.A month-long march and sea crossing brings the rural struggle closer to new ties with other communities where the movement may be weak, to potential new allies and supporters that can provide “information, supplies and logistics”. The camp-outs in the city become spaces for education, receiving material support, and “staging ground” for political action.Inspired by this tradition, Dang A Dang Radio will present Lakbayan: voices of resistance from the Philippines, a collection of protest music and sonic expressions of dissent in the Philippines. Through a sampling of the archive through “listening stations” with audio recordings, text and visual materials, it will highlight the country’s history and tradition of protest.The exhibition will present an inter-generational selection of sounds from the classics of the First Quarter Storm movement to the current generation of activists and musicians, accompanied by background information and context through materials like songbooks, liner notes, posters, and photographs from the collection of Dang A Dang Radio, and other progressive organizations.Drawing from the spirit of the Lakbayan, the exhibition will “transport” the stories of struggle from the peripheries, not as an appeal for mercy, but in a call for solidarity.The exhibition will map the themes and sectors represented in the archive and how they are reflected in the music and other audio materials featured. It hopes to show not just worsening conditions and oppression, but also the sound of movements gaining strength and building political power.

SAVVY Contemporary

Lakbayan

The “Library of MaerzMusik” is a new space/time for open exchange and personal study, to which the festival invites visitors daily from 14:00 with free admission. In this modular library in the Festspielhaus, artists and the public meet in interactive formats, lectures and artistic interventions.

Präsentation

Presentation

Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Oberes Foyer

Haus der Berliner Festspiele, Upper&nbsp;Foyer

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Past Events

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Programme Schedule

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Reflexe und Reflexionen

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Every autumn and winter, the Berliner Festspiele present a Performing Arts Season that brings a panorama of international dance, theatre and performance productions to the stage of the Festspielhaus and the Gropius Bau.

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Performing Arts Season 2025/26

Today’s Events

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Marina Abramović unfolds Balkan&nbsp;Erotic&nbsp;Epic in two parts: the exhibition by the iconic artist will open at the Gropius Bau in April, and in October her new multi-hour stage production will be shown at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele as part of the Performing Arts Season. The work traces Abramović’s ongoing engagement with ritual, eroticism, death and the body as a site of political resistance.

Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic

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The second season, presented between October 2024 and January 2025, concentrated on memory and heritage in contemporary performing arts, with a focus on New York’s dance and performance scene.

Performing Arts Season 2024/25

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Performing Arts Season 2024: Überblick

Performing Arts Season: Overview

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Gallery 2024/25

Cultural pluralism is not a new phenomenon; it has long existed within peoples, nations and communities. Even in prehistoric times, humans moved in search of food, water and shelter. Their migration patterns were influenced by climate, resource availability and interactions, later driven by imperialism and economic ambitions. The resulting cohabitation and collective behaviours, along with the languages, gestures and cultural heritage shared and exchanged, have continually shaped people’s identities as well as nations and communities, not seldom at a devastating cost. While this multidimensional diversity and plurality of identities has always been a part of human history, contemporary global homogenisation now poses significant challenges to traditions, local languages and cultural heritage. This, in turn, leads many regions and countries to witness the resurgence of rigid, stereotypical and essentialist concepts of identity. Against the backdrop of these developments, the Performing Arts Season 2025/26 will bring together works that interrogate binaries and singular, unrelated identities, reflecting the interconnectedness of the world and the self in its totality – what Édouard Glissant termed the “Whole-World” (Tout-monde).Paraphrasing these conceptions of identity through the lens of the performing arts as an ephemeral phenomenon rooted in negotiation and relationships, this third Performing Arts Season edition presents a selection of dance, theatre and performance works that discard the idea of a majority-minority-society which often ascribes non-European artists to a certain minority status. The pieces created by Eun-Me Ahn, Gisèle Vienne and Étienne Bideau-Rey, William Kentridge, Akram Khan Company, Nina Laisné, François Chaignaud and Nadia Larcher, Thorsten Lensing and Ligia Lewis delve into themes such as the precarity of identity, displacement, creolisation and transnationality, highlighting the power of performance to navigate and articulate our shared yet diverse experiences.

“Who am I?” is a question as old as humanity itself, and one that has been repeated – sometimes philosophically, sometimes corporeally – across the world. Despite our complex, constantly changing realities and pluralistic societies, the belief in a consistent self nevertheless still holds a certain credibility and triggers political and social debates. This intangible and often troubling notion of “identity” serves as the starting point for the Performing Arts Season 2025/26.

