SIFA 2026 is not just an abstract art-world conversation
Lately, there has been a hunger for the arts—a communal desire for visceral, in-person experiences off-screen. The Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) recognizes this Renaissance for the 2026 edition. Running for 15 days from May 15 to 30, SIFA 2026 brings together artists from Singapore, alongside Korea, Peru, France, Japan, Brazil, Sweden, the US, and beyond.
Led by festival director Chong Tze Chien, this year’s theme, “Let’s Play!”, forms part of a three-year curatorial arc titled “Legacy” (2026), “Roots” (2027), and “Renaissance” (2028), tracing Singapore’s performing arts landscape by honoring the past, examining the present, and imagining the future.
This thinking reflects the long game of a festival that has been running since 1977, now approaching nearly five decades. “The evolution of SIFA and its impact on local performing arts and culture echoes over generations,” Chong says, with the same forward-thinking perspective reflected across the programming.
The bold international lineup
I often think of performing arts as poetry in motion. Like a wordsmith, a performer exercises immense discipline and vulnerability, facing all kinds of challenges while drawing audiences into an emotional, visceral response that hits the gut. And if someone leaves moved, like after reading a powerful phrase in a book, they are changed.
In 2023, I attended SIFA’s “The Anatomy of Performance: Some People,” which brought to mind the experimental energy of 1970s downtown New York. SIFA 2026 seems poised to carry that same fearless spirit—one that doesn’t play it safe, touches on difficult ideas, while trusting audiences to stay open and curious.
Take one of the highlights, “Hamlet,” from the Peruvian company Teatro La Plaza, as an example. The reimagining of Shakespeare’s play will be performed by a cast of actors with Down syndrome, built between Shakespeare’s text and the actors’ own lives. It takes the existential question at the heart of the play, “to be or not to be?” and asks: What does it mean to exist when the world keeps deciding you don’t quite fit?
Then there’s “Hedda Gabler,” presented by the National Theater Company of Korea, featuring a reprise by veteran actress Lee Hye-young as Ibsen’s famously complicated heroine. The refreshed staging leans into Hedda’s frustrations after her six-month honeymoon, alongside questions of desire and societal constraint.
From France, “Lacrima” by acclaimed theater maker Caroline Guiela Nguyen transforms the stage into a Parisian haute couture house in a nearly three-hour epic moving across workshops, families, continents, and generations. The story follows the eight-month process of fulfilling a commission for a British princess’s wedding dress, performed by a cast of both professional and non-professional actors. As a meditation on labor, the work resonates deeply in any country where craft and creative work are chronically undervalued.
Rounding out the international slate are “Tempo” from Sweden and Brazil, which plays with time’s elasticity through movement and stage illusion; “Planet [wanderer],” a French Japanese collaboration between choreographer Damien Jalet and sculptor Kohei Nawa, known for his glass bead-covered animal sculptures; and “Noli Timere,” an Asia premiere aerial performance from the US and Canada born from a five-year collaboration between two Guggenheim Fellowship recipients.
The latter suspends eight performers up to 25 feet in the air inside a monumental net sculpture that travels from the Festival Village to Nexus at Punggol Digital District, transforming Singapore’s urban landscape into something almost otherworldly.
And even then, this only scratches the surface of SIFA 2026’s programming.
Homegrown and holding its own
As the host country, Singapore showcases works that sound just as compelling.
“Lush Life” pairs the sonic stylings of jazz singer Jacintha Abisheganaden with the more bohemian pop tone of Dick Lee in an intimate documentary performance directed by Ong Keng Sen. “Salesman 之死,” written by Jeremy Tiang, revisits Arthur Miller’s landmark 1983 Beijing production of “Death of a Salesman,” which Kuo Pao Kun famously brought to Singapore’s Victoria Theatre in 1986. Forty years on, the play will still be asking sharp questions about culture and translation.
“Strangely Familiar” by THE Dance Company puts live performers alongside digital embodiments to explore identity in the age of the virtual, while Yang Derong’s installation “YOU ARE (NOT) WHAT YOU EAT!” wraps Singapore’s food culture in a pointed meditation on plastic consumption.
While in the Festival Village, you can expect highlights like “Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming” by The Theatre Practice, which transforms the Village into a communal music and movement space rooted in intergenerational exchange; “Rupture” by The Observatory, a dawn sound installation drawing on volcanic activity, best experienced, one imagines, as the sun comes up; and “Makan Culture,” an interactive celebration of Singapore’s beloved dishes told through puppetry, music, and theater.
The relevance of SIFA
Since 1977, SIFA has only grown in relevance. This year’s edition is built around five pillars designed to create accessible entry points into the arts for a wide range of audiences.
The “Festival Stage” anchors the festival with large-scale local and international productions. Meanwhile, the “Festival Village” acts as its warm, beating heart: a free, open-access hub inspired by the festive spirit of the 1990s and early 2000s, filled with indoor and outdoor performances, installations, parades, and participatory experiences running from dusk until early morning.
“Festival Play!Ground” takes performances beyond traditional venues with a roving parade geared toward families and first-timers. “Festival House” presents immersive talks and family-friendly programming that encourage audiences to engage more deeply with what they’re seeing. Then there’s “Festival Late Nites,” a series bringing together filmmakers, movement artists, musicians, and experimental practitioners pushing art-making into less conventional territory.
This year also serves as the debut of “Diversity Futures: A Transnational Creative Think Tank,” a three-year initiative connecting emerging artists from Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Together, these strands create a festival with no wrong door to enter.
Why the region should be paying attention
SIFA makes a strong case for what happens when a city invests in the arts consistently over time, rather than only seasonally, while still ensuring there are spaces open to everyone.
“SIFA 2026 celebrates Singapore’s artistic heritage while embracing bold experimentation,” says Sharon Tan, executive director of Arts House Group. “We are committed to elevating SIFA as a festival deeply loved by locals and recognised internationally… bringing artists and audiences together to experience the transformative power of the arts.”
This balance of heritage and experimentation shows a drive towards art that is both accessible and uncompromising. Both the international and local Singaporean works in SIFA cover weighty questions about identity, labor, society, and the world that can easily relate to all, not just as an abstract art-world conversation.
“Let’s Play!” SIFA 2026 says. From the epic to the intimate, the nostalgic and the newly radical, SIFA 2026 promises a festival that can hold it all together in just a couple of weeks.
