Anoushka Shankar announces line-up for Brighton Festival 2025

“For Brighton Festival 2025, we look towards a New Dawn. Together with the Brighton Festival team, I’ve been shaping a programme that envisions a hopeful future – an emergence from the dark of night into the glow of early morning. For years now there have been many reasons to worry, to lose hope. But we have the power within us to create an alternate future. That’s what Brighton Festival 2025 is about – let's come together to reflect, lift each other up and take action. This is a festival for everyone to participate in, to connect with, to feel part of. I can’t wait.”  

Join in and get creative in How dark it is before dawn, a major participatory event for this year’s Festival. Artistic powerhouses and creators of our 2025 brochure covers, Doyel Joshi and Neil Ghose Balser of Howareyoufeeling.studio, invite everyone across the city and beyond to draw their ‘New Dawn’ using drawing materials available in various Brighton locations. Creations will be showcased in a final, major exhibition at The Old Courtroom from Fri 23-Mon 26 May.

Anoushka has invited artists who have inspired her over the years including mesmerising Pakistani-American vocalist Arooj Aftab and Mercury Prize-nominated singer songwriter Nadine Shah.

World premiere and Brighton Festival commission Wembley is the new performance piece written by acclaimed author and screenwriter Nikesh Shukla and actors Nikesh Patel and Himesh Patel, reflecting on the aftermath of the UK’s 2024 race riots, wrestling with their place in this country and calling for change.

Don't miss Anoushka perform her new album, Chapter III: We Return to Light. This performance is a culmination of Anoushka's recent trilogy of mini-albums, completing the cycle and looking towards a new dawn - a time of strength, wisdom and change.

Anoushka and Sweety Kapoor host a special rendition of Brown Girl in the Ring, which sees an exceptional cohort of award-winning female poets, actors, dancers, musicians and activists come together to perform . Featured in this special event: Mona Arshi, Bishi, Nikita Gill, Asha Puthli, Meera Syal (CBE) and Indira Varma, plus a performance by Anoushka Shankar herself.

At ROOM-i-Nation, South Indian Karnatik music extraordinaire Aditya Prakash combines live music, sound, video projection and personal stories in a reflection of his experience growing up as an Indian man in America, offering a hopeful look at uniting cultures and musical traditions.

This year’s inspired dance programme includes award-winning choreographer Aakash Odedra’s captivating solo piece Songs of the Bulbul, combining Indian classical dance with Sufi kathak and Islamic poetry. Renowned Bharatanatyam dancer Mythili Prakash also joins us with a mesmerising solo performance, Jwala, exploring fire as a symbol of destruction and rebirth.

World renowned Hofesh Shechter Company returns with Brighton Festival co-commission, Theatre of Dreams, which dives into a world of fantasy and the subconscious, accompanied by musicians performing a cinematic score; and we’re delighted to present the world-premiere of AYNA from British-Turkish choreographer Ceyda Tanc, who weaves Turkish folk traditions and astounding contemporary choreography to explore our desire for love and belonging with an all-female cast. 

Also returning to Brighton Festival are Circa, who push physical limitations to the very edge with visionary circus production Humans 2.0; combining acrobatics, contemporary dance and a pulsing electronic score that will leave you questioning what it means to be human.

In our international theatre programme, Peruvian theatre company Teatro La Plaza bring their defiant reinvention of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, performed by a fantastic cast of actors with Down syndrome; from Italy, don’t miss The Gummy Bears Great War – the ingenious table-top exploration of the absurdity of war using real gummy bears; and legendary theatre director Emma Rice and her company Wise Children turn Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest on its head in a hilarious reworking.

Leading American feminist writer Rebecca Solnit joins Brighton’s former Green MP Caroline Lucas to talk about her new collection of essays No Straight Road Takes You There, exploring the power of collective action.

Writers Shon Faye & Torrey Peters come together in a Brighton Festival Exclusive to discuss queer and trans love and desire with their new books Love in Exile and Stag Dance.

And internationally renowned author Robert Macfarlane takes you on an exhilarating journey from Ecuador to Southern India and Quebec with his most personal and political book yet: Is a River Alive? proposing the idea that rivers are living beings

For the first time since the BBC Proms in 2017, Anoushka Shankar performs her father Ravi Shankar and American composer Philip Glass’s pioneering album Passages, alongside an ensemble of Indian classical musicians and the Britten Sinfonia.

The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Brighton Festival Chorus perform the UK premiere of Academy Award-winning film composer Rachel Portman’s new concerto, Tipping Point, as part of their nature-themed programme featuring Sibelius’s orchestral hymn to the Finnish forests and American eco-activist composer John Luther Adams’s choral prayers to Mother Earth.  

In a special performance, two classical music icons together for the first time: Aruna Sairam, a giant of Indian classical music and Ganavya, a rising star who melds South Asian sounds with spiritual jazz.

Submerge yourself in ground-breaking electronic artist Max Cooper's immersive experience of luminous sculptures created with projections, lights and lasers accompanying his legendary ambient and beat-driven soundscapes.

And save the date for Shiva Soundsystem's founder Nerm, who gathers his friends and top-secret star guests to the decks for a super special closing party for Brighton Festival 2025.

In world premiere Beside the Sea, photographers Martin Parr and JJ Waller join forces to create a ground-breaking exhibition of supersized photographs fixed to the roofs of many of the city’s bus shelters, that can only be seen from the top deck of a bus as it drives past.

It’s time to get creative! Future City: Brighton 2125 calls all young makers, inventors and creators to come to Brighton Dome Corn Exchange and build a futuristic Brighton & Hove using recycled materials; and dive into the ‘best bits’ of Shakespeare at Pocket Shakespeare with former Children’s Laureates Michael Rosen and Chris Riddell, packed with live illustration and lots of laughs.

Without Walls is back with a variety of free, family-friendly events in outdoor locations across Brighton and Crawley including Hydropunk, a fun and interactive installation where participants work together to conserve and recycle 1,000 litres of water; Eshu at the Crossroads, which brings the vibrancy of Yoruba culture to life with dance, puppetry and music, and Go Grandad, Go!, a hip-hop dance and theatre show exploring intergenerational family relationships.  

The Children’s Parade is back for opening weekend, and after its roaring success last year, Brighton Table Tennis Club returns with a Table Tennis Day for the whole family, with Paralympic champions Will Bayley and Bly Twomey, plus 20 tables, music and delicious food.

Catch work from Brighton Festival Film Unit including the new documentary about music education hub Create Music's Orchestra 360; a music group for children and young people with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, including a special live performance from the Orchestra.