Noorderzon Festival

Noorderzon Festival of Performing Arts & Society is a multi-day, trendsetting arts festival with a distinctive place in the cultural landscape. It presents a high-quality and idiosyncratic programme of exciting, contemporary performing arts from around the world, created for a broad and diverse audience.

The festival invests consciously and with care: in promising international makers and companies, in the strength of the local cultural infrastructure, in interdisciplinarity, and in actively engaging its audience. Noorderzon is also a meeting ground for professionals, offering space for exchange between colleagues in the informal and open atmosphere of a public festival. 

In doing so, Noorderzon is something of an odd one out, fulfilling a unique role within the Dutch festival landscape. The festival deliberately takes risks and embraces experimentation as a way to enable and demonstrate artistic development. Its programming provides context and presents multiple perspectives on the world around us, with an open yet sharp gaze. Curiosity is the guiding principle, with the world as our backyard. Noorderzon is one of only nine festivals in the Netherlands with a permanent place in the national cultural infrastructure, funded directly by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. 

Noorderzon introduces, inspires, welcomes and invites reflection. It creates a context that is as open and accessible as possible, where everyone is welcome and feels welcome. The festival is a vehicle for encouraging reflection and dialogue in the most pleasant and well-informed way imaginable. The city becomes the stage, with the freely accessible Noorderplantsoen as a beautiful backdrop, a social meeting place, and a playground all in one.