EFA Monthly Digest July 2026 - Part II
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.
For more highlights, check out Part I of EFA Monthly Digest for the festivals starting at the beginning of the month.
The second half of July is inextricably linked in my mind with the opening of the two months of BBC Proms in London (17 July – 12 September). I have been going to them since 1969 and the heritage of the season is extraordinary. They are called properly the Henry Wood Promenade Concerts and that conductor started them at The Queen's Hall in 1895. When the hall was bombed in 1942 the concerts moved to The Royal Albert Hall. Since then the RAH has been the main home but there are outposts all over the UK and every concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3. The claim is that the Proms constitute the world's biggest classical music festival and it is hard to disagree. There is serious music played informally and not very serious music given formal respect. In the RAH (often very hot, especially when the TV lights are on), several hundred people stand silently where usually the expensive seats are set, and line the top gallery. They are the Prommers and they shout helpful comments to conductors (“love your jacket”, they used to call to Sir John Pritchard, “do you really?” he answered, “I got six made in Hong Kong”) and whoever raises the lid of the piano. To prom you can book on line from 9am on the day.
Mittelfest has a slightly confusing name. Mitte (middle) of what, one asks? The answer is that country of hills, valleys, forest and venerable cities that has been Roman, Austrian, Lombard, Slavic and Italian in its time, sandwiched between the Dolomite mountains and the Adriatic sea. The main festival centre is Cividale del Friuli and, for all its ancient glories, Mittelfest is devoted to contemporary theatre, dance, music and circus arts (16 – 26 July). Cividale has been fought over by every bunch of soldiers on their way to and from Rome. Now at peace, it reflects the tenor of the times by having Fear as this year's theme.
A place where that fear is all too real is Jerusalem. These are difficult ethical times for the Israel Festival (28 July – 14 August). So many are angry at the Israeli Government's actions in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank that curating a festival that can express the hurt but bring people together through the arts is painful. Yet that is an important part of the arts' job. On 4 and 5 August the festival presents All Spirits: an anti-war dance in six scenes, and on several days there is a 20 minute walk through an empty theatre. Here is how it is described. “Temporarily Removed is a tour in search of what cannot be seen. A reflective commemoration of international productions that were planned to take place in Israel - but will not. A collection of inspiring works that we wanted to expose Israeli audiences to - but cannot. We invite you to wander through the Jerusalem Theatre, during which you’ll hear first-hand testimonies about international theatre or dance creations - be they shocking, critical, or touching. The tours will be led by artistic directors, curators, and creators who will share their personal viewing experience with the audience. Temporarily Removed seeks to observe absence, isolation, and disconnection. The tours pose questions about Israel's current political-global reality, and about Israel's international relations with the world - in a climate of war and cultural boycott.” The other side is acknowledged too, with Sagui Dekel-Chen (10 August) singing songs he composed during his 498 days as a hostage of Hammas.
Gdansk Shakespeare Festival (23 July – 2 August), on the Baltic coast, reflects contemporary war too, and has made great efforts to include those affected by the war against Ukraine. This year, though, marks the 30th anniversary of the festival and the vision that led its founder, the late Jerzy Limon, to have built a replica of a theatre from Shakespeare's time in the city. In the early 1600s, a company of English and Scottish actors, in exile in Gdansk as Catholics, performed Shakespeare's plays uncensored. In London the plays had to be approved by the Master of the Revels in the Lord Chamberlain's department – a situation that, depressingly, lasted until 1968. All The World's A Stage sums up the festival's ethos of free theatre still.
In Prizren, a Kosovan city that has as complicated an intercommunal history as any in the Western Balkans, is forging a path back into international recognition through its festivals. The Open Air International Theatre Festival (21 – 28 July) makes use of all the suitable spaces that are available including the yards of a cinema, the museum, mosques, churches, temples, squares and the city's remarkable stone bridge
Also in the open air, and in a country that is emerging from political isolation, is the Valley of Arts Festival (24 July – 8 August), spread around three villages in the Hungarian countryside of the Balaton hills. It is Hungary's largest multi-arts festival and boasts an astonishing 4000 events in its ten days (everything from baby massage to full scale concerts). It is, effectively, one big picnic but unlike the picnic sites along highways, it is proud that just about all the objects that can be are picked up and recycled. The festival is one of the champions of the environmentally sustainable arts movement.
Then there are three festivals that have the luxury of being able to steer clear of the political issues of our fraught times (though 'times' were rarely anything else). Collegium Vocale Crete Senesi (29 – 31 July) is in its 26th year but is not on the biggest of the Greek islands, Crete, but in the Tuscan region of Crete Senesi, and the towns of Ascanio, Pienza and Sant'Anna in Camprena. It is organised by one of Belgium's most famous early music groups, Collegium Vocale Gent, but the concerts are not only given by them (and their venerable founder director, Philippe Herreweghe), not even just of early music. There are English love songs (11am, 30 July) sung by tenor Guy Cutting with George Ireland (piano) and that evening in the same venue (8pm, Church of San Francesco, Ascanio) the Fabrik String Quartet play works from the last decade by Liza Lim and Hector Parra. The weekend culminates in Sant'Anna in Camprena with Herreweghe directing the Renaissance sound of Lagrime di San Pietro by Orlando Lassus. Actually the culmination is probably the 'fine dinner' that follows!
If you are along the stretch of the River Mosel that meanders through north-west Germany any time between 23 July and 3 October, you can count on the Mosel Music Festival to keep you uplifted. The sense of well being is likely to be enhanced further if you refresh yourself with the festival's Artist Wine of the Season, chosen with as great a care as the musical menu. For 2026 it is last year's Pölicher Riesling from the Kanzlerhof vineyard. To prevent rebellion, it is presented to the musicians as well as sold to the audiences. Many of the concerts take place among vineyards too, as well as the grand buildings and spaces of Trier, the first city in the region founded by the Romans. It's doubly appropriate, then, that the festival finishes with Verdi's Requiem in Trier Cathedral.
Meanwhile, I shall be enjoying the superb cava made by the family that founded the festival 40 years ago at Perelada (17 July – 9 August), just outside the Catalan city of Figueras, south of the Pyrenees that rise invitingly in the distance beyond the castle's vineyards. Those who attended the 2023 European Festival Summit will remember the castle grounds fondly. These days most of the events take place in the adjacent church. Sadly I will not arrive in time for the evening (25 July) with the great Welsh baritone Sir Bryn Terfel (with whom I have shared many delightful bottles of bubbly over the years) but I will be looking forward to Jordi Savall's concert on 9 August. Savall, who has probably done more than anyone else to revitalise the performance of music from southern Europe of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, will be 85 a few days earlier and will be directing Les Musiciens du Concert des Nations, along with soprano Nuria Rial and violinist Lina Tur Bonet in a continuous sequence of music from Vivaldi's time. Savall's own festival begins in the hills above Barcelona the following night, from which I shall report.