This year’s Norfolk & Norwich Festival will feature over 100 events – including 20 free shows – at venues reaching from King’s Lynn to Lowestoft.
Tickets will go on sale on Friday for the main festival run, following the early release of a small number of productions late last year.
The Festival will present sixteen theatre and performance premieres, including four works all written and produced in the East, exploring the varied concerns of the region: family ties in the age of climate catastrophe in Albatross by Martha Loader (8-21 May); the devastating impact of county lines in St George’s Theatre Company’s Crossing the Line (11-18 May); gift-giving and the very edge of human endurance in Curious Directive’s Heartwood, and a family-friendly promenade experience in Wind in the Willows by Sheringham Little Theatre (16 & 17 May).
Kaleider, whose work plays with the boundary between installation and live performance, presents the UK premiere of Requiem (15 – 17 May), in which five performers – backed by a grand musical score – work to build a giant kinetic creature from metal and breath.
Experimental theatre company Brokentalkers will team up with acclaimed accordionist Danny O’Mahony to bring Danny’s moving story to life in the UK premiere of Bellow (15 & 16 May), a theatrical experience fusing traditional music, electronic sound design and dance.
The Festival will offer a first look at Treekin, a new family show about nature from Trigger developed with Festival-supported school workshops in Norwich.
Circa, one of the world’s greatest circus companies, returns to the Festival for the first time since 2015 to headline the Spielgetent with their extraordinary show Wolf, 13-24 May.
Australian puppeteers Terrapin and multi-disciplinary artist Tim Spooner’s show Matter Era combines puppetry and animation to invite audiences into a strange ecosystem entirely without people (12-14 May) and Underwater showcases a collaboration between artists An-Ting and Ian Gallagher (21 & 22 May), in a live performance project – presented in a hybrid online and in-person form – that unveils the acoustic world of marine life through mixing communication from coral reefs, fish and whales into 3D compositions and visuals.
The Festival opens with the Welcome Weekend featuring eight new Festival commissions that will premiere over two days of outdoor arts across the streets of Norwich. They include: CHAIR! set in a dreamlike world and imagining how we can once again have public spaces that care; Elevateher from Daughters Of The Wire which reveals female struggles and strengths played out between three multi-height tightwire rigs; a high-energy gig-theatre experience in The Torch where Afrobeat, hip-hop, rap and storytelling collide from Nigel ‘Kobby’ Taylor; Tender Exchange living folk artwork inviting, deep listening, sharing and connection by Radical Ritual.
Frozen Light Theatre also premiere their new production as part of the Welcome Weekend – Museum Of Spirals, a new one-to-one experience for audiences with profound and multiple learning disabilities.
The dance programme for 2026 includes London-based troupe Cut A Shine with a raucous ceilidh (9 May) and Thick & Tight who present Natural Behaviour (22 & 23 May), a performance that sits between a variety show and a biology essay, exploring what it means to be ‘natural’ through a queer lens.
Contemporary music includes a special event that will open the Festival – folk pop artists Stornoway will present one of their two UK concerts for 2026, opened exclusively in Norwich by ambient folk artist Alice Boyd. Senegalese kora player Seckou Keita will bring together a unique and electrifying band as part of a 30th anniversary tour (23 May).
Other contemporary highlights include Matthew Herbert and Momoko Gill in Herbert & Momoko (14 May), the grand pop drama of Irish star SexyTadhg (16 May), the Cuban stylings of Ana Carla Maza (21 May), the boygenius-produced jasmine.4.t (22 May), and Norfolk-born saxophonist Sam Braysher’s quartet performing with acclaimed jazz vocalist Sara Dowling (13 May).
New for 2026, in collaboration with Norwich Arts Centre, is the relaunched Norwich Jazz Festival. This showcase of the best in UK jazz includes genre-blending contemporary African diasporic collective Balimaya Project (15 May), unique tuba player Theon Cross (16 May), a tribute to South African musician Abdullah Ibrahim and township jazz from the National Youth Jazz Orchestra (19 May), the Neil Cowley Trio (21 May), nine-piece big band Nubiyan Twist (22 May), Manchester trio GoGo Penguin (23 May) and bassist Gary Crosby’s sextet’s celebration of jazz innovator Charles Mingus (24 May).
For the classical programme, the Festival welcomes organist James McVinnie and Syrian musician Maya Youssef as resident artists for 2026. McVinnie begins with Infinity Gradient, a collaboration with composer Tristran Perich (10 May) scored for solo organ and 100 speakers in 1bit audio, a unique blend that will fill the vastness of Norwich Cathedral; also playing St Peter Mancroft with a rendition of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Clavier-Übung III (21 May). Maya Youssef begins her residency with a presentation of new work exploring the meeting point between Middle Eastern and Celtic traditions in New Paths Through Old Worlds (20 May) at the Octagon Chapel, then presents her 2022 album Finding Home (22 May).
The BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme brings young British and international musicians to the Octagon Chapel: chamber music ensemble Astatine Trio (11 May); Estonian flautist Elizaveta Ivanova accompanied by pianist Sanja Bizjak; a pair of concerts from internationally recognised string musicians, the Kleio Quartet, performing classics from Mendelsohn and Schubert (11 May) and then joining forces with fellow BBC New Generation Artists, baritone Andrew Hamilton and pianist Berniya Hamie (12 May).
Other classical music highlights include Philharmonia Chamber Players playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations (10 May); Britten Sinfonia with a programme that focuses on the years Benjamin Britten spent in North America (20 May); and international opera star, Roderick Williams teams up with the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra & Chorus presenting William Walton (23 May). On the Festival’s closing night the pioneering collective Scottish Ensemble delivers a memorised, kinetic production of Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.
With a national spotlight on the 2026 Year of Reading, the Festival presents the City of Literature Weekend from 22-24 May. Highlights include the Harriet Martineau Lecture, this year delivered by Dr Rachel Clarke, and talks and workshops from Ali Smith, Ece Temelkuran, James Canton, Yvvette Edwards, Georgia Shackleton, Rishi Dastidar and Jarred McGinnis.
From the Dunes, a short film by Joseph Harrington and local poet Poppy Stevens tells the story of a family from Hemsby whose home is under threat from coastal erosion, accompanied by poems created in school workshops.
Visual arts offerings include a celebration of visionary East Anglia painter Mary Newcomb; an exhibition featuring seven decades of contemporary art by the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society; a 3D collage exploring entanglements between nature, chronic illness and possibility by *conditions apply artist collective; and new works from artist Olivia Bax.
- For full listings visit Norfolk & Norwich Festival
