HEART OF THE CITY FESTIVAL to Feature 100+ Events

The 23rd Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival will kick off next month. The 2026 Festival features over 100 events at over 30+ local venues, including music, poetry, theatre, ceremony, films, dance, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, art talks, history tours, and more! 

This year's theme,  Belonging, celebrates the experience of being seen, heard, respected, and valued for who you are. At the Festival, Belonging is something we create together; it's sharing stories, laughter, grief, and joy. Belonging reminds us that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, compassion, and respect.

For 23 years, the Heart of the City Festival has been rooted in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and focused on listening and learning from the community. The Festival works with and for the Downtown Eastside community to carry forward our stories, ancestral memory, cultural traditions, lived experiences, and artistic practices, illuminating pathways of resilience. 

A few selected highlights in the upcoming 2026 Festival include: 

Electric Company Theatre's new play, Epigone, a  modern myth about complicated grief, stigmas of addiction, and our responsibilities to the dead, runs for two weeks at the Russian Hall. 

Reimagining Justice: The Circle Project  is a series of three video installations created by  The Circle Project, a Vancouver-based association of artists and people with lived experience of incarceration committed to creating provocative art.