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| Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus who perform Walton's Belshazzar's Feast at this year's Festival |
By far the largest arts festival in the East of England and the fourth largest in the UK, the 2026 Norfolk & Norwich Festival runs from Friday 8 to Sunday 24 May offering a grand cultural feast to include a performance of Walton’s magnificent Belshazzar’s Feast by the Norwich Philharmonic Society.
Without a shadow of doubt, the Norfolk & Norwich Festival, one of the oldest music and arts festivals in England established in 1772 to raise funds for the Norfolk & Norwich Hospital, has a glorious and illustrious past of attracting major international soloists and orchestras which, I’m pleased to say, continues to this very day.
However, the festival has moved on over the years thus becoming a triennial event in 1824 rotating between the cities of Birmingham and Leeds much in the same way as the Three Choirs Festival rotates to this very day between the cathedral cities of Hereford, Worcester and Gloucester.
And from 1988, the festival has been held on an annual basis and, therefore, each year presents a host of international performers working alongside emerging talent and homegrown East Anglian artists in an expansive and engaging programme featuring not only classical and choral music but also taking in drama, dance and film with the literature and visual arts side of the festival ever growing.
A charity-funded organisation supported by Arts Council England and Norwich City Council with generous support coming from a multitude of sponsors and donors, the festival also offers a year-round programme of creativity and culture for children, young people and their communities like no other.
This year’s edition not only takes over the fine city of Norwich for 17 wondrous and action-packed days but spreads out for the first time into Norfolk with events taking place at Wells-next-the-Sea, Lowestoft, King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, Diss and Swaffham thereby transforming the county into a hive of cultural activity.
%20Bill%20Smith_Norwich%20Cathedral%20(1).jpg "Norwich Cathedral Choir (Photo: Bill Smith / Norwich Cathedral)") |
| Norwich Cathedral Choir (Photo: Bill Smith / Norwich Cathedral) |
‘We’re thrilled to bits with this year’s programme,’ enthused Daniel Brine, the festival’s Artistic Director and Chief Executive, ‘which offers a wonderfully eclectic mix featuring international artists, bold new performances and electrifying work by local artists. What I’m particularly proud of is the community-participation work woven throughout this year’s festival. For over 250 years, we’ve been bringing people together and in today’s world that feels more vital than ever. The arts have a remarkable power to heal and unite and that spirit of connection runs through everything we do.’
Over 20 free events are on offer while there’ll also be 16 theatre and performance premières including four works all written and produced in East Anglia exploring the varied concerns of the region. For instance, family ties emerge in the age of climate catastrophe in Martha Loader’s Albatross, the devastating impact of county lines in St George’s Theatre Company’s Crossing the Line and the very edge of human endurance in curious directive’s Heartwood.
Thankfully, the outdoor Band Stand in Chapel Field Gardens is back and one can enjoy a series of free musical evenings celebrating outstanding local talent in partnership with BBC Introducing, a dedicated BBC platform launched in 2007 to support unsigned, undiscovered and under-the-radar UK music talent while providing emerging artists opportunities for radio airplay on BBC local and national stations (Radio 1, 6 Music, etc) as well as performance slots at major festivals such as Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds and, in some cases, recording sessions at BBC’s Maida Vale Studios.
Youth and family is an important aspect to the festival’s overall planning strategy therefore a family-friendly promenade experience comes with Wind in the Willows produced by Sheringham Little Theatre while Bootworks Theatre Company’s The King’s Lynn Nine (The Old Library, King’s Lynn) surrounds a group of local nine-year-old children sharing their thoughts on the world they live in.
The festival also plays host to a series of bold genre-defying companies such as Kaleider’s new work, Requiem, which plays with the boundary between installation and live performance in which five performers (backed by a grand musical score) work to build a giant kinetic creature from metal and breath.
And in partnership with Norwich Theatre Royal, the experimental theatre company, Brokentalkers, teams up with acclaimed accordionist Danny O’Mahony to bring his moving story to life in the UK première of Bellow, a theatrical experience fusing traditional music, electronic sound design and dance.
The family-orientated show Treekin, created by Trigger, focuses on nature and has been developed by Norwich-based school workshops supported by the festival while Circa, a celebrated and cherished circus company, returns to the festival for the first time since 2015 headlining events in the Spiegeltent with their brand-new show Wolf, a ferocious and intense spectacle to amuse and delight with performers using technology old and new to offer a thought-provoking experience.
Australian puppeteers Terrapin and multi-disciplinary artist, Tim Spooner, invites audiences into a strange ecosystem entirely without people in their new show, Matter Era, combining puppetry and animation while Underwater showcases a collaboration between artists An-Ting and Ian Gallagher 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.
