Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) 2026

SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2026 SETS THE STAGE FOR “LET’S PLAY!” – FESTIVAL VILLAGE RETURNS AS BOLD 3-YEAR VISION BEGINS

SIFA 2026. Courtesy of Arts House Group

This May, the Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) transforms stages and public spaces into sites of play. Led by the call-to-action “Let’s Play!”, SIFA invites audiences to explore, experiment, engage and be inspired by the arts. From dawn soundscapes along the river to aerial performers suspended 25 feet in the air at Punggol, this year’s Festival calls on audiences to rediscover both the joy and significance of coming together through art.

Singapore International Festival of Arts SIFA 2026

Organised by Arts House Group and commissioned by the National Arts Council (NAC), SIFA 2026 celebrates the Festival as a living, evolving archive, honouring heritage, nurturing homegrown talent, and imagining new possibilities for artistic expression.

Marking 49 years of artistic excellence, SIFA 2026 – Let’s Play! launches an ambitious three-year curatorial arc led by Festival Director Chong Tze Chien. Titled Legacy (2026), Roots (2027) and Renaissance (2028), the trilogy traces Singapore’s performing arts landscape – honouring the past, examining the present and imagining the future.

A NEW THREE-YEAR VISION SIFA’s next chapter unfolds as a long-term artistic journey:

● SIFA 2026: Legacy

The opening year honours the foundations upon which contemporary practice stands. Legacy asks: What do we inherit? And what do we choose to carry forward? Through works that confront mortality, artistic lineage and cultural memory, SIFA 2026 turns the past into something urgent and alive.

● SIFA 2027: Roots

Marking SIFA’s 50th anniversary, Roots revisits the Festival’s beginnings, celebrating our pioneers, and ignites intergenerational dialogues across Singapore’s arts community.

● SIFA 2028: Renaissance

Culminating in Renaissance, the Festival spotlights hybrid forms, emergent voices and bold experimentation where tradition and the future converge.

“The evolution of SIFA and its impact on local performing arts and culture echoes over generations,” says Mr Chong Tze Chien, Festival Director, SIFA. “We invite artists and audiences to reflect on the foundations that shape contemporary practice and where we stand today. We draw audiences to step out to engage and discover, and step into that dialogue: to be moved, surprised, and inspired. The Festival becomes a conduit for diverse audiences to feel the energy and possibilities of the arts, and to reap creatively and artistically through what the Festival is and what it can be.”

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FIVE PROGRAMME PILLARS

SIFA’s five programming pillars, offer multiple pathways for audiences to experience the arts on their own terms:

Festival Stage: Large-scale performances featuring homegrown and international works.
Festival Village: A hub of communal engagement, interactive installations and outdoor performances, returning in 2026 with a vibrant, nostalgic festive spirit.
Festival Play!Ground: Experiential and participatory works including a vibrant roving parade designed for families, young audiences, and first-time festivalgoers.
Festival House: Immersive, family-friendly performances, workshops, and talks that deepen understanding and engagement with the arts.
Festival Late Nites: Night-time programming that encourages playful and experimental encounters.

SIFA roving parade

Together, these pillars create a vibrant constellation of performances, installations, and encounters, extending across indoor and outdoor spaces, varying scales, and extended timeframes: from epic productions to immersive, participatory works. Free performances, public installations, and communal spaces will also capture the Festival’s pulse from dusk to dawn, on the Festival grounds and beyond.

“SIFA 2026 celebrates Singapore’s artistic heritage while embracing bold experimentation,” says Ms Sharon Tan, Executive Director of Arts House Group. “Through immersive experiences, public engagement, and accessible programmes, we are committed to elevating SIFA as a festival deeply loved by locals and recognised internationally, bringing artists and audiences together to experience the transformative power of the arts.”

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

SIFA Festival Village

At the heart of SIFA 2026 is the long-awaited return of the Festival Village at the Empress Lawn extending to the Anderson Bridge – a free, open-access hub for gathering, encounters and artistic play.

1. Return of the Festival Village

SIFA The Theatre Practice

Inspired by the festive spirit of the 1990s and early 2000s, the Festival Village is designed as a central strand of SIFA’s three-year arc, bringing together indoor and outdoor performances, interactive installations, parades and participatory experiences that extend from late night into the early morning. It will feature works such as:

Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming 《记忆游泳池》by The Theatre Practice – transforming the Village into a communal music and movement space rooted in intergenerational exchange.
RUPTURE by The Observatory – a dawn sound installation drawing on seismic research, volcanic activity and mythology.
Makan Culture at the Festival Market – an interactive celebration of Singapore’s beloved dishes through puppetry, music and theatre.

SIFA Makan Culture

Extending its immersive offerings, SIFA 2026 presents AUTOMATA, a late-night series curated by Hothouse (Singapore) as part of Festival Late Nites bringing filmmakers, programmers, movement artists, musicians and machinists to explore ritual, repetition and mechanical bodies through film, movement and sound.

2. Diversity Futures: A Transnational Think Tank

SIFA 2026 also launches Diversity Futures: A Transnational Creative Think Tank, a three-year initiative connecting emerging artists from The National Theater Company of Korea’s young directors programme, and Hong Kong Arts Festival’s No Limits platform, with their peers and counterparts from Singapore.

Through residencies, labs and collaborative experiments, Diversity Futures seeks to reimagine inclusive and sustainable creative practice across Asian contexts.

