Vienna Festival

Between May 16 and June 22, 2025, Vienna will play host to a contemporary festival of the arts: the Vienna Festival will present more than 40 theater and music productions, installations and community projects, including eleven world premieres and ten in-house productions. The slogan: V is for loVe! A brilliant opening ceremony in the great outdoors with free admission will be held on Rathausplatz.

The Vienna Festival will turn the whole of Vienna into a festival scene, with 155 performances being staged at 29 different locations. 46,000 tickets are on sale, in addition to 16 events with free admission.

Open-air ceremony: V is for LoVe!

At the grand opening of the Vienna Festival on May 16 on Rathausplatz, the Free Republic of Vienna will once again be proclaimed in the second year of Milo Rau’s directorship. This time it will be a Republic of Love.

Pop superstars meet the Band of the Republic, Congolese tenor Serge Kakudji meets a children’s choir, punk meets brass band music, pop stars meet shamans. Also performing are American multimedia artist Laurie Anderson and ESC legend Nicole. A colorful, poetic and political evening against fascism, nationalism and bad vibes – because V is for loVe!

Wiener Festwochen 2024 - Opening at Rathausplatz

Brand New Classics

Revolutionary, complex, without reverence, but full of love – the most prominent directors, actors and companies are adapting twelve classical (musical) works of theater for the present day in the flagship series Brand New Classics:

Elfriede Jelinek’s scandalous play Burgtheater is performed in Vienna for the first time. Milo Rau directs the satire about Austria’s involvement with National Socialism.
Moeder Courage: Belgian director Lisaboa Houbrechts interprets Bertolt Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage.
Itay Tiran’s production of Shakespeare’s royal drama Richard III is a relentlessly critical mirror of the political present in his native Israel.
In All About Earthquakes, German director Christopher Rüping brings Heinrich von Kleist together with the American feminist, philosopher and author bell hooks.
In Persians. Triumph of Empathy, Flemish playwright and historian Chokri Ben Chikha traces the arc from the oldest Greek tragedy of the same name by Aeschylus to today’s Middle East conflict.
With Ils nous ont oubliés – based on Thomas Bernhard’s Das Kalkwerk – French star director Séverine Chavrier is staging a work in Austria for the first time.
Ursina Lardi plays a war photographer in Milo Rau’s new play The Seer (Die Seherin), inspired by Sophocles’ character Philoctetus.
In White Widow (Weiße Witwe), Kurdwin Ayub reinterprets One Thousand and One Nights as the story of a woman who will walk over dead bodies for her passion.
Director Guillermo Cacace breathes new life into Chekhov’s classic The Seagull in Gaviota.
American director Wu Tsang and the group Moved by the Motion are staging Robin Hood as a visually powerful experience for adults and children alike.
In Gorges Ocloos’ The Grief of Red Granny, Pergolesi’s iconic baroque work Stabat Mater merges with African traditions to create a universal sound of mourning.
In Musée Duras, Julien Gosselin transports the existential power of French writer Marguerite Duras’ texts into the present day.

1 of 3

3 pictures

Scene photo for Moeder Courage: Four people on stage, one holding a burning white flag. — Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito.” Milo Rau’s opera directing debut at the Vienna Festival 2024 – © Kurt Van Der Elst

Dancers performing a modern choreography on stage with dramatic lighting. — The Talking Car: the first theater production by visual artist Agnieszka Polska is a hypnotic science fiction road trip. – © Kurt Van Der Elst

Theatre scene with musicians in red garments, a dancer sitting on the floor, and a deciduous tree standing — In his new AfrOpera “The Grief of Red Granny”, Gorges Ocloo explores the theme of mourning, drawing on Pergolesi’s baroque work “Stabat Mater”. – © Kurt Van Der Elst

Mozart’s “La Clemenza di Tito.” Milo Rau’s opera directing debut at the Vienna Festival 2024 – © Kurt Van Der Elst

The Talking Car: the first theater production by visual artist Agnieszka Polska is a hypnotic science fiction road trip. – © Kurt Van Der Elst

In his new AfrOpera “The Grief of Red Granny”, Gorges Ocloo explores the theme of mourning, drawing on Pergolesi’s baroque work “Stabat Mater”. – © Kurt Van Der Elst

Academy of Second Modernism

The Academy of Second Modernism (running from 2024-2029) aims to increase the proportion of works by female composers on stages worldwide. In two concerts with Klangforum Wien, ten pioneering female composers will once again be performing their works and acting as ambassadors in 2025.

House and Club of the Republic

The beating heart of the Vienna Festival is the House and Club of the Republic in the Funkhaus – icons of theory such as Eva Illouz will debate here alongside former Red Army Faction members, while global stars such as Laurie Anderson will sit around the campfire with sex workers, and the SIGNA collective will transform the attic into an immersive performance installation with The Last Year.

The Pelicot Trial will bring the undoubtedly most discussed trial of recent times to the Funkhaus in cooperation with the Festival d’Avignon. The concert performance series Caravan of LUV by Elia Rediger & int int irrit combines pop culture with healing rituals. The Funkhaus is also live on air with the Free Radio of the Republic. The doors of the festival center in the Funkhaus are wide open – just drop in!

Vienna Festival 2025

16.5.-22.6.2025
16.5.2025: Open-air event on Rathausplatz to mark the opening of the festival. Free admission.
29 venues all over Vienna
Program, info, tickets: www.festwochen.at