Meanwhile, live art duo, Hunt & Darton, bring Kids Business to Swaffham High Street, a hilarious pop-up created with the town’s children inviting audiences to take part in a wholly unique and original retail experience.
However, as in past years, the festival opens with the Welcome Weekend featuring eight new commissions being premièred over two days of outdoor arts across the streets of Norwich. The shows comprise CHAIR! set in a dreamlike world and imagining how we can once again have public spaces that care while Elevateher, from Daughters of the Wire, reveals female struggles and strengths played out between three multi-height tightwire rigs while a high-energy gig-theatre experience comes with The Torch where Afrobeat, hip-hop, rap and storytelling collide by courtesy of Nigel ‘Kobby’ Taylor.
The Welcome Weekend also sees Radical Ritual’s Tender Exchange, a work comprising a living folk artwork inviting heartfelt sharing, deep listening, trust and connection while the outdoor performance, Fragments of Us, from Talawa Theatre Company, explores identity, resilience and vulnerability, centring on a cast of black men and boys.
A beautiful mini-epic comes, too, in Holy Dirt, a vibrant and innovative ‘in-the-round’ dance work that brings comedy to Indian street theatre while Shyam Dattani and Mira Salat’s innovative outdoor dance work, Garbh, reimagines ancient Gujarati folk dance.
Physical comedy and visual imagery form Ferdinando + Bernstein’s upbeat and freewheeling show, Stick and Stone, a work highlighting climate breakdown with the joy of idiocy and play while Frozen Light Theatre also première their new production, Museum of Spirals, in a ‘one-to-one’ experience for audiences with profound and multiple-learning disabilities.
The dance programme looks bright and cheerful this year and includes London-based troupe, Cut a Shine, offering a raucous ceilidh while Thick & Tight presents Natural Behaviour following its run at Battersea Arts Centre in a performance that sits between a variety show and a biology essay exploring what it means to be ‘natural’ through a queer lens.
A huge breadth of genres and styles are on offer, too, in the music programme ranging from contemporary to classical, grandiose to intimate and boldly experimental to traditional. Contemporary music includes a special event opening the festival featuring acclaimed folk-pop artists, Stornoway, who’ll present one of their two UK concerts for 2026 by ambient folk-based artist, Alice Boyd, making her Norwich début while masterful Senegalese kora player, Seckou Keita, plays the Spiegeltent with his electrifying band as part of their 30th anniversary tour.
Other contemporary highlights include Matthew Herbert and Momoko Gill in Herbert & Momoko, the grand pop drama of Irish star SexyTadhg, the captivating Cuban stylings of Ana Carla Maza, the boygenius-produced jasmine.4.t, Norfolk-born saxophonist Sam Braysher’s quartet performing with acclaimed jazz vocalist Sara Dowling, Cowboy Junkies performing a concert spanning 40 years of their music-making and foregrounding their unique mix of blues, country, folk and jazz influences and the highly anticipated return of The Bo Nanafana Social Club with The Big Bamboo, a Norwich cult classic.
In collaboration with Norwich Arts Centre, who have relaunched the Norwich Jazz Festival as part of the Norfolk & Norwich Festival programme, one can enjoy the genre-blending contemporary African diasporic collective Balimaya Project, the unique tuba player Theon Cross, a tribute to South African musician Abdullah Ibrahim and township jazz from the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, the witty and playful collective Neil Cowley Trio, the virtuosic collaborations of nine-piece big band Nubiyan Twist, the exhilarating Manchester trio GoGo Penguin celebrating their powerful new album ‘Necessary Fictions’ and bassist Gary Crosby’s sextet celebrating the legendary jazz innovator, Charles Mingus.
For classical lovers, the festival welcomes organist James McVinnie and Syrian musician Maya Youssef as resident artists. McVinnie begins his programme with ‘Infinity Gradient’, a collaboration with composer, Tristran Perich, scored for solo organ and one hundred loudspeakers in 1bit audio, a unique blend that will surely fill the vastness of Norwich Cathedral.
He will also showcase the organ of St Peter Mancroft with a rendition of Bach’s Clavier-Übung III while Maya Youssef begins her residency with a presentation of exciting new work exploring the meeting-point between Middle Eastern and Celtic traditions in New Paths Through Old Worlds at the Octagon Chapel.
The BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme once again kicks in with a wonderful cross-section of the most exciting young British and international musicians to the Octagon Chapel comprising chamber music ensemble Astatine Trio; Estonian flautist Elizaveta Ivanova making her Norwich début accompanied by pianist Sanja Bizjak; the Kleio String Quartet performing Mendelsohn and Schubert later joining forces for their second concert with fellow BBC New Generation Artists, baritone Andrew Hamilton and pianist Berniya Hamie.
