The Bregenzer Festspiele Returns to Lake Constance in Summer 2026

The Bregenzer Festspiele will return to the shores of Lake Constance next summer with Giuseppe Verdi’s “La traviata” staged on the festival’s famous floating Seebühne, opening July 22, 2026, as part of a season that runs through Aug. 23, 2026. 

Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata, one of the most popular works in opera history, will be given on the lake stage for the first time. Director Damiano Michieletto and stage designer Paolo Fantin are setting the story of Parisian courtesan Violetta Valéry in the frenzied 1920s – a world of glamour, excess and inner emptiness. “It’s a cynical, capitalist, fascinating world that wants to consume and has no time to waste,” says Michieletto. Violetta’s story is told as a modern drama: a woman in the spotlight – and at the same time in the shadows due to society’s contempt. The production premieres on 22 July. Kirill Karabits and Pietro Rizzo are the conductors.

Owing to popular demand, two additional performances of La traviata have been added to the programme. Die The opera will therefore be performed on 28 evenings in summer 2026. Around 188,000 tickets have gone on sale, almost half of which are already booked. In total, approximately 228,000 tickets are available for the almost 80 events in next year’s festival season (including the dress rehearsal of La traviata).

To mark its 80th anniversary, the Bregenz Festival is mounting a big singalong on the lake stage on 1 August. Hundreds of people from all over the Lake Constance region will sing the most popular opera melodies together, accompanied by choirs, soloists and an instrumental ensemble. Everyone is invited to sing along! Also, along the lakeside promenade from 13 June to 23 August, there will be an exhibition of large-format photos from eight decades of spectacular lake stage productions.

An opera full of fantasy, humour and social criticism will be staged at the Festspielhaus in 2026. Leoš Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr Brouček takes the audience into surreal worlds on the moon, in the Middle Ages and the modern era. The premiere is on 23 July. Yuval Sharon, artistic director of Detroit Opera, is staging the rarely performed work as a Dadaist-inspired satire about people’s complacency and self-isolation from society. Robert Jindra conducts, with stage and costume design by Jon Bausor.

The Werkstattbühne theatre space will host the world premiere of two new works of music theatre that show how conflicted humans can be when it comes to technology and emotion. Passion of the Common Man (31 July and 1 August) by Daníel Bjarnason and YUM! (20 and 22 August) by Wen Liu both explore empathy, consciousness and consumerism in a digitalised world.

The Opera Studio will bring Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore to the stage of the Theater am Kornmarkt, opening on 17 August. Director Anna Kelo will set the romantic comedy in the milieu of a high school – with all the turbulence, insecurity and big emotions that go with first love and self-discovery. The result promises to be a charming, contemporary piece about love, courage and individualism that offers the young singers of the Opera Studio a chance to develop their vocal expressiveness and stage presence. The music director will be Danila Grassi.

A hypochondriac and three women in a state of intoxication meet in the theatre in Bregenz. First, Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid will be staged by the Vienna Burgtheater in a production directed by Stefan Bachmann. The guest performances, beginning on 24 July, are taking place in summer 2026 thanks to the support of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Housing, Arts, Culture, Media and Sport to mark the 80th anniversary of the Bregenz Festival. Second, Natalie Baudy’s play Under the Influence – winner of the Austrian Theatre Alliance prize – will receive its world premiere at Theater Kosmos on 12 August.

The orchestral concerts in 2026 will embrace Nordic myths, British soundscapes and compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries. Under the conductors Dalia Stasevska, Eva Ollikainen, Petr Popelka and Leo McFall, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Vorarlberg Symphony Orchestra will present works by Saariaho, Sibelius, Ravel, Dvořák, Elgar and others. There will also be the immersive piano recital Bach Nirvana by pianist Angela Hewitt at the Werkstattbühne, a chanson evening with Anne Sofie Von Otter, and a Bach concert with the choir of Bayerischer Rundfunk in the parish church of St Gallus. 

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