Sponsored by Belfast International Arts Festival
Belfast International Arts Festival – the city’s longest running international arts event – returns for a stellar 64th edition with over 200 events taking place across 30 venues from October 14 to November 8.
Encompassing theatre, dance, classical and roots music, visual, digital arts and literature accompanied by outreach and education events, BIAF offers a platform to the very best international and homegrown artists, along with exciting new voices, in a veritable feast of eclectic events hosted in spaces right across the city.
This year’s programme is no exception and is a truly international affair welcoming artists from 19 countries alongside, of course, an exceptional range of work created here in Northern Ireland.
The festival’s new immersive arts strand will include a takeover of Studio Ulster. Highlights include Lost Communications: Underwater, a psychedelic audiovisual descent into a world that is simultaneously alien and home, and TAKKUUK, an extraordinary immersive journey into the Arctic, with infrared cinematography and a hypnotic BICEP score.
Meanwhile Rory Friers, the festival’s 2026 artist-in-residence, presents an immersive installation, HOME, with a scrapbook of voice, memories and shared experiences of residents and staff at Glendun care home in Cushendun. Friers will also create an ambitious one-night only performance at The MAC alongside award-winning composer and pianist Michael Keeney, Arco String Quartet, and a variety of special guests.
As a UNESCO City of Music, Belfast provides the backdrop for an exciting programme spanning continents and genres.
The festival opens with the legendary Orchestra Baobab from Senegal, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien presents An Evening With… Blue Morpho and Norwegian violinist Henning Kraggerud, one of Europe’s most distinguished musicians, makes his festival debut. The Ulster Orchestra, under the baton of Chief Conductor Anna Handler, marks the 200th anniversary of Beethoven’s death with a performance of his Seventh Symphony.
Theatre and dance remain at the heart of the festival, with several productions forming part of the Lyric Theatre’s 75th anniversary celebrations. Highlights include the Lyric’s own production of Brian Friel’s Faith Healer, starring Conleth Hill, and Darren Jackson’s Wedding, an immersive theatrical experience by Big Telly Theatre Company that invites audiences to attend a wedding service at St Bartholomew’s Church, Stranmillis, before joining the reception at the Lyric.
Across the city, the programme continues with outstanding theatre in a range of venues. The MAC welcomes Belgium’s internationally acclaimed Ontroerend Goed with Thanks for Being Here, a playful celebration of live theatre’s most essential ingredient – its audience. Cahoots’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, fresh from a five-star review in The Guardian, brings together puppetry and theatrical magic in an enchanting adventure for the whole family at Cityside.
Our Voice Together Now, the unique international dance exchange between Belfast, Cairo, and Palestine, funded by a British Council International Collaboration Award, continues this year with a double bill by choreographers Michael McEvoy with Tá Brón Orm, and Shaymaa Shoukry with The Light Within. The festival’s Theatre and Dance strand culminates with the world premiere of Nōs, by Luail – Ireland’s National Dance Company, a landmark triple bill of defining contemporary dance works by choreographers Akram Khan, Liz Roche and Belfast’s own Oona Doherty.
The Talks & Ideas strand welcomes a wide range of writers, artists and broadcasters. Simon Mayo, a familiar voice to generations of listeners, celebrates more than four decades on air and multi-Booker nominated author Sebastian Barry joins the festival to discuss The Newer World, a novel about one man’s life in the aftermath of the American civil war.
Meanwhile an Oscar Wilde walking tour will explore the writer’s Belfast connections on what would have been his 172nd birthday.
Beginning at the front gates of Queen’s University Belfast on October 16, the tour will retrace Wilde’s 1884 visit to the city and explore the local people and places connected to his life.
The Lyric Theatre will then mark its 75th anniversary with the launch of a special anthology celebrating Threshold, its influential literary periodical, on October 16.
Belfast author Jan Carson will discuss her new collection of micro-fiction, No Vacancy, at The Harrison Chambers of Distinction on October 18.
The visual arts strand stretches across the city with exhibitions at Craft NI, Naughton Gallery, Golden Thread Gallery, Queen Street Studios, and the Royal Ulster Academy’s Annual Exhibition at Ulster Museum.
Full programme and ticketing information is available at belfastinternationalartsfestival.com.
