From Matjieshuts to AI Opera: The National Arts Festival’s Programme Reveal

Calling all culture kids, arts lovers, critics and creators: it’s your mid-winter call to leave the everyday world behind and make the journey to Makhanda for the annual National Arts Festival from 25 June-5 July 2026. 

The Festival has gathered works from around the world to keep audiences wide awake as creativity intersects with AI under the shadow of cultural hegemony and commodification and the programme reclaims the deepest, purest stories of our humanity. Across theatre, dance, music, visual art and performance, artists ask urgent questions: How do we preserve what preceded us while navigating technological transformation? What does Ubuntu mean in an age of algorithms? How do we heal from inherited trauma while building new worlds?

The Curated Programme

25 June – 5 July

Indigenous Wisdom & Decolonial Futures

The festival foregrounds indigenous knowledge systems as pathways through contemporary crises. Jason Jacobs (2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre) presents Kraal (theatre), a visceral two-part work unraveling the dop system’s colonial legacy in both a theatre and a sacred matjieshut, breathing life into the ancient wisdom of the Kamiesberge. In the visual arts programme, the retrieval of lost language through material process is central to Bronwyn Katz’s (2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art) exhibition: Ta a-b kobab ada kāxu-da, ti khoe-du’e! Language here is not fixed or lexical; it is relational, a system of contact, conduction, and response

Moya Michael’s It’s Like a Finger Pointing a Way to the Moon (Dance) dances alongside the guardians of Namibian languages, proposing we disappear to preserve the words that precede us. Coming to NAF for its South African premiere after opening in Berlin, Albert Ibokwe Khoza’s  Dear Museum! The Truth of the Matter it Seems Was Better When We Were Not Telling the Truth (theatre/performance art) offers a love letter and farewell to ethnological museum practice, questioning whose souls are buried in the display cases. 

• Kraal – 2-4 July
• Ta a-b kobab ada kāxu-da, ti khoe-du’e (SBYA work)- opens on 26 June
• Dear Museum! The Truth of the Matter it Seems Everything Was Better When We Were Not Telling the Truth: 26 – 28 June
• It’s Like a Finger Pointing a Way to the Moon: 29 June – 1 July

Political Memory & Artistic Freedom

The Gabrielle Goliath Tribunal (theatre/performance art) has been conceived and facilitated by TheatreDuo & Co to initiate urgent debates on censorship in contemporary South Africa, exploring the shifting face of state repression into corporate and social pressures and the role of the artist as public witness. The conversation has multiple national iterations and is a response to the censoring of artist Gabrielle Goliath who was meant to exhibit on South Africa’s stand at the Venice Biennale.

“When the structures that suppress an artist’s truth are laid bare, remaining on the fence is complicity. Goliath’s story demands we move beyond observation and take a clear position against institutional silencing.”  TheatreDuo

The Market Theatre’s acclaimed production The Cry of Winnie Mandela (directed by Momo Matsunyane, SBYA for Theatre 2023), weaves four women’s stories of waiting for their absent and imprisoned men during apartheid. The work is based on the same-titled book by Njabulo Ndebele. 

Motlalepula Phukubje’s I Hope This Finds You Well (visual art) reactivates the legacy of the Imvaba Arts Association, the Gqeberha (then Port Elizabeth) collective that mobilised art for resistance between 1986 and the early 1990s. An autobiographical experimental film by artist Brent Meistre of the redacted traumatic witnessing of his childhood. This is conjured through objects, VHS films and music cassettes of 1980’s apartheid Grahamstown (Makhanda).

Lee-Che Janecke (2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Dance) tells the story of his journey from trials of family and identity to the forefront of African dance’s global popularity alongside the emergence of his own masculinity and African identity in MIJAVAN.

An autobiographical experimental film by artist Brent Meistre, SAFE HOUSE is the redacted traumatic witnessing of his childhood. This is conjured through objects, VHS films and music cassettes of 1980’s apartheid Grahamstown (Makhanda).

Witnessing complicates this partial retelling about a time when Meistre, as a child, was often taught to block his ears, close his eyes, or not to tell. Working through this fog of embargo on the senses, Meistre narrates silenced and redacted memories of being within a family closely intertwined with the local apartheid security police in Grahamstown (now Makhanda). 

• FATC (Co)Ruption: 2 – 4 July
• The Gabrielle Goliath Tribunal: 1-3 July
• The Cry of Winnie Mandela: 26 – 28 June
• MIJAVAN (SBYA work): 26-28 June
• SAFE HOUSE: 25 June-5 July

Technology, AI & the Digital Question

Africa’s first AI-generated opera, autoplay (dance) by Darkroom Contemporary (who are celebrating 15 years of pioneering innovation this year), creates unique performances where generative AI composes music in real-time while audience interaction shapes the narrative. The work uses absurdity and satire to challenge passive acceptance of our dystopian present.

