NORFOLK & NORWICH FESTIVAL 2026 Full Programme Announced

Artistic Director & Chief Executive, Daniel Brine, has announced the full programme for the 2026 Norfolk & Norwich Festival. One of the oldest arts festivals in England, having been established in 1772, Norfolk & Norwich Festival presents world-class international performances alongside emerging talent and homegrown East Anglian artists in an expansive multi-arts programme featuring theatre, dance, music, film, literature and visual arts. 

Lasting for 17 days the Festival takes over the city of Norwich and spills out into the surrounding areas, this year taking in Wells-next-the-Sea, Lowestoft, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Diss and Swaffham, transforming the county into a hive of cultural activity. This year there will be over 20 free events in a programme that welcomes artists from all over the world for over 100 events. Tickets will go on sale on Friday 20 February at www.nnfestival.org.uk.

Artistic Director & Chief Executive, Daniel Brine said:

"We're thrilled to share this year's programme. It's a wonderfully eclectic mix featuring international artists, bold new performances, and electrifying work by local artists. What I'm particularly proud of is the community participation work woven throughout. For over 250 years, we've been bringing people together, and in today's world, that feels more vital than ever. The arts have this remarkable power to unite us, and you'll see that spirit of connection running through everything this May. I can't wait!"

The Festival will present sixteen theatre and performance premieres, including four works all written and produced in the East, exploring the varied concerns of the region: family ties in the age of climate catastrophe in Albatross by Martha Loader (8-21 May), the devastating impact of county lines in St George's Theatre Company's Crossing the Line (11, 13, 14 & 18 May) gift-giving and the very edge of human endurance in curious directive's Heartwood, and a family-friendly promenade experience in Wind in the Willows by Sheringham Little Theatre (16 & 17 May). Additionally, Bootworks Theatre Company presents The King's Lynn Nine (10 May), in which a group of local nine-year-old children share their thoughts on the world they live in.

Norfolk & Norwich Festival 2026 will once again play host to a series of bold genre-defying companies. Kaleider, whose work plays with the boundary between installation and live performance, presents the UK premiere of Requiem (15 - 17 May), in which five performers - backed by a grand musical score - work to build a giant kinetic creature from metal and breath. In partnership with Norwich Theatre Royal, the experimental theatre company Brokentalkers teams up with acclaimed accordionist Danny O'Mahony to bring Danny's moving story to life in the UK premiere of Bellow (15 & 16 May), a theatrical experience fusing traditional music, electronic sound design and dance. The Festival will offer a first look at Treekin, a new family show about nature from Trigger developed with Festival-supported school workshops in Norwich. Circa, one of the world's greatest circus companies, returns to the Festival for the first time since 2015 to headline the Spielgetent with their extraordinary show Wolf, a ferocious and intense spectacle which plays from 13-24 May.

Performers will use technology old and new to offer thought-provoking spectacle. Australian puppeteers Terrapin and multi-disciplinary artist Tim Spooner's show Matter Era combines puppetry and animation to invite audiences into a strange ecosystem entirely without people (12-14 May) and Underwater showcases a collaboration between artists An-Ting and Ian Gallagher (21 & 22 May), in a live performance project - presented in a hybrid online and in-person form -  that unveils the acoustic world of marine life through mixing communication from coral reefs, fish and whales into 3D compositions and visuals.  Meanwhile, live art duo Hunt & Darton bring Kids Business to Swaffham High Street - a hilarious pop-up created with the town's children which invites audiences to take part in a wholly unique and original retail experience.

The Festival opens with the Welcome Weekend featuring eight new Festival commissions that will premiere over two days of outdoor arts across the streets of Norwich. They include:  CHAIR! set in a dreamlike world and imagining how we can once  again have public spaces that care; Elevateher from Daughters Of The Wire which reveals female struggles and strengths played out between three multi-height tightwire rigs; a high-energy gig-theatre experience in The Torch where Afrobeat, hip-hop, rap and storytelling collide from Nigel ‘Kobby' Taylor; Tender Exchange living folk artwork inviting, deep listening, sharing and connection by Radical Ritual; Fragments Of Us from Talawa Theatre Company, an outdoor performance exploring identity, resilience, and vulnerability and centring on a cast of Black men and boys;  a beautiful mini-epic that brings buffooning to Indian street theatre in Holy Dirt; Garbh an innovative, in-the-round, outdoor dance work that reimagines ancient Gujarati Folk Dance';  physical comedy and visual imagery brought together by Ferdinando + Bernstein to face the climate breakdown with the joy of idiocy and play in Stick And Stone. Frozen Light Theatre also premiere their new production as part of the Welcome Weekend -Museum Of Spirals, a new one-to-one experience for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities.

