WILD HORIZON Circus & Play Festival Will Come to Philadelphia's Cherry Street Pier
The event will run May 2 & 3, 2026.
A new kind of circus is taking over Philadelphia's waterfront this spring as Wild Horizon, a free public festival for young people and families, launches at Cherry Street Pier May 2 & 3, 2026.
Wild Horizon | Circus & Play Festival celebrates boundary-pushing performance in public space while expanding access to one of humanity's most essential instincts: play. Designed for audiences of all ages, the festival invites Philadelphia families to experience contemporary circus, dance, and clown performances in an open, welcoming environment where curiosity, movement, and imagination take center stage.
Following a year of community conversations, artist collaborations, and collective visioning, Wild Horizon emerges as a bold new platform for high-impact public performance. The festival reimagines public space as a site of wonder, freedom, and shared creative expression.
Produced by Almanac Projects in partnership with Ninth Planet and Rebel Arts Movement, and presented with the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, the weekend will feature world-class performances, youth workshops, and interactive experiences led by Philadelphia-based artists and visiting international performers. Featured performances include two works for the very young from Philadelphia's Ninth Planet and Australian artist Stephen Noonan (The PaperBoats), performances for all ages from Well-Balanced Dads, Hooligans & Co, and Full Out Formula from Chicago, dance from Philadelphia's Esther Baker and Tammy Carrasco, site-specific juggling installations from David Chervony and Stephen Doutt, and new creations from a cohort of Wild Seeds resident artists. Philly's own Rebel Arts Movement will engage young people of every skill level in hands-on circus challenges.
Wild Seeds is the residency at the heart of Wild Horizon, where international circus, dance, and performance artists will spend a week creating new site-specific work on the pier. During the festival, audiences will encounter these brand-new performance experiments as pop-up shows, roaming performances, interactive encounters, and unexpected moments of spectacle throughout the waterfront.
“This festival fills a hole left in Philadelphia's cultural calendar due to the closing of several circus and performing arts for youth festivals over the last few years, and is truly going to be a gratifying, magical, and unforgettable experience for families,” says organizer Ben Grinberg. “At a time when public space increasingly feels like a space of violence, fear, and hostility, we hope this festival offers the chance to reclaim a sense of wonder and freedom, even if just for an afternoon.”
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