Other classical music highlights include the Philharmonia Chamber Players performing Bach’s Goldberg Variations, one of the masterpieces of the baroque era; the Britten Sinfonia offering an illuminating programme focusing on the years Britten spent in North America while the international baritone, Roderick Williams, teams up with the Norwich Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Ashley Grote, in what promises an exhilarating performance of Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, a cornerstone of the British choral repertoire of the 20th century detailing the biblical fall of Babylon.
Being performed in St Andrew’s Hall, Norwich, following The Halls’ multimillion pound restoration and refurbishment programme over the past couple of years, the concert also includes a rare performance of Walton’s incidental music to Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film, Henry V, featuring renowned Shakespearean actor, Alex Jennings, as Henry. I doubt very much whether this work has ever been performed in Norwich.
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| Scottish Ensemble - Impulse (Photo: Foxbrush) |
On the festival’s closing night, in partnership with the Norwich Theatre Royal, the pioneering collective Scottish Ensemble will deliver a memorised, kinetic production of Shostakovich’s Chamber Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings.
The Visual Arts programme is strong this year offering a blend of exhibitions, talks and tours presented in some of Norfolk’s grandest and most intimate venues. There’s a celebration of visionary East Anglia painter Mary Newcomb; an exhibition featuring seven decades of contemporary art by the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society; a 3-D collage exploring entanglements between nature, chronic illness and possibility by *conditions apply artist collective in Great Yarmouth.
There will also be a collection of new works and conversations from artist Olivia Bax; a film and sculpture installation entitled Off-Earth by Louis Nixon exploring the human detritus left in space; a new season of investigative exhibitions at the Sainsbury Centre engaging with the question What is the Meaning of Life? and a showcase of highlights from Karun Thakar’s renowned global textile collection.
And with a national spotlight on the 2026 Year of Reading, a dynamic and varied programme of writers and thinkers come together in the festival’s City of Literature Weekend. Highlights include the Harriet Martineau Lecture, this year delivered by Dr Rachel Clarke, plus talks and workshops from Ali Smith, Ece Temelkuran, James Canton, Yvvette Edwards, Georgia Shackleton, Rishi Dastidar and Jarred McGinnis.
This year, too, the festival continues to platform unique local voices in film. Therefore, a short film entitled From the Dunes by Joseph Harrington and local poet Poppy Stevens tells the story of a family from Hemsby whose home is under threat from coastal erosion while award-winning choreographer, Dan Canham, whose moving local stories in Fenland Elegy and Four Portraits from an Edgeland, showcased at previous editions of the festival, will this year be shown in a double-bill in the Fenlands for the first time.
There’s a lot more on offer (there always is at the N&N Festival) so click on www.nnfestival.org.uk to open a treasure-chest of cultural activity that would, I feel, enlighten the discerning eyes of Edmond Dantès, the Marseille-born sea captain and protagonist of Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 adventure novel, The Count of Monte Cristo.
As an aside, the ‘Swedish nightingale’, Jenny Lind, an artist and humanitarian of distinction, enjoyed a special relationship with the citizens of Norwich which resonates to this very day thanks to her generosity and goodwill through the concerts she willingly gave at St Andrew’s Hall in 1847 followed by a couple more two years later to raise funds for an infirmary for sick children in the city of Norwich.
And following a public meeting in 1853 it unanimously endorsed the idea of a children’s infirmary for Norwich - a year later the hospital opened in Pottergate close by to the city’s late 11th-century marketplace directly opposite the intricate flint-knapped 14th-century Guildhall which now houses the offices of the N&N Festival.
Nowadays, the Jenny Lind Hospital in Norwich - the second city in the realm, by the way, to have such a hospital as London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children opened two years earlier - forms a corporate part of the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital.
To celebrate this heritage, pianist, conductor and creative programmer, Simon Crawford-Phillips together with soprano Carolyn Sampson (the ‘English Nightingale’) and violist/violinist, Lawrence Power gave an illuminating concert in St Andrew’s Hall in 2022 to celebrate Jenny Lind’s legacy while marking the festival’s 250 anniversary.
Therefore, to remember Jenny Lind and her love and kindness to Norwich, the conductor’s room of the refurbished St Andrew’s Hall is dutifully named after her. History meets you at every twist and turn when rummaging in Norwich.
Norfolk & Norwich Festival: Friday 8 to Sunday 24 May.
Box office: 01603 531800; online nnfestival.org.uk; in person at Norwich Guildhall.
YoungNNF / Under 18s tickets: £7.50. Concessions available
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