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| Nicola Benedetti (Image: Andrew Perry) |
Under the title All Rise, this year’s Edinburgh International Festival is presenting 24 days of performances from 7 to 30 August 2026. Nicola Benedetti’s fourth programme as Festival Director features 147 performances in total with five world premieres and eight works commissioned by the festival. Over 2000 artists will be taking part, of which over 700 are Scots. And the Festival feels that nowhere else in the UK does a festival have the ability to take such creative risks
Whilst this year’s title, All Rise, rather makes me think of ‘The Ladies who Lunch’ from Sondheim’s Company, the phrase is in fact the name of a work by Wynton Marsalis that will open the festival, performed by the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (with Marsalis in his final year as artistic director), the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Edinburgh Festival Chorus and Jason Max Ferdinand Singers, some 200 performers in all, conducted by James Gaffigan.
This opening work points to the Festival’s theme, as it sheds a spotlight on the USA during the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of Independence (though whether, by August, we will feel like celebrating the USA is a moot point.) The Festival is presenting the largest number of American artists in its history and aims to focus themes arising from a focus on the USA – freedom, ingenuity, hypocrisy, prejudice. The Festival was founded in 1947 in the belief that culture could help rebuild understanding between nations. Benedetti explained that in 2026 what they wanted to do was avoid the myth and effectively remythologise through art to create a truer but messier story of the USA.
The Festival will feature the premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s opera The Galloping Cure, with libretto by Royce Vavrek. The work will be staged by Tom Morris, thus reuniting Mazzoli, Vavrek and Morris after the 2019 staging of Breaking the Waves. The new opera is an allegory about the opioid crisis, a darkly funny tale that is a devastating critique of contemporary society. It features a cast including Daniela Mack, Justin Austin and Susan Bullock, conducted by Stuart Stratford.
Still on the American theme. Zurich Opera will be bringing their production of Verdi’s A Masked Ball, directed by Adele Thomas and conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. The production uses the original, Boston version of the libretto but resets the piece in the American Gilded Age. There are two casts, Stephen Costello, Dalibero Jenis and Elena Stikhina, and Piero Pretti, George Petean and Erika Grimaldi.
There are two operas in concert. Mozart’s Don Giovanni features Maxim Emelyanychev conducting the Scottish Chamber Orchestra with Konstantin Krimmel, Michael Sumuel, Louse Alder, Janai Brugger and Hera Hyesang Park. Strauss’s Elektra features Karina Canellakis conducting the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Irene Theorin, Vida Mikneviciute and Nina Stemme.
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| Verdi: A Masked Ball – Zurich Opera (Photo: Herwig Prammer) |
The return of the King’s Theatre after refurbishment means that the venue becomes the focus for some of the theatre programme. International Theater Amsterdam is bringing Ivo van Hove’s production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America with the two plays compressed into a single five-hour evening.
A collaboration between the Festival, Festival d’Avignon and Holland Festival, all three of which were established in 1947, will feature A Trial, conceived and directed by Christiane Jatahy with actor Wagner Moura. A sequel to Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, the work will put Thomas Stockmann on trial, and it will be up to the audience to judge. Belgian company Olympique Dramatique brings together a cast of Deaf and hearing actors to reimagine Chekov’s The Seagull performed largely in sign language. Khashabi Theatre with writer/director Bashar Murkus and dramaturg Khulood Basel will be presenting a retelling of the legendary 14th century poem The Epic of Bani Hilal combining physical theatre, music, puppetry and dance, mixing Palestinian folklore with Arab performance styles.
The Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra is finally making its Festival debut and besides the opening concert there is also Duke Ellington’s Black, Brown and Beige and the premiere of a collaboration with pianist Yuja Wang. A jazz-adjacent concert will feature the National Youth Orchestra of the USA conducted by Karina Canellakis in Gershwin’s Piano Concerto in F with Kirill Gerstein and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.
There is a residency for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, when Gustavo Dudamel conducts concerts including the UK premiere of Gabriela Ortiz’s Revolucion diamantina, a work focusing on female violence and Mexican feminism, and Thomas Ades’s Inferno, alongside Beethoven symphonies. The Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal and conductor Rafael Payare will be performing Coleridge Taylor’s complete 1899 cantata trilogy, The Song of Hiawatha, the first time it has been performed at the festival. There is also a concert featuring music by Canadian Indigenous composers. The Berlin Philharmonic returns to the Festival after a gap of 20 years with a two-concert residency conducted by Kirill Petrenko including by Elgar’s Enigma Variations, music by Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, and Scriabin’s Symphony No. 3 ‘Le divine poeme’.
Bach to Bach will feature a marathon day of Bach’s music with a come-and-sing Bach chorales event, the complete cello suites from Alisa Weilerstein and pianist Vikingur Olafsson in recital.
%20Khulood%20Basel%206-preview.webp "The Epic of Bani Hilal - (Photo: Khulood Basel)") |
| The Epic of Bani Hilal – (Photo: Khulood Basel) |
Concerts at the Queen’s Hall feature the Dunedin Consort in the Scottish premiere of Tansy Davies‘s Passion of Mary Magdalene based on non-canonical gospels and ancient texts, guitarist Sean Shibe’s Festival debut, a new commission from composer Stuart Macrae and performances from the Festival’s Rising Stars.
Alabama’s The Legacy Museum, in its first international exhibition, is presenting The Legacy of Slavery at the Playfair Library charting not only the history of racial injustice in America but also Scotland’s links to slavery. A series of post-show talks with the creative teams will complement seven productions in the opera and theatre programme.
Over 50,000 tickets will be available for £30 or less including £10 ‘give it a go’ tickets for all events. And there are free tickets for 8-18-year olds, NHS staff, charity workers and low-income benefit recipients.
Full details from the Festival website.