The dance programme for 2026 includes London-based troupe Cut A Shine with a raucous ceilidh (9 May) and Thick & Tight who present Natural Behaviour (22 & 23 May) following its run at BAC, a performance that sits between a variety show and a biology essay, exploring what it means to be ‘natural' through a queer lens.

The music programme for 2026 spans a huge breadth of genres and styles  from contemporary to classical, grandiose to intimate, and boldly experimental to traditional.  Contemporary music includes a special event that will open the Festival - acclaimed folk pop artists Stornoway will present one of their two UK concerts for 2026, opened exclusively in Norwich by ambient folk artist Alice Boyd (who makes her Norwich debut).  Bookending the Festival, masterful Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita will bring together a unique and electrifying band for the Norwich date as part of a 30th anniversary tour (23 May).

Other contemporary highlights include Matthew Herbert and Momoko Gill in Herbert & Momoko (14 May), the grand pop drama of Irish star SexyTadhg (16 May), the captivating Cuban stylings of Ana Carla Maza (21 May), the boygenius-produced jasmine.4.t (22 May), Norfolk-born saxophonist Sam Braysher's quartet performing with acclaimed jazz vocalist Sara Dowling (13 May), Cowboy Junkies with a concert spanning 40 years of their music-making and foregrounding their unique mix of blues, country, folk and jazz influences (14 May) and the highly anticipated return of The Bo Nanafana Social Club with The Big Bamboo, a Norwich cult classic. The outdoor Band Stand also returns for a series of free musical evenings that celebrate outstanding local talent in partnership with BBC Introducing.

New for 2026, in collaboration with Norwich Arts Centre, is the relaunched Norwich Jazz Festival as part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival programme. This showcase of the best in UK jazz includes genre-blending contemporary African diasporic collective Balimaya Project (15 May), unique tuba player Theon Cross (16 May), a tribute to South African musician Abdullah Ibrahim and township jazz from the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (19 May), witty and playful collective Neil Cowley Trio  (21 May), the virtuosic collaborations of nine-piece big band Nubiyan Twist (22 May), exhilarating Manchester trio GoGo Penguin celebrating their powerful new album, Necessary Fictions (23 May) and bassist Gary Crosby's sextet's celebration of legendary jazz innovator, Charles Mingus (24 May).

For the classical programme, the Festival welcomes organist James McVinnie and Syrian musician Maya Youssef as resident artists for 2026. McVinnie begins with Infinity Gradient, a collaboration with composer Tristran Perich (10 May) scored for solo organ and 100 speakers in 1bit audio, a unique blend that will fill the vastness of Norwich Cathedral. He also puts the organ of St Peter Mancroft through its paces with a rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach's Clavier-Übung III (21 May). Maya Youssef begins her residency with a presentation of exciting new work exploring the meeting point between Middle Eastern and Celtic traditions in New Paths Through Old Worlds (20 May) at the Octagon Chapel, then presents her celebrated 2022 album Finding Home (22 May).

The BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme once again bring an exhilarating cross-section of the most exciting young British and international musicians to the Octagon Chapel: chamber music ensemble Astatine Trio (11 May); Estonian flautist Elizaveta Ivanova making her Norwich debut accompanied by pianist Sanja Bizjak; a pair of concerts from internationally recognised string musicians, the Kleio Quartet, performing classics from Mendelsohn and Schubert (11 May) and then joining forces with fellow BBC New Generation Artists, rising star baritone Andrew Hamilton and pianist Berniya Hamie (12 May).

Other classical music highlights include Philharmonia Chamber Players playing one of the masterpieces of the Baroque era from Bach in Goldberg Variations (10 May) in their first performance at the Festival, Britten Sinfonia with a programme that focuses on the years Benjamin Britten spent in North America (20 May), and international opera star, Roderick Williams teams up with the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra & Chorus presenting William Walton (23 May). On the Festival's closing night, in partnership with the Norwich Theatre Royal, the pioneering collective Scottish Ensemble delivers a memorised, kinetic production of Shostakovich's Chamber Symphony and Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings.

With a national spotlight on the 2026 Year of Reading, the Festival presents a dynamic programme of writers and thinkers as part of the City of Literature Weekend from 22-24 May. Highlights include the Harriet Martineau Lecture, this year delivered by Dr Rachel Clarke, and talks and workshops from Ali Smith, Ece Temelkuran, James Canton, Yvvette Edwards, Georgia Shackleton, Rishi Dastidar and Jarred McGinnis.

This year, the Festival continues to platform unique local voices in film. From the Dunes, a short film by Joseph Harrington and local poet Poppy Stevens tells the story of a family from Hemsby whose home is under threat from coastal erosion. It will be accompanied by poems created in school workshops (9-10 and 13-17 May). Award-winning choreographer Dan Canham showcased moving local stories Fenland Elegy and Four Portraits from an Edgeland at previous editions of the Festival, and in 2026 they will be shown in a double bill in the Fenlands for the first time (23 May).