EFA Monthly Digest August 2026
Each month Simon Mundy highlights what is happening across the European Festivals Association (EFA)’s network, offering a glimpse of the many ways our community is active across Europe and beyond.
The Big Daddy of general arts festivals is the Edinburgh Festival. The curated International Festival runs from 7 – 30 August and the Fringe, the uncurated mayhem of self-promoted shows that number thousands, starts on the same day and finishes on 31st. The biggest problem for visitors and participants alike is finding a floor, let alone a bed, to sleep on. Running between shows would be a good way to get fit if you didn't stop for a few drinks in between. This year getting around by public transport is likely to be even more fraught than ever as Princes St., the city's main thoroughfare, may be partly closed after a major fire. Having said all that, there is nothing quite like immersing oneself in the Edinburgh festivals (there are book, TV, film and other festivals happening too as well as music, theatre and comedy). It is exhausting in the best possible way. One comes away exhilharated, inspired and poor! I've performed at it, written about it as a critic, and had my plays shown on the Fringe so I know from multiple experiences, but the one thing it never is, is dull.
Also in the North, and free of sweltering heat, is the Helsinki Festival (18 August – 5 September). Two Seventh Symphonies are featured in the concert by the Symphony Orchestra of the Sibelius Academy on 28 August; Beethoven's (his most joyful) and Sibelius's (his last). The Sibelius Academy is worth featuring here because its record of turning out great musicians, especially conductors, far outstrips Finland's size. Away from the music programme, the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan give four performances (27 – 30 August) and singer-songwriter Amanda Bergman, said to be the Nordic Joni Mitchell, is on stage on 4 September.
Jordi Savall is one of the very few musicians to have a festival named after him during his lifetime. It takes place (10 – 16 August) in the hills of Catalunya above Barcelona, especially in the monastery of Sant'Creus, and it features music from the late mediaeval to the early Romantic, reflecting the periods of Savall's interest. Savall himself will have just turned 85 as the festival begins and he will be in charge for Baroque music on 11 August with his orchestra Les Concerts des Nations (LCN - also to be heard two nights earlier at the Perelada Festival: see this digest for July Part 2). The following night he directs his other great ensemble, Hesperion XXI, in a programme fashioned around the life of the astronomer Nicholas Copernicus, who died in 1543. They explore Elizebethan consort music on 15 August and Savall rejoins LCN on the final night to conduct Mendelssohn symphonies – well outside his image of an early music specialist. In between an impressive array of musicians give a fine list of chamber concerts in gorgeous surroundings.
Italy is probably better than any other country at giving composers their own festivals. Rossini's takes place in his home town of Pesaro (11 – 23 August). He wrote many famous operas, of course, but one of the great things about his festival is that it gives modern audiences a chance to discover the ones that are not so famous. Il Viagio a Reims is often heard but where else would you get a chance to watch in one festival Le Siège de Corinthe, L'Occasione fa il Ladro, and La Scala di Seta? Concerts, salons and lectures fill out the programme.
Nestling in Italy's Alpine foothills is the South Tyrol Festival, part of the mainly German speaking part of the nation (from where the Wimbledon tennis champion, Jannik Sinner, comes). The festival (15 August – 21 September) takes place in the grand surroundings of Merano, an important spa and sanatorium centre in times when such things were more than fashionable therapies. Merano hosted EFA's General Assembly in 2010 and the combination of Italian and Austrian cultures was somehow reassuring. This year marks 150 years of the spa itself and the 40th of the festival. The grandeur of the scenery is matched by that of the programme, with an impressive collection of visiting orchestras from Basel, Pittsburgh, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Dresden, Salzburg, and the Baltic – along with various period instrument groups.
In the northern-most province of the Netherlands, the city of Groningen has a tent village built on its Noorderplantsoen for “an eleven day summer party”, the Noorderzon Festival (20 – 30 August), mostly of theatre performances but with plenty of the other arts as well, including art installations, dance and literature. It has been going since 1991 and has grown considerably in the intervening years from its original music-based programme to involve a much wider range of artistic expression and deepen its relationship to the community. Much of the festival is free.
Some very large and impressive festivals wait until the end of August, when locals are returning from their holidays, to stage their events. The Utrecht Early Music Festival (28 August - 6 September) is the largest in the world devoted to music performed in a way and on instruments appropriate to the period of its composition. This year's theme is Giving Voice, with the explanation, “Les voix humaines - the human voices - is the title of one of the most famous works by the French Baroque composer Marin Marais. Remarkably, he does not let those voices be heard in song, but in the strings of the viola da gamba. This paradox defines the festival theme: the human voice resounds, but never in just one way. It appears in ever-new forms, with the greatest diversity.” Within that there a number of sub themes – Notre Dame in Paris, the music of William Byrd, the salon, the International Van Wassenaer Competition for emerging ensembles, for example, and co-curators. It really is possible to listen to music from morning till late at night without pausing for a sandwich.
Talking of competitions, this is the alternate year when the Enescu Festival in Bucharest (23 August – 19 September) holds three competitions - for piano, violin and cello - rather than concentrating on hosting a collection of visiting orchestras. Over the years the competitions have launched the careers of an impressive number of soloists, whether they actually won the prizes or not. If they do, the winners get to play in the main festival the following year. If they don't, but at least get to the later rounds, there is the chance to be noticed by those scouting new talent. Several of the judges give concerts themselves too and the competitors have to prove themselves as soloists in chamber music and, as finalists, concertos.
In the hills where the River Tiber rises, north of Perugia, sits Citta di Castello, not the only Italian city to have a castle but the name does describe it nicely. The charming old palaces and churches are the venues for the Festival of Nations (27 August – 11 September), which picks the composers of a country, both classical and contemporary. This year's festival focuses on Germany as well as Italy and the programmes mix periods cleverly, from Bach onwards.
In much higher hills, the Sounds of the Dolomites Festival (24 August – 3 October) invites both musicians and audiences to walk to its venues. “The journey and the wait,” the festival says, “play an integral part.” For example, to get to the Sass Pardoi, thousands of metres up, you have to take a cable car and the intrepid music lover can greet the dawn (6am 2 September) by walking along a scree path to listen to a quintet of female brass players, the Belles of the Rockies. Venues seems an inadequate word to encompass places for music that are landscapes with more sheep and rocks than buildings.