3. A Festival for All

Building on the positive public response to last year’s SIFA Pavilion at Bedok Town Square, SIFA’s Festival Play!Ground at Nexus, Punggol Digital District extends SIFA’s commitment to community outreach by bringing large-scale and high impact artistic experiences into the heartlands. Conceived as a platform for public engagement and shared encounters, this activation invites residents and visitors alike to experience festival works beyond traditional performance venues.

Driving this outreach is Noli Timere (United States/Canada), a soaring aerial performance that unfolds across the Festival Village before arriving at Nexus, Punggol Digital District. The result of a five-year collaboration between Guggenheim Fellowship recipients Rebecca Lazier and Janet Echelman, the work features a specially designed, voluminous net sculpture animated by eight multidisciplinary performers. Comprising contemporary dance and avant-garde circus with public sculpture, social practice and advanced engineering, Noli Timere marks its Asia premiere and transforms the urban landscape into a shared site of wonder.

SIFA Noli Timere

Choreographed to an original score by Quebecois composer JORANE, the performance presents aerial artists suspended up to 25 feet in the air, moving upon and within the sculptural form.

Its presentation at Nexus underscores SIFA’s vision of Festival Play!Ground as a space where art meets community, expanding access and reimagining how performing arts can enliven everyday spaces.

“NAC commissioned SIFA to be a festival that showcases our nation’s cultural identity and strengthens our connection with each other. SIFA’s line-up this year aims to transform our city into a living stage that makes the arts accessible while showcasing the creativity of our artists. Audiences have a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the local and international performances put together by SIFA,” adds Mrs Elaine Ng, CEO of NAC.

4. From Singapore to the World: A Stage Without Borders

SIFA The Lighhouse

SIFA 2026 brings together powerful artistic voices from Singapore and around the world, reflecting both innovation and heritage while nurturing cross-border collaboration.

● Lush Life (Singapore): Two of Singapore’s most distinctive and contrasting musical voices come together in a bold new collaboration, pairing the audiophile-grade jazz stylings of Jacintha Abisheganaden with the bohemian pop sensibility of Dick Lee. Directed by internationally acclaimed Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen, Lush Life unfolds as an intimate documentary performance, weaving together their lives, artistry and enduring connections in a layered portrait of music, memory and identity.

● Salesman之死 (Singapore): Written by Jeremy Tiang and directed by Danny Yeo, this play centres on Arthur Miller’s 1983 visit to Beijing to direct the first Chinese production of Death of a Salesman, a landmark staging that was brought to Singapore in 1986 by pioneer of Singapore theatre Kuo Pao Kun. Marking 40 years since that Singapore presentation in the Victoria Theatre, the new iteration, Salesman之死 unfolds as a multilingual tale of cultural confusion, impossible translation and
unexpected encounters amid the chaos of theatre making.

● YOU ARE (NOT) WHAT YOU EAT! (Singapore) by Yang Derong – a kaleidoscopic installation reflecting on Singapore’s food culture and plastic consumption.

SIFA YOU ARE (NOT) WHAT YOU EAT!

● Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》(Singapore): A transcultural dance production by T.H.E Dance Company, co-created in collaboration with artists and designers from the region, combines live performers and digital embodiments to explore how culture, digital identities, and everyday norms intertwine in contemporary lives.

● LACRIMA (France): French director, author and filmmaker Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s epic drama explores the human and social worlds behind a fictional Parisian haute couture commission for a royal wedding. Moving between workshops, families, and continents, the work brings together professional actors and non-professional performers to examine labour, secrecy, and the emotional weight carried by those whose hands create objects of desire.

● Hedda Gabler (South Korea): A contemporary reimagining of Ibsen’s classic, starring one of the most prominent South Korean actresses in the 1980s Lee Hye-young as the iconic heroine, exploring desire, frustration, and societal constraints with striking theatrical precision.

● Hamlet (Peru): A group of people with Down syndrome take the stage to share their desires and frustrations through a reimagining of Hamlet. The play is built between Shakespeare’s text and the actors’ lives, and it takes as its starting point the question he asks us about existence. To be or not to be? What does it mean to be for people who can’t find spaces where they are not considered?

SIFA The Lighthouse Arts House Group The Lighthouse. Image courtesy of Arts House Group

● Tempo (Sweden/Brazil): An exploration of time’s elasticity through text, movement, and stage illusions, turning ordinary moments into extraordinary experiences where gravity, speed, and perception dissolve.

● Planet [wanderer] (France/Japan): Materialised as an intriguing result of a collaboration between choreographer Damien Jalet and scenographer Kohei Nawa, where they confront the bodies of the eight dancers with the materials and textures of the scenography to create a story of the visceral bond between people and planet.

“By bringing in world-class performances directly into our communities, SIFA’s diverse programming enriches Singapore’s vibrancy while strengthening our position as a premier cultural hub. The Festival offers visitors an authentic taste of our cosmopolitan identity and reinforces Singapore’s appeal as a must-visit destination,” said Ms Guo Teyi, Director, Leisure Events, Singapore Tourism Board.

📅 15 to 30 May 2026
📍 Various locations in Singapore
🏷 Free and ticketed programmes. Selected programmes are eligible for the SG Culture Pass.

For more information, visit here.

🎭🎪 JUNE SCHOOL HOLIDAY 2026 🎪🎭

Welcome to the June school holidays! Make the most of the break with your little ones – explore our curated list of fun, engaging, and family-friendly activities happening across Singapore during the June School Holidays in Singapore 2026.