EFA Monthly Digest October 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.
Somehow Autumn feels like the right moment to re-engage with jazz. The nights are closing in, the temperature dropping, and sitting tipsily late at night in a basement (not smoky these days, which goes against the tradition) is alluring. At the Enjoy Jazz Festival (2 October - 7 November), the venues and concert times are more mainstream, though: some grand places in Heidelberg, Ludwigshafen and Mannheim. But this is jazz from all over Europe and beyond, mingling many traditions, not the trad jazz of 1920s New York City. No smoke, but plenty to fire the ears.
Jazzfest Berlin (29 October – 1 November) is more condensed and has more of a club feel, whether at the Berlin Festival House or the splendidly named Quasimodo club. Were I in town a week before the A Soul for Europe meeting, I'd be hanging out in Quasimodo for the festival artists' jam sessions (30 & 31 October, from 11.45 pm). If you prefer a noisy Sunday afternoon when the hangover has dispersed, try Mathias Muche and Bonecrusher's 12 trombones and percussion in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (1 November, 2.30 pm).
Also very contemporary, but not necessarily with jazz influence, is Kosova's long-established festival of experimental music, ReMusica (26 October - 1 November), directed by EFA's own Donika Rudi. This year, more classical and early music events are mixed in too in Pristina and Prizren. The great thing about music in Kosovo's capitals, modern and ancient, is that everything is within walking distance and the festival's audience and visitors are a family. If you are not friends at the start, you will be by the end.
In Aveiro (8–16 October), on the coast of Portugal, there is a week devoted to technology and the arts: exhibitions, installations, performances and other experiments. For the first few days, PRISMA / Art Light Tech (8–11 October) puts light at the heart of the artistic programme, with works spread through the city's public and natural spaces, allowing visitors to wander and see its architecture and heritage shine in a new way.
Liszt, as a composer, often divides opinion, but there is no denying his centrality to the Hungarian Romantic tradition, even though he lived as often in France, Germany and Italy as in his home country. The Liszt International Cultural Festival (8-22 October) does include some of his music but is far richer than that, including a literary festival, Romany dance from the Carpathian Mountains, the contemporary Georgian composer Vahktang Kakhidze's Requiem from 2021, and the London Sinfonietta marking Steve Reich's 90th birthday this month (one of the nicest composers one could ever talk to, by the way).
Speaking of Georgia, the country's national arts festival, GIFT, takes place from 16 October – 22 November. This will be its 14th year, and it has adopted the motto 'peace begins with a smile'. Neither is easy to conjure up in the country at the moment, which seems beset by threats and turmoil. Its director, Keti Dolidze, says in her introduction, After five years of forced silence, 'The Gift' returned last year. It was a fair decision because the disappearance and closure of festivals are not suitable for a civilised country. Georgia should become a country of festivals.
If Georgia has faced difficult years, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates has been trying to deal with a fraught and unpredictable security situation as the war between the USA and Iran shows little sign of abating. Nonetheless, the city's music festival (10 October – 19 December) intends to hold an impressive series of concerts and discussions, many given by artists from the Gulf, with important contributions from those in New York and sponsored by the international community. The American Ballet Theatre are due on 21 November; the wonderful and articulate violinist Lisa Batiashvili (Georgians again) gives a recital on 10 December, and there is a festival academy for young musicians with intensive tuition and masterclasses for a month, with the students forming the Abu Dhabi Festival Youth Orchestra.
Vicenza is one of those gorgeous cities in Italy's Po Valley in which it would almost be a crime not to hold a festival. It does hold a quick one, the Vicenza Opera Festival (23 -26 October), founded and directed by the conductor Ivan Fischer with his Budapest Festival Orchestra, using the extraordinary Renaissance theatre space, the Teatro Olimpico, and other venues for concerts and, this year, a production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. The whole festival is already sold out, so this will have to serve as a taster for next year.
In the capital of Moravia, Brno, the region's most famous 20th century composer, Leos Janacek, is celebrated in the festival that bears his name (13 October – 17 November). For those who love his often disturbing operas, several can be heard in the National Theatre, as well as a rare chance to see Martinu's opera Theatre Behind The Gate, and two chamber operas by young composers Eunika Pechankova (Oh Humanity) and Tereza Konzalova (Here Is The Island).