Trailer, Performing Arts Season 2025/26, Design: 3pc

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Following on 12 and 13 November, Albanian-born Greek-based theatre maker Mario Banushi returns to Haus der Berliner Festspiele after being part of the festival Performing Exiles in 2025. Banushi shows his latest piece, MAMI, as its German premiere. As his personal mythology, this work, a visual poem and a landscape of memories, depicts the source of life and is a tribute to the women who nurtured us.What is more, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returns to her roots with the new creation GLA55, which will have its world premiere at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele on 19 November, with further performances on 20 and 21 November. The Ictus Ensemble and Bl!ndman revisit early works by the master of minimalism, Philip Glass, while Rosas dancers let a geometric choreography unfold, guiding our consciousness into a trance-like dimension.In December, you can see two bold dance pieces. Belgian-French choreographer Damien Jalet brings Planet [wanderer] on 4 and 5 December, inspired by Japan’s Genesis story, the Kojiki. Alongside the overwhelming organic stage set by the Japanese sculptor, Kohei Nawa, it discusses the boundary between the living and the dead, and the inseparable relationship between the human body, the elements of the cosmic world, and gravity.Canadian leading choreographer, Marie Chouinard, on the other hand, highlights on 9 and 10 December an evening consisting of her early masterpiece and her latest piece: The Rite of Spring, a piece of music that has inspired legendary artists to create groundbreaking choreographies in each epoch, and MAGNIFICAT, which is one of the eight most ancient Christian hymns and is the canticle most frequently recited. What defines both works is that they are subject to her sublime and exquisite choreography.&nbsp;Dumb Type, Japan’s leading multimedia performance collective, presents their latest performance work, 2020, from 15 to 17 January. This has been a phantom work, which they almost completed and planned to premiere in March 2020 as the first work after 18&nbsp;years but was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic; only a recorded version was presented. Berliner Festspiele present the European premiere in January 2027 right after the now live world premiere at ROHM Theatre Kyoto. AI, surveillance society, communication failure, the climate crisis, geopolitics – the performance explores these threats to humanity in the liminal space between technology and the living body.After being a part of the 2025/26 Performing Arts Season and being nominated for the 2024 Theatertreffen, we are pleased to welcome again Franco-Austrian artist, choreographer and director Gisèle Vienne on 21 and 22 January with her new creation CREATION 2026 (WT) and Berliner Festspiele co-production (world premiere at Schauspielhaus Z&uuml;rich). In this first collaboration with the writer Marie NDiaye, Vienne articulates the contemporary concerns and the struggles for a dignified and viable life for all, embodying the long-standing research into power relations and their construction.Through these prominent contemporary expressions of performing arts and while bringing back to mind fundamental meanings of performativity, we might find that the performing arts exist as neither mere entertaining nor healing, but as a device that shapes our profound perception and thinking about the world, and furthermore, generates and changes it. The theatre has been over time and will continue to be an actual space: a place for people to come together. At the same time, the experience of theatre is a phenomenon that cannot be repeated and exists only in the here and now. Let’s share this unique time together and encounter different people and perspectives in the upcoming edition of the Performing Arts Season, which coincides with the Berliner Festspiele’s 75th anniversary year.

Myths that tell of the world’s origins and rituals that connect humans to nature and the earth serve as the very source of identity, allowing humans to anchor themselves in history, confirm their roots in a particular land, and affirm their coexistence with others. Myths often depict battles, not to make humans hostile, but to provoke deep reflection on how tragic and devastating the consequences of war truly are. Some ancient rituals, including those involving sacrifice, may seem brutal by modern standards, but they were not intended to stimulate sadism; rather, they served to affirm the vulnerability and preciousness of life. It is fair to say that a sense of awe for the dignity of life has sustained these traditions.The immediacy that characterises the practice of performing arts is a mechanism for activating a community’s collective imagination and emotion, and its origins can likely be traced back to songs and dances praying for harvests. There, mythical narratives unfolded, ritualistic forms became established as local festivals, and were passed down continuously across generations. In other words, myths and rituals can also be said to be the origins of performing arts. Now, let us ask ourselves anew: Can contemporary performing arts serve not as something that divides us living in the modern world, but as something that connects us? And can they inspire a sense of awe and reverence for life and its dignity? It is by returning to this fundamental meaning of performing arts that this 2026/27 Performing Arts Season has been conceived.<h3>Programme</h3>We open the fourth Performing Arts Season on 14 October with a bold new performance work: the stage version of <a href="${link:{uuid:{c9197019-0240-4d93-9716-a043bce5ed89},repository:{website},path:{/bfs-de/performing-arts-season/programm/2026/spielplan/balkan-erotic-epic}}}">Balkan Erotic Epic</a> by the seminal iconic performance artist, Marina Abramović, will premiere in Germany. This durational ritual where ancient Balkan myths meet performance art explores until 17 October the eroticism, spirituality and traditions of Abramović’s homeland, brought to life by a cast of more than 30 performers, dancers, musicians and singers. Furthermore, she will host an exhibition of the same name that will already open in April at Gropius Bau.

