Two unique collaborations, three co-productions and a composition commission: the first four performances of Holland Festival 2026 have been announced. 

Ticket sales for the first four performances of the 79th Holland Festival will start on 25 November. A Trial - after An Enemy of the People by Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy and actor Wagner Moura is a contemporary adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's An enemy of the people. This performance is a special collaboration between the Holland Festival, Festival d'Avignon and Edinburgh International Festival, the three European festivals founded in 1947.

Dutch artist Germaine Kruip explores with A Possibility the boundaries between perception, sound and performance and will thus be shown in Amsterdam as well as in Heerlen. Associate artist Hildur Guðnadottir shows in Nærmynd: Iceland Symphony Orchestra x Hildur Guðnadóttir hear her own work, alongside that of composers who inspire her. And Lebanese theatre-maker and choreographer Ali Chahrour returns with a show full of resilience, music, poetry and raw emotion in When I Saw the Sea. 

Three iconic festivals join forces: A Trial - after An Enemy of the Peopleby Christiane Jatahy and Wagner Moura

In 1947, in the aftermath of World War II, Holland Festival, Festival d'Avignon and Edinburgh International Festival were founded on the same conviction: art as an engine for reconciliation and cultural reconstruction. Almost eight decades later, it marks A Trial - after An Enemy of the People the special bond of these three festivals and the beginning of a multi-year collaboration to mark their 80th anniversaries in 2027. 

About this collaboration

Emily Ansenk, Holland Festival director: ‘International festivals such as the Holland Festival, the Festival d'Avignon and the Edinburgh International Festival are vibrant breeding grounds for artistic exchange. Artist-driven and looking to the future, together we facilitate new work that challenges conventions and allows room for artistic risk. Based on the belief that art can connect, these post-war performing arts festivals have become platforms for new voices, stimulating ideas and artistic collaborations that know no national boundaries.’ 

A Trial is also the first collaboration between theatre and film director Christiane Jatahy (associate artist of the Holland Festival in 2024) and award-winning actor Wagner Moura (best known for his Golden Globe-nominated role as Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos). Together, they give a new, radical and contemporary interpretation of Henrik Ibsen's An enemy of the people, inviting the audience to pick a side. 

In Ibsen's landmark 1882 play, protagonist Thomas Stockmann tries to expose a water pollution scandal in his spa town, but ends up in exile as a result. More than a century later, the work remains painfully topical, with its sharp look at the tension between personal integrity and social conformism, and between ecology and profit. 

In Jatahy's adaptation, Stockmann, interpreted by Wagner Moura, finds himself in a contemporary Brazilian courtroom where his fate is decided. Lawyers and judges are missing: it is up to the audience, to decide whether he is innocent or an ‘enemy of the people’. 

Christiane Jatahy says of the collaboration: ’For an artist, support from festivals and theatres is essential to conduct research and develop work. Without that support, ideas don't take shape, time slips through our fingers and creations never come to life. The support and collaboration of the Holland Festival, the Festival d'Avignon and the Edinburgh International Festival have been - and continue to be - fundamental to realising my artistic dreams, turning them into theatre and being able to share them with audiences.’ 

Light, space and sound: Germaine Kruips A Possibility 

Another first: for the first time, the Holland Festival is teaming up with PLT Theater Heerlen and will feature A Possibility by Germaine Kruip was presented both in Amsterdam and Heerlen. This collaboration came about on the initiative of PLT. It fits well with their ambition to present special and ground-breaking performances and with that of the Holland Festival to present festival performances outside the Randstad. Both partners made the performance possible with a co-production contribution. 

Originally trained as a scenographer, Dutch artist Germaine Kruip moves between visual art, architecture and performance. A Possibility is a new theatre work by Kruip, exploring perception, sound and performance. 

A Possibility consists of two parts, the first of which builds on the work A Possibility of an Abstraction from 2014. In this revamped first act, the stage becomes a blank canvas for a game of perception: light plays with shadow, reflection and the architecture of the theatre, transforming them into characters in a hypnotic, sense-making performance. 

The second act introduces the human element: four percussionists enter the stage and play Kruip's tuned sculptures, eliciting unique sounds from the unusual instruments. With A Possibility Kruip creates a work that transforms the theatre into a place of wonder and invites the audience to explore a world of infinite possibilities. 

A Possibility was commissioned by Factory International, Manchester; Holland Festival and PLT and produced by Factory International, Manchester.

Raw emotions in Ali ChahroursWhen I Saw the Sea 

Lebanese director and choreographer Ali Chahrour impresses with his performances about mourning, rituals and survival. After the heartbreaking Told by My Mother, (Holland Festival 2025), he returns with When I Saw the Sea. This time, he turns his gaze to the exploitation of migrant workers under Lebanon's kafala system, which puts migrants' residence status in the hands of their employer, making them very vulnerable.

On stage, three women - Tenei Ahmad, Zena Moussa, Rania Jamal - tell their own stories as well as those of thousands of others. They sing, move and speak in a form that balances between performance and testimony. The music is by singer Lynn Adib and musician Abed Kobeissy, who together create a combination of traditional and electronic music.

The design of When I Saw the Sea is austere: an empty stage, subtly shifting lights and music that oscillates between lamentation and the rhythms of the heart. Three women, armed with only their voices and their bodies, demand their right to be seen and heard, and Chahrour transforms their survival into art. When I Saw the Sea is a co-production of the Holland Festival. 

Personal portrait in sound:Nærmynd: Iceland Symphony Orchestra x Hildur Guðnadóttir 

Associate artist for the upcoming edition, Hildur Guðnadóttir, is among the leading (film) composers of her generation. Her work is characterised by an enchanting combination of ambient drones - a lingering layer of sound that evokes a certain tension or atmosphere - and contemporary composed music. 

During Nærmynd: Iceland Symphony Orchestra x Hildur Guðnadóttir not only stars Guðnadóttir as a composer, she also performs as a cellist with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. This orchestra, founded in 1950, gained notoriety with performances at the BBC Proms, at Carnegie Hall and at the Musikverein in Vienna, among others, and is playing their compatriot's music for the first time at The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The programme of Nærmynd, Icelandic for ‘close-up’, features music from Guðnadóttir's award-winning film scores Joker, TÁR and A Haunting in Venice. It will also sound new work that she is co-commissioning (i.c.w. Reykjavík Arts Festival) especially for this occasion. Music by composers who inspire her will also be heard: Arvo Pärt, Ryuichi Sakamoto (associate artist in 2021), Mica Levi, Kaija Saariaho and Alvin Lucier. 

Nærmyndwill be conducted by Daníel Bjarnason, one of Iceland's most distinguished conductors and composers, who has previously appeared at the Holland Festival with We Came in Peace for All Mankind (2018). Most recently, he was involved as a conductor in Lux, the new abum of Spanish superstar Rosalía.