Sonic Acts Biennial 2026

Taking place in Amsterdam in February and March 2026, the Sonic Acts Biennial is spread across more than 80 events and 20 major cultural venues such as Paradiso, Muziekgebouw, Oude Kerk, Stedelijk Museum, Rijkasakademie, De Ateliers, etc. The programme features a multi-venue exhibition, cutting-edge concerts, a symposium, club nights, and sound experiments by 200 international and local artists. 

Melted for Love explores the reverberations of home: a place that, amid ongoing upheaval—crisis, conflict, and forced displacement—feels increasingly uncertain. Reimagining home beyond a fixed location, the Biennial creates a shared space of hospitality, kinship, and connection. Here, to be 'melted for love' is to dissolve into gentleness, allowing closeness to overcome distance and creating the foundations for a new kind of belonging. 

Forming the nexus of the Biennial, the large-scale exhibition runs for two months across three venues, alongside a satellite exhibition at Het Documentaire Paviljoen and a special collaboration with Framer Framed. Comprising commissioned installations and multimedia works, it features a range of artists such as Diana Policarpo, Adelita Husni-Bey, Dominique White, Noor Abed, Christian Nyampeta and Kivu Ruhorahoza.

If attentiveness, respect, and care are essential expressions of love, then we enact them each time we listen closely. In this spirit, and building on Sonic Acts’ longstanding engagement with sound, the Biennial presents many concerts with newly commissioned works by KMRU & Aho Ssan, BJ Nilsen, Jana Winderen, Sarah Davachi, Sam Dunscombe, and performances by artists such as Laura Ortman, Mazen Kerbaj, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, etc. The spatial sound programme, performed on the spectacular 60-speaker orchestra, the Acousmonium, is organised in collaboration with the Musical Research Group of the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA GRM).

A sound exhibition called Listening Room invites visitors to listen with their whole bodies—to engage with the immersive, relational, and ecological qualities of spatial sound. It presents many newly produced works by artists from the Sonic Acts Spatial Sound Residency, such as Elizabeth Davis, Leslie García, Leilehua Lanzilotti, C. Lavender, Ji Youn Kang, and more. 

The two-day Symposium gathers 20 thinkers and artists for lectures, dialogues, and performances that blur the line between theory and concert. Contributors include Yuk Hui, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Margarida Mendes, Yazan Khalili, and Steve Goodman (Kode9). 

The Biennial hosts a range of discursive interventions, including hands-on workshops on sound, writing, and embodied research, and artist talks, among them a conversation with Jeremy Deller about folk traditions, and Femke Herregraven about her newly commissioned immersive installation.

Melted for Love is inspired by a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, whose evocative verses speak to the impossible heartbreak of exile. His words, appearing as loose quotations, also thread through the Biennial reader, a 300-page volume of exclusive interviews, essays, and visual contributions. 

Selection of artists
Adelita Husni-Bey, Aho Ssan, Aimée Theriot, Alina Schmuch, Almagul Menlibayeva, Ameneh Solati, Amr Mdah, Arjuna Neuman, Ayesha Hameed, Beatriz Ferreyra, Benjamin Thigpen, Bergsonist, Bernardo Gaeiras, BJ Nilsen, Busher Kanj, C. Lavender, Chris Watson, Christian Nyampeta, Diana Policarpo, DJ DIE SOON, Dominique White, Drew McDowall, Eglė Budvytytė, Eleni Ikoniadou, Eliana Otta, Elizabeth Davis, Éliane Radigue, Eomac, Espen Sommer Eide, Femke Herregraven, Femi Shonuga-Fleming, Flavia Dzodan, Hilde Marie Holsen, Hugo Esquinca, HUNITI GOLDOX, ILYICH, Jana Winderen, Jeremy Deller, Ji Youn Kang, Jim O'Rourke, Joachim H. Ben Yakoub, Kivu Ruhorahoza, KMRU, La Nòvia, Laura Ortman, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Jokkoo Collective, Leila Bordreuil, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Leslie García, Lower Levant Company, Lukas De Clerck, Lukas Marxt, Maeve Brennan, Margarida Mendes, Maria Bertel, Mariam Gviniashvili, Marcin Pietruszewski, Mark Fell, Martyna Basta, Matthew Biederman, Mazen Kerbaj, Nancy Mounir, Nick Klein, Nina Garcia, Noor Abed, Olga Micińska, pantea, Paul Jebanasam, Pierce Warnecke, Reem Shilleh, Rebecca Salvadori, Rian Treanor, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Rully Shabara, Saint Abdullah, Salomé Voegelin, Sam Dunscombe, Sarah Davachi, Sébastien Robert, Signe Lidén, Sondi, Steve Goodman (Kode9), Yazan Khalili, Yuk Hui

About Sonic Acts
Sonic Acts is a leading platform for international projects, research, and the co-production of new artworks. Founded in 1994 to present new developments in electronic and digital art forms, the organisation has gained prominence through its residencies, publications, commissions, and the Sonic Acts Biennial—an intensive (sound) art, theory and technology programme motivated by changes in the ecological, political, and social landscape.