The Singapore International Festival of Arts will return from May 15 to 30 this year, transforming the city into an arts playground that stretches from theaters and civic landmarks to green spaces, the Singapore River and the heartlands.
Organized by Arts House Group, SIFA 2026 marks the first edition led by new Festival Director Chong Tze Chien, who begins a bold three-year curatorial arc tracing Singapore’s performing arts landscape from past to future. The trilogy opens with Legacy in 2026, followed by Roots in 2027 and Renaissance in 2028.
Under the tagline “Let’s Play!”, this year’s festival invites audiences of different ages, backgrounds and levels of familiarity with the arts to explore, experiment and connect through performance.
Rather than treating the past as something fixed, Legacy looks at heritage, memory, mortality and the evolving present as living forces that continue to shape the future.
The festival will unfold through five programming pathways: Festival Stage, for large-scale productions; Festival Village, set at the historic Empress Lawn against the backdrop of national monuments; Festival Play!Ground, featuring interactive works and parades; Festival House, designed for family-friendly experiences; and Festival Late Nites, offering night-time programming.
Together, they offer audiences different entry points, price points, locations and ways of encountering the arts.
A major centerpiece will be the return of the Festival Village, which stretches from Empress Lawn to Anderson Bridge. The area will host indoor and outdoor performances, interactive sound installations, parades and open-access programs, bringing the festival beyond conventional theater spaces and into the public life of the city.
Among the more playful offerings is Makan Culture, an interactive show using puppets and music to tell stories inspired by beloved local dishes such as rojak, pandan cake and kaya toast. For late-night audiences, AUTOMATA, curated by Singapore’s Hothouse, will explore ritual and machine bodies through programs featuring filmmakers, musicians, machinists and artists, including Chinese music producer Guzz.
SIFA 2026 will also travel to Nexus at Punggol Digital District, where Noli Timere, by Rebecca Lazier from Canada with Janet Echelman from the United States, will make its Asian premiere. Combining contemporary dance, avant-garde circus and a specially designed net sculpture, the aerial performance brings a large-scale immersive work into one of Singapore’s newest districts.
The festival also gathers artists and collectives whose works challenge traditional forms of storytelling and performance.
One of the key highlights is Hamlet by Peru’s Teatro La Plaza, a bold reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy performed by actors with Down syndrome. Blending Shakespeare’s text with the performers’ own experiences, the production explores existence, desire and frustration while expanding ideas of who gets to tell stories on stage.
Another highlight, Salesman之死, by playwright Jeremy Tiang and director Danny Yeo, revisits Arthur Miller’s 1983 journey to Beijing to direct the first Chinese production of Death of a Salesman without speaking Mandarin. Marking 40 years since the Singapore presentation at Victoria Theatre, the new work becomes a multilingual story of cultural confusion, translation, ownership and unexpected encounters in the chaos of theater-making.
Local commissions will also take the spotlight. Strangely Familiar《熟悉的陌生》 by T.H.E Dance Company brings together performers from the region in a transcultural dance production exploring how culture, digital identities, behaviors and everyday norms are woven into contemporary life. Singapore artist Liu Xiaoyi’s Last Rites features theater veterans from different cultures reflecting on endings, legacy and mortality.
The festival’s international lineup further includes LACRIMA by French director Caroline Guiela Nguyen, which looks at the human world behind a fictional Parisian haute couture royal wedding commission; Hedda Gabler, starring South Korean actress Lee Hye-young in a contemporary reimagining of Ibsen’s classic; and The Lighthouse by Australia’s Patch Theatre, an immersive family performance that is part installation, part scientific quest and part rave.
With its expanded citywide format, SIFA 2026 positions performance not only as something to be watched, but as something to be entered, questioned and played with.
From Shakespeare and Arthur Miller to local food culture, digital identity and aerial sculpture, the festival seeks to open up the arts to more audiences while asking how the past continues to shape the way people gather, remember and imagine what comes next.
The full festival lineup and ticketing details are available at sifa.sg.
marco.lam@singtaonewscorp.com
𝗗𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗹𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗔𝗽𝗽 ↓