Canadian company Guilty by Association’s 2021 blurs theatre, AI and video games as a daughter reconstructs her deceased father pixel by pixel, exposing the tenderness and terror of digital resurrection. UK artist Louise Orwin’s FAMEHUNGRY (theatre) turns the stage into an endurance arena where live theatre collides with TikTok Live, questioning how social media reshapes identity, labour, and visibility.

The MTN x UJ New Contemporaries Award Exhibition, titled Holding sp(l)ace for the in____between is curated by Amogelang Maledu. It showcases four South African artists Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Zara Julius, thato makatu and Unathi Mkonto working in mediums ranging from sound installation, printmaking and sculpture. The exhibition uses the Black feminist practice of ‘refusal’ as a framework of experiencing the artworks.

• 2021: 2 – 4 July
• autoplay: 26-29  June
• FAMEHUNGRY: 1 – 4 July
• Holding sp(l)ace for the in____between Exhibition opens 26 June 

Music as Philosophy & Spiritual Practice

Ndumiso Manana (2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Music) performs with full band and three-piece horn section for the first time in Pulchritudinous: The Beauty of the Journey (music) spanning his complete artistic arc from In the Beginning Was the End to 2025’s OBHM: Full Stop. The eSwatini artist—SAMA winner, Spotify Radar honoree, and contributor to Burna Boy’s Grammy-winning Twice As Tall —has collaborated with Usher, Tyla, Nasty C, and Cynthia Erivo.

Gabi Motuba (2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Jazz) presents The Sounds of a Black Girl (music) centering vocal improvisation through spiritual jazz and neo soul.

“Jazz exists in my philosophy. It is my way of life and my style. Drawing on the Zen proverb ‘the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon,’ I frame jazz as threshold rather than limit—an invitation to transcend form.” – Gabi Motuba

The Soweto String Quartet (music) fuses classical string traditions with kwela, mbaqanga and African jazz in Strings of the Nation: 30 years of the Soweto String Quartet, which marks 30 years since their first recording. Makhanda’s legendary Masicule Concert makes an appearance with Masicule Combined performed by Eastern Cape choirs, while the IGWIJO Competition further highlights the tradition of communal singing in a new talent stage competition. 

• The Sounds of a Black Girl (SBYA work): 4 July
• IGWIJO Competition: 2 July
• Pulchritudinous: The Beauty of the Journey (SBYA work): 27 June
• Masicule Combined: 26 June
• Soweto String Quartet (SSQ): 27-28 July

Ubuntu & Collective Humanity

Forgotten Angle Theatre Company’s (Dance) (Co)Ruption, zeros in on corruption through the device of a simple water queue where harassed mothers, teenagers, car guards, and taxi drivers wait as heat and thirst intensify—but still, no water arrives.

• FATC (Co)Ruption: 2 – 4 July

Untamed Selves & Primal Energy

‘The world is going to the dogs. Be a wolf’, 

That’s the rallying cry of Australian circus performance company Circa’s Wolf. A gasp-inducing acrobatic thrill ride where ten extraordinary artists grasp, tear, climb, leap and balance with fierce abandon. The wolf as a symbol of our untameable selves—liberating, anarchic, savage. Circus with fangs.

• Circus (Wolf): 2 – 4 July

Cross-Cultural Dialogue and Stories From Here

Stop It… Is It Not the Same Gaze? by Megan Mace (visual art) brings together contemporary artists from China, Taiwan, and Southern Africa to examine the dynamics of the Gaze through the lens of Sino-African connections. The exhibition offers a platform for audiences to engage with previously unseen or underrepresented questions about traditional ways of creating exploring ownership and displacement in the state of viewing.

From Brazil comes I Have a Story (I Have a Story That Looks Like Mine) an immersive theatre/installation by Tetembua Dandara. The work explores intergenerational encounters in a space reminiscent of her grandmother’s living room, a backyard, or 1990s party. Narratives reconstructed through voices and food, gazes and the artist’s photo book – an artist’s collaboration will also translate the Portuguese book into isiXhosa. 

The Eastern Cape’s Mandela Bay Theatre Complex brings two theatre works centred in the story-telling of the region, Bhayi Lam, The Musical is a tragic musical love story focusing on themes of grit, determination and hope, and The Public Servant is the story of Bongani Gxilishe, a distinguished South African public servant, ANC stalwart and former student leader.

Mark Wilby presents Terminus (visual art) explores how perception, memory, and consciousness shape our notion of place through photographs and sculptural installation.

• I Have a Story (I Have a Story That Looks Like Mine): 3-4 July
• The Public Servant: 27 – 29 June
• Bhayi Lam, The Musical  3-4 July

Light Relief, Crackling Satire

Very Big Comedy Show: 2 July

South Africa’s greatest comedy names. Makhanda’s biggest stage. The Very Big Comedy Show has returned — bigger, better and more unreasonably stacked than ever. Including Rob Van Vuuren as host and Alfred Adriaan as headliners, more names released soon, with each making their one and only appearance at NAF 2026. Don’t miss this popular comedy experience on the festival calendar. One night. No second chances.

Film Programme 

Film makes a return to the National Arts Festival with a series of acclaimed international works from the screens of global film festivals. Most of the works are not scheduled for public release or streaming in South Africa, this is your one chance to see extraordinary films.

