September 18–October 12, 2025
Austria
As peace talks promising to end the carnage in Ukraine and Gaza fail again and again, endless war becomes an accepted means of defining national identities—and not only in the countries directly involved. Against this backdrop, steirischer herbst remembers its antifascist legacy to address the crumbling postwar order and rise of authoritarianism in newly commissioned performances, a large group exhibition, discussions, and more. Its upcoming edition, Never Again Peace, takes its title from an antiwar comedy by German-Jewish writer and antifascist Ernst Toller: Nie wieder Friede (1934–36). Toller’s play targets the complacency and obedience of Europe as it succumbed to fascism and war and could not be more relevant today.
The 58th edition of the festival opens on September 18 on Graz’s Freiheitsplatz (Freedom Square), with an audio performance by LIGNA that explores contested ideas of freedom. The opening day concludes with a double bill by Manuel Pelmuș and Frédéric Gies, whose new choreography revisits a Kurt Jooss antiwar classic, and Ivo Dimchev, who playfully challenges social norms, identity, and everyday lies.
Further performances punctuate the three-and-a-half-week festival: Augustin Maurs explores social exclusion through an acoustic outsider; Michiel Vandevelde, Pankaj Tiwari, and Eneas Prawdzic dive into the world of young right-wing men; Helga Lázár stages Ernst Toller as apocalyptic puppet theater; Franz von Strolchen muses about giving up in the age of AI; Theater im Bahnhof and Das Planetenparty Prinzip tackle inheritance between the private and the public; and Isabella Sedlak and Yousef Sweid tell the story of a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship caught between all religious and political camps.
The steirischer herbst ’25 exhibition takes place at Graz’s former distillery Bauer, renamed BAU for the duration of the festival. Featuring nearly twenty new commissions (see full artist list below), it transforms this labyrinthine building into a metaphor for a polarized society. On multiple floors, visitors can discover entangled stories of growing repression and escapes to freedom, of eternal wandering and forced hiding—situations all too typical for those implicated in the ongoing wars in Ukraine, Palestine, and elsewhere. A curatorial intervention, Six Characters of Hotel W., revisits the contradictory post-WWII period in Austria through new fictions by writers Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus, Erich Klein, Miklavž Komelj, Madame Nielsen, Maria Stepanova, and Ilija Trojanow. The group exhibition opens on September 19, with performances by Max Höfler and Andreas Unterweger, Maria Vilkovisky and Ruthie Jenrbekova (Kreolex zentre), and Nástio Mosquito, as well as a bed race by Ahmet Ögut.
In three double bills with mixed hues, this year’s herbst cabaret invites the audience to confront toxic biases, guilty pleasures, and collective daddy issues, with new shows by Zaid Alsalame, Charlotte Gash, Lau Lukkarila, Liina Magnea, Edwin Ramirez, and the Seven Trials Theatre Troupe.
In keeping with the title and global situation, the festival’s discussions feature peace talks where two participants with divergent positions question one another and search for common ground. The audience votes on whether progress has been made. They include encounters between Stefan Heidenreich and Ana Teixeira Pinto, Ed. Hauswirth and Claudia Unger, Philipp Eder and Ilija Trojanow, and Tomer Dotan-Dreyfus and Richard Schuberth. Artist talks and further panels complete the discussion program, and the herbstcafé hosts—next to music acts—additional reading performances by Maria Vilkovisky and Ruthie Jenrbekova (Kreolex zentre) as well as Nazis & Goldmund.
As ever, steirischer herbst embraces a varied Partner Program by local art institutions and cultural initiatives as well as its festivals-within-the-festival ORF musikprotokoll and Out of Joint, the literary festival within steirischer herbst.
Participating artists include Carla Åhlander and Gernot Wieland, Zaid Alsalame, Angélique Aubrit & Ludovic Beillard, Candice Breitz, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Ivo Dimchev, Eva Ďurovec, Charlotte Gash, Gelitin, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Elias Holzknecht, Max Höfler and Andreas Unterweger, Dana Kavelina, Helga Lázár, LIGNA, Lau Lukkarila, Liina Magnea, Augustin Maurs, Nástio Mosquito, Stephan Mörsch, Nazis & Goldmund, Olaf Nicolai, Ahmet Öğüt, Illya Pavlov, Manuel Pelmuș and Frédéric Gies, Edwin Ramirez, Isabella Sedlak and Yousef Sweid, Seven Trials Theatre Troupe, Haim Sokol, Mounira Al Solh, Franz von Strolchen, Theater im Bahnhof and Das Planetenparty Prinzip, Philippe Vandenberg, Michiel Vandevelde, Pankaj Tiwari, and Eneas Prawdzic, Maria Vilkovisky and Ruthie Jenrbekova (Kreolex zentre), and zweintopf.
steirischer herbst ’25 is curated by Ekaterina Degot, David Riff, Gábor Thury, and Pieternel Vermoortel and created by the festival’s whole team.
For further information or accreditation requests, please contact the press department at press@steirischerherbst.at.
