We are proud to present the programme for Gent Festival 2026! This year, we invite you to experience music in many different ways: focused or exuberant, still or in motion, in the districts or right in the heart of the city. Music theatre, baroque opera, chamber music, symphony orchestra and so much more. Or head out into the city with OdeGand, and discover intimate concerts in hidden gardens in Sint-Amandsberg with Whispering Leaves.

This year, Gent Festival opens with an extraordinary concert in Sint-Baafskathedraal: La Bomba Flamenca, inspired by Emperor Charles V's rehearsal of his own funeral ceremony. For the first time, two music theatre productions feature on the programme: the baroque banquet Eat Me and Liesa Van der Aa's HUNTER. Two minimalist masterworks will also challenge audiences: Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, and Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians as part of our new concept Imagination of the Night. Not to be missed either: Quatuor pour la fin du temps, written by Olivier Messiaen in exile, in which he imagines the end of time.

Umissable highlights

The Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège brings together two Russian giants: Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich. The contrast could hardly be greater. Tchaikovsky's virtuosic Piano Concerto No. 1 is set against Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony, an oddity nestled between his epic Fifth and Seventh. With unexpected turns and an idiosyncratic structure, Shostakovich creates a work that is deeply personal and entirely his own.

A standout success at last year's Salzburger Festspiele, now coming to Ghent: Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat, performed by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre with puppets and set design by German expressionist Georg Baselitz, and music directed by violinist Isabelle Faust. A soldier trades his violin for a magical book, but when the devil gets involved, nothing goes unpunished.

Baritone Matthias Goerne and Camerata RCO present a selection of Hanns Eisler's Hollywood Songbook: songs written in exile in Los Angeles, set to texts by Bertolt Brecht, far from the Europe that had expelled them both. Eisler is considered one of the last great figures in the German Lied tradition. In this concert, he stands side by side with the composer who started it all: Franz Schubert.

More well worth your time

The programme doesn't end there. ECMA returns this year with open masterclasses, the results of which you can witness in Rough Surfaces. Moor Mother forms a duo with cellist Mathis Mayr; together with Razen, they make up a Double Bill at VIERNULVIER. Alcide - The Triumph Hercules showcases all the hallmarks of French baroque opera. I Solisti & Chorwerk Ruhr reflect on global unrest with Against the War. During Imagination of the Night, ROLROLROL becomes the late-night mutation of Steve Reich. We close, not long after, at dawn with Shostakovich's 24 Preludes and Fugues, performed by Alexander Melnikov.