THE VILLAGE TRIP FESTIVAL Expands 2026 Program With New Events Celebrating Revolutionary Voices

The Village Trip Festival has expanded its 2026 program with a host of newly added events, bringing even more music, theater, comedy, art, history, and activism to the Village from September 25 through October 4.

Now in its eighth edition, The Village Trip is celebrating Revolutionary Voices, highlighting the artists, writers, musicians, performers, and activists whose works have challenged convention and changed the world. With the expanded program, the festival now features 40 events exploring the extraordinary cultural and political history of Greenwich Village, the East Village and the Lower East Side—and the continuing role of these neighborhoods as places where new ideas, new art, and new movements take root.

Among the added highlights are:

• Reading the Declaration of Independence: A Conversation About Our Past and Present (September 26, NYU Tisch) – A free public reading and roundtable discussion will examine the Declaration 250 years after its signing. Led by Robert Snyder, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and Journalism at Rutgers University and former Manhattan Borough Historian, the event asks what the Declaration meant in 1776—and what it means today.
• Vocal Gumbo: Voices of Dissent and Hope (September 27, DROM) – Vocal Gumbo joins The Village Trip at DROM for an evening of musical activism featuring Janis Siegel (of The Manhattan Transfer) and Lauren Kinhan (of New York Voices) plus special guest Lea DeLaria.
• Janie Barnett Sings the Songs of Cole Porter: An Unlikely Renegade (September 28, The Bitter End) – Singer and arranger Janie Barnett reimagines Cole Porter's sophisticated classics with a raw, rootsy soul.
• Revolutionary, Darling! (September 29, The Monster Bar) – Vivian LeDay hosts a one-night cabaret celebrating trans voices, stories, and songs across generations. Trans New Yorkers will share experiences of humor, heartbreak, resilience, resistance, and joy in a neighborhood where queer revolution helped change the world.
• This Hammer Can't Kill Me: Paul Robeson, His Music and His Story (September 28, HB Studio) – A conversation with baritone James C. Martin exploring Robeson's extraordinary life as an artist and activist, accompanied by selections from his repertoire. The event also looks at Robeson's historic 1958 Carnegie Hall concert and his return to the stage after years on the political blacklist.
• Women's Work (September 29, St. John's in the Village) – An evening of music and poetry explores the tension between the demands placed on women and the creative lives they have sustained. The program features a world premiere by Kitty Brazelton alongside works by Liz Queler, Missy Mazzoli, Shoko Suzuki, Ann Southam, and Whitney George, with texts by Eleanor Roosevelt, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and others.
• Mapping the Legacy: Village Artists Tell Their Stories (September 30, HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre) – The Performing Arts Legacy Project brings together groundbreaking Village artists. Moderated by PAL founder Joan Jeffri, the panel will explore the careers and experiences of artists who have documented their lives and work through the project's online archive.
• Where Theater Revolutions Began: La MaMa Archive Tour with Spiderwoman Theater (October 1, La MaMa) – Audiences can explore the La MaMa Archives with head archivist Kylie Goetz and featured artist Muriel Miguel of Spiderwoman Theater, the oldest continually running Native feminist theater company in the Americas, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.
• We The People – Poetica Musica (September 25, St. John's in the Village) – The festival opens with an exploration of 250 years of American musical expression, drawing on works by composers including Aaron Copland, William Bolcom, and Hall Johnson and asking what the American experiment means today.
• The Peoples' Voice Café: Songs of Freedom and Resistance (September 26, Assembly Hall, Judson Memorial Church) – Four longtime activist musicians—Judy Gorman, David Tarlo, Lindsey Wilson, and Adele Rolider—come together for an all-acoustic evening of songs for peace, human rights, and social justice.
• Find Your Authentic Voice: A Masterclass with Voice Coach Henry A. McDaniel (September 29, West Beth Community Room) – An innovative masterclass explores the relationship between the voice people use in the world and the person they feel themselves to be.

The festival has also expanded its walking-tour offerings. New tours include:

TOUR DATES

• Wonderful Town: A walking tour with Jamie Bernstein
• Founder and Fugitive: Aaron Burr's Greenwich Village
• The 1960s and '70s Music of the West Village from Dylan and Springsteen to Woodstock and Beyond
• East Village Underground: Two Centuries of Creativity and Rebellion
• The East Village, The Music and the Explosions of the 1960s, '70s and '80s
• Beatnik Greenwich Village
• Greenwich Village Gargoyles, Grotesques and Mascarons
• The Republic of Greenwich Village: Birthplace of the American Avant-Garde

New arts and family programming includes Framing the Village Exhibition: Independent Thinkers!, the fifth Village Trip art exhibition at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery; The Ukrainian Museum at 50: Special Guided Tour; and Notes from a Life: An Evening with Allen Shawn, an intimate October 3 program featuring the composer, pianist, and author.

The festival's signature free concert this year will feature The Slambovian Circus of Dreams performing for the public at Gansevoort Plaza in the Meatpacking District, bringing The Village Trip's tradition of free outdoor music to a new location and audience.

The expanded program joins previously announced festival highlights including Let Freedom Sing: Paul Robeson – His Words, His Music, Dorothy Day: A Radical Saint of the City, Miles and Trane at 100, Woody Guthrie's Songs to Grow On, The Ahn Trio with James Moore: The Art of Collaboration, America Sings a Siren's Song, Village Voices, Classical Cool: Ich Bin Ein New Yorker, 'Who Are We?' Songwriting Workshops for Kids, Stand Up & Be Counted!, and the Greenwich Village Folk Festival's 40th Anniversary Concert.

Many events are free, with ticketed events ranging from $10 to $60.

The Village Trip's 2026 theme, Revolutionary Voices, comes at a particularly fraught moment. As the United States celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the festival looks both backward and forward—to the voices that challenged the status quo in generations past and to the artists and activists continuing to ask difficult questions, create new forms, and imagine a better world.

The Village Trip 2026 runs September 25 through October 4 across Greenwich Village, the East Village, and the Lower East Side. A full list of events, schedules, venues, and ticket information is available at the festival's official website:

ABOUT THE VILLAGE TRIP

The Village Trip is a 501(c)(3) non-profit festival where arts and activism meet. Each autumn, it brings the songs, diverse voices, and stages of the past and present Greenwich Village and East Village together again – for New Yorkers who call these streets home, and for anyone who's looking for a place where a better world gets a fresh start.

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