BALLETBOYZ, CIRCUS ZAMBIA, and More Set For LATITUDE FESTIVAL

With under two months until Henham Park opens its gates, Latitude Festival is getting ready for its twentieth edition with another wave of arts programming added, from 23 to 26 July 2026. This announcement reaches across Latitude's theatre, dance and comedy stages, including Zambia's most exciting touring circus company. 

Melvin Benn, Festival Founder and Director, said: "Twenty years on, and Latitude remains the trailblazer it was in 2006: the original cross-arts festival, where music, comedy, theatre, dance, poetry, science and ideas have always shared the same fields. BalletBoyz back at the festival to celebrate their own twenty-fifth year. Circus Zambia bringing their extraordinary Afronauts to a UK festival for the first time. And right across our programme, a whole new generation of artists who give me complete confidence about where the next twenty years of Latitude are going. I cannot wait to welcome everyone back to Henham in July."

BalletBoyz

Latitude welcomes one of the most celebrated names in contemporary British dance back to Henham Park. BalletBoyz return to the festival with their landmark 25th anniversary production Still Pointless, fresh from a sold-out run at Sadler's Wells and a major UK tour. No strangers to Latitude, having performed multiple times across the years via the festival's long-standing Sadler's Wells dance partnership, with sets including Serpent and Fallen in 2013 and Life in 2017, founders Michael Nunn OBE and William Trevitt OBE have spent a quarter of a century at the driving heart of British dance, commissioning some of the greatest contemporary choreographers of the era, from Christopher Wheeldon and Russell Maliphant to Liam Scarlett, Xie Xin and Javier De Frutos, and working with composers including Max Richter, Keaton Henson and Cassie Kinoshi. Featuring ten world-class dancers and fusing live performance with film, Still Pointless is BalletBoyz at their most ambitious and most BalletBoyz: a thrilling, irreverent, deeply moving celebration of where the company have been and where they're going next, and a perfectly Latitude piece of full-circle programming for the festival's twentieth.

Afronauts

Joining them in the Theatre Arena, Circus Zambia & Wake the Beast present Afronauts, a UK debut for one of the most extraordinary new shows on the international circuit, inspired by the true story of Edward Nkoloso and Zambia's 1964 attempt to join the space race armed with little more than a wheelbarrow and unshakeable optimism. The show arrives at Henham fresh from sold-out runs in Lusaka and a triumphant outing at South Africa's National Arts Festival, ahead of becoming the first Zambian company ever to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe. Co-directed by Circus Zambia founder Gift Chansa and Wake the Beast's Adam McGuigan, the show fuses breathtaking acrobatics, theatre, choral music and spectacle into a joyous, defiant celebration of the imagination, courage and audacity of a newly independent Zambia.

Anatomy of Survival

Also in the Theatre Arena, The Place brings Anatomy of Survival to Henham Park, a collaboration between award-winning playwright Vivienne Franzmann (Pests, Bodies) and choreographer-psychotherapist Frauke Requardt, commissioned and co-produced by The Place in association with the Royal Court. It takes a single witnessed meltdown in a coffee shop and refracts it through twenty-two shifting eyewitness accounts: with four performers, dance, drumming, sharp text and (yes) a person in a bear costume, it is a darkly funny, viscerally felt journey through the fight, flight, freeze and rest-and-digest states of the human nervous system.

Zoie Sings... Pop Up Choir

Over at the Waterfront, Zoie Sings... Pop Up Choir returns, a long-loved Latitude fixture, with Bristol-based natural voice practitioner Zoie returning with her open-to-all forest choir, gathering festival-goers, whatever their experience, to learn songs from across the world in glorious unrehearsed harmony, by the water.

COMEDY

The Comedy Arena adds yet more firepower. Thanyia Moore brings her commanding Stage Presence and razor-sharp wit to Henham as MC; the Funny Women Champion and 2022 Chortle Comedy Breakthrough winner has become one of British comedy's most reliable rooms-warmers, a regular on Mock the Week and host of her own Moore Laughter night.

Kemah Bob, the Houston-born, London-based comedian, writer and founder of the FOC IT UP! Comedy Club, brings the show that landed her debut Miss Fortunate in the Guardian's Top 10 Comedy Shows of 2024, sharp, bold and fearless, fresh from a sold-out Soho Theatre run and tour support slots for Hannah Gadsby, Nish Kumar and Desiree Burch.

Lewis Garnham, one of Australia's most distinctive comic voices, makes his Latitude debut: a laconic, gifted storyteller whose 2025 Stream of Contentedness tour sold out across Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Byron Bay, with three full-length specials to his name and a viral following to match.

On the Listening Post, the legendary Comedy Store Players return to Henham for their long-running, mid-show, no-script-needed masterclass in improvised comedy, the UK's most celebrated improv troupe in their natural festival habitat.

After dark, the Comedy Arena becomes a buzzing after-hours playground as the UK's best club nights take centre stage: Massaoke leads the charge with the world's biggest mass sing-along party, live band Rockstar Weekend powering through hairbrush anthems from across the decades, while pop sensation Guilty Pleasures invites festival-goers to surrender to the joy of feel-good floor-fillers, together turning Latitude's home of stand-up into the festival's most riotous late-night dancefloor.

COSMIC SHAMBLES FOREST OF SCIENCE AND CULTURE

The previously announced Cosmic Shambles Forest of Science and Culture also gains a host of new names. Following yesterday's reveal of two dedicated stages, a packed Museum Street and a full evening programme stretching from particle physics to puppetry, from Greek mythology to electric vehicles, and from the ocean floor to the edge of space, three of the most talked-about names in their fields lead today's additions.

Singapore-born comedian Sam See, the first South East Asian act to win five stars at the Edinburgh Fringe, brings the storytelling, suits and stadium-ready charm that has taken him from Singapore to twenty-five countries and onto Comedy Central.

Zoologist, vet and former CBeebies Minibeast Adventure presenter Dr Jess French, named in BBC Wildlife magazine's top fifty most influential UK conservationists, brings her boundless enthusiasm for the small, scuttling and overlooked.

And Dr Mark Spencer, Britain's foremost forensic botanist and author of Murder Most Florid, brings extraordinary tales from a career using brambles, pollen and plant fragments to help police solve murders, arsons and missing person enquiries.

2026 Theater Fans' Choice Awards - Live Stats

Best Sound Design - Top 3

1. Adam Fisher - The Lost Boys

30.3% of votes

2. John Shivers - Chess

15.5% of votes

3. Tony Gayle - Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York)

8% of votes

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