Battersea Arts Centre Reveals 2025/26 Season

Battersea Arts Centre has announced its 2025/6 season. The programme will see artists from all over the world – including France, Portugal, Belgium, Australia, Rwanda and the UK – come together on Lavender Hill this autumn, in a celebration of extraordinary performance and radical, socially conscious new work from across the globe. Including six UK and World Premieres and two pieces of work that are part of this year's London Borough of Culture, the season ranges from the hyper-local with Manchester collective Quarantine's two week takeover of the venue to Radio Live's on stage interviews with young people from conflict zones, connecting wider global narratives.

Battersea Arts Centre invites audiences and artists alike to come together to engage in conversations around some of the pressing issues of our time, with many of the productions in this season having an active role for the audience to play on stage, exploring what it means to come together collectively both as an audience and as a community. Many of the shows in the 2025/6 season put dialogue right at the heart of theatremaking, in a fitting tribute to the building's radical municipal history as Battersea Town Hall.

Pelin Başaran, Creative Director of Battersea Arts Centre says: “This season has been shaped by the question of how we move beyond the “collective vertigo,” a term borrowed from Naomi Klein, that we have been experiencing as a society in response to recent global developments. In these times, when we feel disorientated, with a constant fear of falling, how can we, as a community, hold on to one another, support each other, and find our collective, powerful voice? 

This resonates with our building's radical history as a town hall — a place dedicated to open debate and civic action. We want to create space for challenging questions that will help us to reimagine the society in which we live, by connecting local and global stories. I'm proud to be presenting work from around the world here at BAC while supporting UK artists to make new work that will travel internationally.” 

Tarek Iskander, Artistic Director and CEO of Battersea Arts Centre says: “I am proud of every season we host here at BAC, but this one feels special. Being part of Wandsworth's London Borough of Culture year is a joy – and it also comes at a time when the world is full of ideologies that seek to divide us. That's why BAC is consciously spotlighting artists that challenge this division, creating work that celebrates what connects us and everything we share. The season further reinforces our belief that great art can come from anywhere – whether it's across the globe, or just around the corner.” 

Liberty Festival will open the autumn season. London's flagship festival platforming and  celebrating work by some of the most exciting disabled artists is part of Wandsworth's tenure as The Mayor's London Borough of Culture. Produced by CRIPtic Arts, the festival will embed these artists at the heart of Wandsworth community at locations across the borough. With BAC as the hub for Liberty Festival, it will explore the disabled experience – past, present and future - and push artistic boundaries to create a fresh, resonant and vital experience, cementing Wandsworth's commitment to inclusivity. The festival runs from 24-28 September, and will be at BAC from 25-28 September. Full line up to be announced.

Following the critically acclaimed The Dan Daw Show in 2022,  Dan Daw Creative Projects return to present EXXY in the Grand Hall, a World Premiere in co-production with BAC. EXXY (Australian slang for “that's expensive, mate”) takes the audience on an epic and tender journey back to where Dan Daw began - working class, with very little. Join Dan, a queer, crippled artist on the rise as he transports us to the Australian outback to talk about his imposter syndrome and fluctuating self-worth. Joined on stage by three performers who walk and talk like him,  Dan finds comfort in the possibility of finally blending in after a lifetime of standing out. EXXY is co-commissioned by Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Battersea Arts Centre, Transform, Take Me Somewhere and Tramway for the New Dimensions Commission 2025. These five UK organisations have come together to support artists who are ready to dream big and create a new work of scale that can tour nationally and internationally. Runs 2-10 October and then touring (Tramway, Take Me Somewhere Festival: 15 October; Leeds Playhouse, Transform 25 Festival: 22-23 October; Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts: 6-7 November).

French artists Aurélie Charon & Amélie Bonnin come to BAC for the first time to present a new edition of Radio Live - the UK premiere of – Radio Live: A New Generation. Part theatre show and part journalistic investigation, Charon hands the microphone to young people from conflict zones and highlights their stories. In this new edition, Radio Live centres stories from Bosnia, Rwanda, Ukraine and Gaza as the young people share the impact of war on their familial, social, artistic, and activist spaces through drawing, video and music. Running 11-12 October.

For two nights only in October Tiago Rodrigues, director of the Festival d'Avignon will perform By Heart. The show makes its long awaited UK premiere, having toured Europe for the last decade to critical acclaim.  Created at the request of his grandmother as she was losing her sight and looking for a final book to learn by heart, the Portuguese artist invites 10 people on stage to memorise a Shakespearean sonnet. While teaching them, Rodrigues weaves in a mix of stories of his soon-to-be-blind grandmother and of writers and characters from books that are, somehow, connected to both his grandmother and himself. As verses are taught to the group of ten people, improbable connections emerge between Nobel Prize winner Boris Pasternak, a cook from the north of Portugal and a Dutch TV program called Beauty and Consolation, and the mystery behind the choice of sonnet is slowly solved. By Heart is a true manifesto for the power of poetry, a moving gesture of love and a look at the joy of unexpected community. Running 14-15 October. (Then 16 October at Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts, Brighton). 

Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed bring Handle with Care, theatre stripped down to its essence. No actors, no technicians, just a box, and the audience.  A box appears on stage with clear instructions for the audience to follow, and once they do, the show begins. For one hour, audiences will live something unique, fleeting, and unrepeatable as they choose their role—take the lead or observe as others make choices that steer the performance in unexpected directions. Running 12-14 November.

On 14 October, BAC and The Place co-present the UK Premiere of Rinse by Bundjalung and Ngapuhi dance artist Amrita Hepi and theatre-maker Mish Grigor. Hepi's electric solo performance explores the romance of beginnings and what happens next, when the initial thrills begin to fade and inertia takes over. An intimate, yet epic performance based on a dynamic improvisation score, Rinse questions whether being on the brink of extinction—a series of endings of various kinds—has intensified the seduction of the past. Running 14 October at The Place.

Following the success of last year's immersive performance, The Holly King and The Oak King,  BAC and Wild Rumpus co-produce A Merry Misrule, a new festive adventure for families, with details to be announced. Running 29 November - 24 December.

In March 2026, award-winning Manchester theatre collective Quarantine take over the former Town Hall - now known and loved as Battersea Arts Centre - for a two week tenure. In co-production with BAC, the company will use the building's radical heritage as a site of debate to ask in their typical provocative, playful and profoundly moving way: who gets heard in a place like this today? Drawing on Quarantine's 27-year history of dismantling conventions, and collaborating with a huge range of people across Lavender Hill and the wider borough, A Public Address dances around the edges of theatre and civic art to create this fortnight-long programme, from intimate encounters to grand-scale durational performances. Part of Wandsworth's year as The Mayor's London Borough of Culture. Running 2-14 March.

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