Performing Arts Season 2026/27

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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.&nbsp;

Peter Hujar / Liz Deschenes: Persistence of Vision

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

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In 2026 the Berliner Festspiele celebrate their 75th anniversary. A selection of events programmed throughout the entire year engage take the anniversary as their theme or mark the occasion with works at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele, the Gropius Bau, the Philharmonie Berlin, on Berlin’s Ringbahn and at other locations in the city.&nbsp;

75 Years of the Berliner Festspiele

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MaerzMusik invites you to concerts, performances, installations and discourse formats at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and several other venues in Berlin. The programme will be announced on 29 January, with advance ticket sales beginning on the same day.is published; advance ticket sales are on.

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More Berliner Festspiele

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Advance sales are now live: tickets for ten selected concert highlights of the Musikfest Berlin, which in 2026 will also mark the 75th anniversary of the Berliner Festspiele, are now available. The programme includes Gy&ouml;rgy Ligeti’s grotesquely humorous anti-opera Le Grand Macabre and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

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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. 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.

Leila Hekmat: Roses Rising – The Movement &nbsp;

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On 13 January, the Theatertreffen’s jury of critics announced their selection of the 10 most remarkable productions for the 2026 Theatertreffen at a press conference. Our congratulations go to the nominated production teams and all participants!

Theatertreffen

MaerzMusik invites you to concerts, performances, installations and discourse formats at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and several other venues in Berlin. The programme is published; advance ticket sales are on.

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Nina Laisné and François Chaignaud with Nadia Larcher

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Key Visual Performing Arts Season 2025

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Programme &amp; Advance ticket sales: 18 June 2026, 14:00

A Panorama of International Dance, Theatre and Performance Productions

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We would like to thank all artists, everyone involved and you, our audience, for a great Performing Arts Season 2025/26 full of moving moments! We are already in the midst of preparations for the next Season, which will present a new panorama of international dance, theatre and performance productions at Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Gropius Bau from October 2026 to January 2027. Initial information on the programme will be available at the end of February.

Thanks for 2025/26 and Look Out for 2026/27

From October 2023, the Berliner Festspiele is to launch an annual Performing Arts Season that will present a panorama of international dance, theatre and performance productions on the stage of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Gropius Bau through the autumn and winter months. Some of the works on display will be co-produced by the Berliner Festspiele or produced in Berlin. The Curator and Programme Director of the Berliner Festspiele’s Performing Arts Season is the dramaturg Yusuke Hashimoto.

Trailer Performing Arts Season 2023/2024, Design: 3pc

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Teaser Performing Arts Season

Trailer Performing Arts Season 2023/2024

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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.

In the Media Library

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Performing Arts Season 2026: Previously on PAS

Impressions

Since 2023, the Berliner Festspiele’s Performing Arts Season has been presenting a range of outstanding international dance, theatre and performance productions at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and Gropius Bau during the autumn and winter months. Some of the works shown are co-produced by the Berliner Festspiele or specially produced in Berlin.

About Performing Arts Season

The works presented in the Performing Arts Season 2025/26 go beyond simple portrayals of identity, embracing its precarity and fluid, multifaceted and often contradictory nature. Through an exploration of connections and differences, they underscore not what divides us, but what unites us, both individually and collectively – strengthening once more the shared threads of our communal experience as well as the validity of the performing arts.

The Programme

Key Visual Performing Arts Season 2026

Programme &amp; Advance ticket sales: 18 June, 14:00

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The Performing Arts Season presents a panorama of international dance, theatre and performance productions on the stage of the Haus der Berliner Festspiele and the Gropius Bau through the autumn and winter months.

Festivals & Programme Series

Upcoming

The Berliner Festspiele organise a range of festivals and art exhibitions, concerts, dance and theatre performances, readings, lectures, debates and much more throughout the year. These events are presented at a range of locations across Berlin but are concentrated primarily at their own two venues: the Gropius Bau and the Haus der Berliner Festspiele.

Berliner Festspiele

The works presented in the Performing Arts Season 2025/26 go beyond simple portrayals of identity, embracing its precarity and fluid, multifaceted and often contradictory nature. Through an exploration of connections and differences, they underscore not what divides us, but what unites us, both individually and collectively &ndash; strengthening once more the shared threads of our communal experience as well as the validity of the performing arts.