Athens Epidaurus Festival Officially Begins

As the first weekend of the globally acclaimed Epidaurus Festival draws near, these are the performances that will be opening the month-long cultural phenomenon

27.05.2026 17:15

Newsroom

Athens Epidaurus Festival Officially Begins

Puccini's Tosca in 2012 at the Theater of Herodes Atticus (under the Acropolis) by the Greek National Opera conducted by Myron Michailidis.

27.05.2026 17:15

Culture

Newsroom

As the first weekend of the globally acclaimed Epidaurus Festival draws near, these are the performances that will be opening the month-long cultural phenomenon

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Athens’ summer brings with it one of Europe’s oldest and most celebrated cultural institutions. The 2026 Athens Epidaurus Festival officially has its first curtain call this Friday, May 29th, transforming the Greek capital into a stage for internationally acclaimed productions, contemporary performances and new artistic voices from Greece and abroad.

Blending ancient drama with modern experimentation, this year’s program promises months of theater, music and dance performances set against some of the world’s most historic backdrops — reaffirming the festival’s place at the heart of Greece’s cultural calendar.

Here are the 3 cultural events and installations that mark the beginning of a month-long journey into the globally-acclaimed Epidaurus Festival.

Objects of Common Interest: embodying this year’s theme

The original light installation by the award-winning design studio Objects of Common Interest returns to P260 this year, having by now become an integral part of the site’s visual identity.

Objects of Common Interest for the Athens Epidaurus Festival. Photo by Karol Jarek.

Founded by architects and designers Elena Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis – who work between Athens and New York – the studio focuses on the creation of sculptural objects and immersive environments that foreground the relationship between materiality and space. Located in the courtyard of Peiraios 260, the installation unfolds as a constellation of luminous tubes in varying shapes and curves, which seem to embrace the architecture of the venue’s interior. The work composes a radiant landscape, activating the industrial surroundings in a manner that feels almost organic.

AΦΤER — the live music series

Debuting on the first day of the festival is AΦTER, a musical programme that transforms the Peiraios 260 venue into a past-midnight mayhem.

On Friday 29 May, marking the opening of the Athens Epidaurus Festival, this new initiative makes its debut through a series of live sets woven into the P260 programme.

This new series aspires to create a fresco of sounds and moods, ripe with surprises. Thirteen musical evenings where jazz gives way to rock, live DJ sets open new sonic directions, and music performances test the limits of stage and sound. An AΦTER that reimagines P260 as a micro-concert ecosystem – almost independently of the artistic programme that precedes it – an event in its own right.

For the debut live concert, queer rapper GVG LOU and psychedelic music group CHICKN will set the tone for the celebrations.

Schliemann III by Heiner Goebbels

This year marks a milestone: two decades of uninterrupted artistic life at Peiraios 260. For its inaugural event at the celebrated venue constellation, the Athens Epidaurus Festival welcomes one of the most compelling figures of the European music and theatre scene, Heiner Goebbels.

Schliemann III is an invitation to inhabit alternative sites of experience, spaces that challenge and recalibrate our perception of History itself. The work takes as its point of departure the reconstruction of a plan of Troy, with its nine unearthed strata, drawn from the diary accounts of Heinrich Schliemann during his excavation programme that took place between 1871 and 1873.