The 22nd edition of the festival, held from November 21st to December 6th, convened nearly 3,600 unique visitors across the city's stages, streetscapes, and saunas. Despite nationwide cuts to cultural funding that impacted the festival and many of its peers, Baltic Circle delivered a rich and timely programme that centred experimental performance and cultural imagination.
Audiences braved slush and sleet for international premieres, sold-out performances, nocturnal city walks, and participatory workshops. Each encounter illuminated the potential of live performance to help us navigate the sociopolitical and cultural questions of our time. Guided by a vision of art as both witness and catalyst, the festival invited attendees to engage with themes of communal safety and memory, embodiment and expression, and collective responsibility.
Nowhere was this engagement with collective responsibility more tangible than in the Sámi Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s public events, where audiences filled the Finnish National Theatre to confront Finland’s colonial history and lay the groundwork toward justice and reconciliation. Culminating both the 2025 festival season and the historic work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Finland, the three-day event reached over 20,000 viewers through live-streams, drew hundreds of in-person attendees, and received widespread media attention.
Nearly 100 volunteers — many of whom are well-known figures within Sámi and Finnish public life — took centre stage to voice excerpts from the over 400 Sámi experiences documented in the Commission’s landmark report. Reading aloud on Finland’s central cultural stage, their words made clear the emotional and political magnitude of the moment.
Reflecting on the season, Managing Director Tiff Zhang notes: “This festival reminded me how deeply we rely on one another. Thank you for bringing your attention, your curiosity, and your care into these shared spaces.”
The next Baltic Circle festival will take place November 20 – 28, 2026.