The National Arts Festival
25.06 - 05.07.2026
The National Arts Festival in Makhanda is South Africa’s most diverse arts festival – a premier platform for artistic innovation and cultural collaboration.
The curated programme ranges in its offering with various themes explored during the two-week period. ‘Indigenous wisdom and decolonial futures’ will highlight works by Jason Jacobs (2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Theatre), who presents ‘Kraal’ (theatre), a visceral two-part work unravelling the dop system’s colonial legacy. Bronwyn Katz (2026 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art) will present the exhibition: ‘Ta a-b kobab ada kāxu-da, ti khoe-du’e!’ exploring language as a system of contact and response. Albert Ibokwe Khoza’s ‘Dear Museum! The Truth of the Matter it Seems Was Better When We Were Not Telling the Truth’, a love letter and farewell to ethnological museum practice, will stage its South African premiere after opening in Berlin.
Under the theme ‘Political memory and artistic freedom’, the programme includes ‘The Gabrielle Goliath Tribunal’ (theatre/performance art), which has been conceived and facilitated by TheatreDuo & Co to initiate urgent debates on censorship in contemporary South Africa, exploring the shifting face of state repression into corporate and social pressures and the role of the artist as public witness. Motlalepula Phukubje’s ‘ I Hope This Finds You Well’ will explore the legacy of the Imvaba Arts Association, the Gqeberha (then Port Elizabeth) collective that mobilised art for resistance between 1986 and the early 1990s.
The theme ‘Technology, AI and the digital question’ will include The MTN x UJ New Contemporaries Award Exhibition, titled ‘Holding sp(l)ace for the in____between’, curated by Amogelang Maledu, with artists Simnikiwe Buhlungu, Zara Julius, thato makatu and Unathi Mkonto, working in mediums ranging from sound installation, printmaking and sculpture. The exhibition uses the Black feminist practice of ‘refusal’ as a framework for experiencing the artworks.
Other works across theatre, music, literature and visual arts engage the themes: music as philosophy and spiritual practice, ubuntu and collective humanity, untamed selves and primal energy, cross-cultural dialogue and stories from here, as well as light relief through comedy.
The film programme will return to the National Arts Festival with a series of acclaimed international works from global film festivals, most of which are not on view in theatres across the country.
For more on the program:
https://nationalartsfestival.
