Baltic Circle returns for its 23rd edition from November 19th to 29th, 2026, taking place across the Finnish capital region. For the first time in the festival's history, every featured project is co-programmed and staged together with partners.
The resulting programme turns toward the subconscious mind, rituals suspended between the sacred and the mundane, and the instincts that surface when we face grief or desire together with others. Featuring both domestic and international premieres, the programme spans theatrical works, guided hypnotic experiences, seminars, sleepovers, and a cafe that doubles as exhibition and workshop space.
First up, NIGHTSCHOOL: an overnight performance and experimental sleepover exploring ways to relate to the world and others amid an unprecedented ecological crisis. Lasting from dusk to dawn, the 15-hour show creates a sensory and conversational space for transforming our relationship to the planet and ourselves. The location and main partnering organization will remain undisclosed until arrival, matching the organizing collective’s core belief: that both personal and societal transformation require opening ourselves up to what we do not know yet.
Opening week continues with Death Cafe / Marraskahvila, produced both together with and at the location of Koekeittiö, a Helsinki-based test kitchen for culinary artists. Curated by Katie Lenanton, Death Cafe will double as a workshop and exhibition space throughout November, hosting community events and artworks that consider how we live with and relate to death and bereavement. The experimental cafe’s programming includes performances by feminist doom metal bands Lithalsa and Kahtia, a Karelian lamenting workshop by Minna Haltia, and a sandwich cake performance by Meri Linna, among other highlights.
Meanwhile, SLURPS SEMINAR takes over partnering organization Demos Helsinki’s office for a 2-day creative seminar. Presenting a wide range of performances, the seminar’s program is a mosaic born from proposals selected through a recent open call. The artist-driven collective behind the programme champions collegial, accessible, collaborative, and newfangled ways of art-making. With the seminar, SLURPS wants to activate open discussion about the structures and challenges present within the art field, all while meeting us in poetic thinking and the collective imagination.
Week two kicks off at Viirus theatre with Sweden-based artist trio Linda Forsell, Adrian Kautsky & Ambrose Watts’ Finnish premiere of The Escape Room. Where contemporary therapy may promise control over oneself, the surreal performance offers dissolution: transformation found by surrendering to the unruly terrain of dreams. Guided by three psychopomps moving between the conscious and unconscious worlds, the performance metamorphizes from a classic escape room into an exploration of one’s own subconscious. Drawing from the artists’ lived experiences with illness, gender transition, and existential distress, the work resists the idea that the self can be optimized.
The journey into the subconscious continues with Aapo Nikkanen’s Tranceformer, the final act of a performance trilogy exploring whether art can happen at the cognitive level. Nikkanen questions the affective powers of contemporary technology: algorithms alter our attention spans, while our trust in and interpretation of the world is increasingly shaped by human-sounding AI systems that may surpass critical reflection. On festival partner Kanneltalo’s stage, certified hypnotherapist Aapo Nikkanen sits down in conversation with a self-trained AI-model. The question remains: can an AI hypnotize an audience, and how can we learn to distinguish which thoughts are still our own?
Shift from studying the subconscious to inhabiting a body full of feeling, and you’ll be poised for Kauri Sorvari’s intimate ‘Forevermore’ and Sonja Jokiniemi’s ritualistic ‘Arvo’.
Kauri Sorvari describes Forevermore as an articulation of the ‘shapes, gestures, and actions of the intimate, eros and erotic at the threshold of dancing.’ The dance-based piece investigates romantic-erotic energy through performers’ bodies, which meet each other in supple, human, lustful, and often minuscule ways on the Kiasma theatre stage. Sorvari is intrigued by the threshold between intimacy coordination and intimacy choreography, simultaneously allowing for performers to respond to movement instinctively. A sloppy kiss, an elated embrace, a loving sigh – they all mix into a tender tapestry of movement in the hands of the Berlin-based performance artist.
Finally, Sonja Jokiniemi’s Arvo premieres in collaboration with Tsuumi Dance Theatre at Stoa Helsinki. The work, the second act of a trilogy, pieces together the fragments left behind by both grief and interrupted heritage by reviving the Karelian lamenting tradition. With “Arvo”, Jokiniemi investigates what it means to inherit a broken lineage and searches for the strength and spiritual power carried by the tradition’s lamenters. In a time marked by both collective and anticipatory grief, Jokiniemi wants to create a space where people can come together and face their individual and communal sorrows in a safe, shared space. Sunday’s performance will be followed by a Q&A and chance to meet the artist in the lobby.
Consider yourself invited!