Sommerszene Festival
International, contemporary, powerful, avant-garde, discursive, political: the annual Sommerszene festival is SZENE Salzburg’s centrepiece. For two weeks leading names and newcomers from all around the world visit the city to present their latest dance and theatre pieces. The programme shows landmark artistic figures whose projects reflect our reality through a wide range of individual aesthetics. The festival is devoted principally to projects in the performing arts with a focus on dance, theatre and performance. However, Sommerszene – with its contemporary and interdisciplinary understanding of art – also presents projects from other disciplines such as installations, films and concerts. Alongside high calibre visiting productions, Sommerszene also collaborates closely with local companies to develop site-specific works for the festival, thus transforming public space into a venue for performance.
Each annual festival presents between 12 and 15 Austrian and international productions at a range of venues around Salzburg. This has made Sommerszene a fixture of the European festival calendar since the 1980s and one whose avant-garde philosophy gives it a substantial international influence.
The programme of the last festival edition Sommerszene 2024 can be found here.
The archive with festival brochures of the previous years can be found here.
Sommerszene 2025 will take place from 11 to 21 June 2025.