HONG KONG – As the city readies itself for another dazzling season of creativity, the Hong Kong Arts Festival (HKAF) is once again setting the stage for a world-class celebration of music, dance, theatre and innovation. The Festival’s 54th edition, running from February to March 2026, will bring together more than 1,100 artists from around the world for over 170 performances — a testament to Hong Kong’s enduring spirit as Asia’s arts hub.

The Festival opens in grand style on 27 February with the Ballet Nacional de España’s La Bella Otero, a sumptuous production reimagining the life of the 19th-century Spanish dancer and femme fatale Carolina Otero. Under the direction of Rubén Olmo, the piece fuses flamenco and classical dance into a vibrant celebration of love, ambition and freedom, setting the tone for a Festival where emotion takes centre stage.

And when the curtain falls a month later, it will do so on Dream in The Peony Pavilion: a luminous contemporary Chinese dance-theatre interpretation of Tang Xianzu’s Ming-dynasty classic, choreographed by Li Xing. Expect swirling silk, moonlit melancholy and the timeless poetry of love and longing.

From Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s majestic Bach and Mozart performances to Benjamin Bernheim’s golden tenor tones, the Festival’s music lineup is nothing short of stellar. The Academy of St Martin in the Fields joins prodigious pianist Yunchan Lim for a Romantic feast, while Hong Kong’s own Aristo Sham, fresh from his Van Cliburn triumph, returns home for a solo recital that promises fire and finesse. Other highlights include the NOVUS Quartet from Korea, Roberto Fonseca’s Cuban jazz party La Gran Diversión, and Cameron Carpenter’s jaw-dropping organ reinterpretation of the classic silent film Sports Queen.

Dance lovers are in for a treat. Roberto Bolle, one of ballet’s brightest stars, inhabits the shadowy genius of Caravaggio in Mauro Bigonzetti’s bold choreography. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker — a legend of contemporary dance — returns to Hong Kong to perform BREL, a deeply personal duet set to the haunting music of Jacques Brel.

Meanwhile, the City Contemporary Dance Company premieres INterstices, a multimedia exploration of memory and motion by Sang Jijia, and Spain’s Invocación pays tribute to the great flamenco choreographer Mario Maya with rhythm, sweat and soul.

The 2026 HKAF leans into the power of theatre to confront chaos with courage. Themes of peace, resilience and rebellion weave through the lineup — from a bold new Chinese-language adaptation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, celebrating women’s resistance to war, to Meng Jinghui’s radical reimagining of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Lin Hwai-min, the visionary founder of Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, collaborates with Jimmy Liao and Taiwan’s circus troupe FOCASA on One to One Hundred: A Brave Journey — a whimsical, heartwarming story about chasing dreams.

Few works capture the Festival’s forward-thinking spirit like KAGAMI, a mixed-reality performance created by the late Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tin Drum. Audiences will find themselves face-to-face with Sakamoto’s digital likeness — a poetic fusion of art, technology and memory. This year also continues HKAF’s commitment to sustainable and participatory art. Belgian troupe Ontroerend Goed’s Handle with Care invites audiences to unpack a performance with no actors — just a box and a set of instructions. It’s theatre, redefined.

More than just a series of performances, the HKAF is a cultural movement. Its “PLUS” programmes open the Festival to everyone, with guided tours through Sheung Wan’s retro-literary streets and Hong Kong’s fishing villages, backstage talks, workshops, and film screenings. The Young Friends initiative continues to nurture the city’s next generation of arts lovers, having already reached 850,000 students since its launch.

“The arts offer a beacon of hope during troubled times,” says HKAF Executive Director Flora Yu. That hope runs through every curtain call, every note, every pirouette of the 2026 Festival, a reminder that even in uncertainty, creativity endures. Advance bookings open on 16 October 2025, and if history is any guide, the city’s art lovers will be quick to secure their seats for what promises to be a spectacular season of imagination without borders.

Photo Credit: Hong Kong Arts Festival

Hong Kong Arts Festival 2026 runs from 27th February to 29th March 2026. For more information about the Hong Kong Arts Festival, visit hk.artsfestival.org.