From Ireland and the UK comes Everybody Digs Bill Evans, directed by Grant Gee. It’s”a nimble, restrained but quietly plangent work that pulls off considerable beauty and feeling” (Variety) that charts the emotionally charged portrait of legendary jazz pianist Bill Evans as he navigates grief, addiction and artistic reinvention after the sudden death of his musical collaborator, Scott LaFaro.

Sentimental Value, the 2026 Academy Award winner for Best International Feature from celebrated Norwegian director Joachim Trier, has been hailed as “a bracingly mature work… a layered masterpiece that Trier has been working toward for his entire career” (IndieWire). The film explores fractured family relationships when an estranged filmmaker father attempts to reconnect with his daughters through a deeply personal comeback film.

Themes of displacement, endurance and survival run strongly through the programme. Lost Land — “haunting… exquisitely well-crafted… an essential work of activist cinema” (Critics Consensus, IMDb 8.2/10) — is the first feature film shot entirely in the Rohingya language by Akio Fujimoto. It follows two young refugee siblings on a perilous journey across Southeast Asia in search of their scattered family, earning widespread international acclaim and major festival awards along the way.

Closer to home, South African-Netherlands co-production Variations on a Theme, directed by 2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre, Jason Jacobs, and Devon Delmar offers “a slow-burn film mixing magical realism with documentary… more of a cinematic meditation than your typical popcorn flick” (Daily Maverick). It’s a haunting exploration of ageing, memory and economic precarity through the story of an elderly Namaqualand goat herder waiting for reparations that may never arrive.

The line-up also includes bold, visually striking works that interrogate identity, ambition and social pressure. In Park Chan-wook’s (South Korea) gripping drama No Other Choice. The work is described as “one of Park’s most humane and mordantly funny works to date…a masterful work of cinema which might well be Chan-wook’s masterpiece” (Time Out, 5/5 stars), a middle-aged paper specialist’s desperate search for employment spirals into obsession after he loses the job that defined his life.

Directed by Kai Stänicke, German feature Trial of Hein has been praised as “a striking debut” (Rotten Tomatoes, 96%) that turns a remote island village into a theatrical courtroom as a returning man is forced to prove his identity to a community that no longer recognises him.

More experimental is Ancestral Visions of the Future by director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese who hails from eSwatini and is currently residing in Berlin. “A highly poetic, highly personal film that transcends the boundaries between reality and dream” (Business Doc Europe), the film explores a young boy’s experiences in eSwatini blended with cinema’s magic, honouring his mother while exploring themes of home and identity. It premiered at Berlinale 2025. His film This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection also had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

Together, these films showcase a powerful range of global storytelling from some of contemporary cinema’s most exciting voices.

Eastern Cape Literature Festival (LITFEST) 

26 – 29 June

At a time when the world is searching for connection, meaning, and understanding, the Eastern Cape Literature Festival (LITFEST) offers audiences an experience that is intellectually stimulating, emotionally resonant and deeply African in spirit. 

Brought to the National Arts Festival by the Eastern Cape Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture, LITFEST grapples with hard questions: Can you question God without losing your faith? What happens after the life you planned ends? How do you become fully yourself in environments that demand silence? And it brings the voices who bring clarity of thought and new perspectives. 

The Politics Of Translation: Who Gets To Read, Belong And Be Heard?

Professor Pamela Maseko facilitates the festival’s opening conversation between Professor Zakes Mda and Dr Athambile Masola. The timing is significant. Masola has just translated Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like into isiXhosa, opening one of South Africa’s most influential political texts to wider isiXhosa-speaking audiences. Meanwhile, Mda’s work was recently translated into Mandarin, reflecting the growing global reach of African literature.

Faith Under Pressure

Nozibele Mayaba author of Let Me Tell You Something and Rorisang Thandekiso Disciple: Walking with God tackle the question: Can You Question God Without Losing Your Faith? A perspective on faith in the real world, they will explore doubt as part of spiritual growth, healing, and what it means to keep walking with God through life’s hardest questions. 

After The Fires: Rebuilding When Everything Ends

Nozipho Tshabalala  After the Fires and Naledi Mqhayi of Finding Balance: A Roadmap for Reimagining Life After Divorce, will be facilitated by Sihle-Isipho Nontshokweni-Bikitsha, to ask: What happens after the life you planned ends?

This conversation explores life disruption—when relationships end, identity shifts and the future you planned no longer exists.  

Between Belief And Becoming: Queer Belonging

Phemelo Motene gathers voices from literature, activism, and culture to reflect on LGBTQI+ lived realities shaped by faith traditions and social expectation.

Still to come in the next 8 days before bookings open, we’ll be announcing The Fringe Programme, our weekend music headline acts, ArtTalk; our series of interactive talks and workshops, The Black Power Station Programme, Eastern Cape Showcase, jazz on the programme, free experiences and more. Stay tuned! 

Tickets go on sale 20th May 2026 on www.nationalartsfestival.co.za