Programme release: The programme of the Ruhrtriennale 2025

The wait is over – the programme of the Ruhrtriennale 2025 is out! The full programme of music theatre, dance, drama, installations, concerts and much more is now online.

The second edition of the Ruhrtriennale under the directorship of Ivo Van Hove is about the question of how we want to live tomorrow and how we can discover and create connections and relationships with one another.

Intendant Ivo Van Hove: “Connectedness is more important than ever in a world full of hostile tensions. These conflicts are part of our lives, and of course at the Ruhrtriennale we deal with the question of how we can understand and shape this ever faster changing world through theater, dance, music theater, concerts and installations. The Ruhrtriennale 2025 has invited international artists who deal with the universal themes of our time, and I cordially invite our audience to discover these productions together.”

Culture Minister Ina Brandes: “Ivo van Hove has set the bar very high with his directorial premiere. With 70,000 visitors and the most successful opening production of all time, his first edition of the Ruhrtriennale was a gigantic success. I am very much looking forward to a thrilling new programme: with world premieres, world-renowned artists and a strong participatory program for children and young people that whets the appetite for art and culture. We need programs like this to pass on the enthusiasm of the Ruhrtriennale to the next generation.”

The Ruhrtriennale 2025 opens on August 21 with the world premiere of I Did It My Way, a music theater production featuring the music of Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra, with the actors Lars Eidinger and Larissa Sirah Herden and with the choreography by Serge Aimé Coulibaly. Ivo Van Hove is thus continuing the new music theater concept he developed for the Ruhrtriennale, in which he combines acting, dance and music to create new narrative forms and in which music is the narrative core. 

Other world premieres this year include the multimedia theater piece Oracle by director Łukasz Twarkowski about the life of the visionary scientist Alan Turing, Delay the Sadness by Sharon Eyal, a touching and deeply physical choreography between club culture and classical ballet as well as the new work Guernica Guernica by Belgian collective FC Bergman, which was inspired by Picasso's famous painting.

The Ruhrtriennale begins on 21 August and ends on 21 September. This year there will be a total of 35 productions and projects with 136 events in Bochum, Duisburg, Essen and Gladbeck, 13 of which are in-house and co-productions as well as commissioned works. We welcome a total of 630 artists from 38 countries. 

Ticket sales start today, with a total of around 45,000 tickets available. Festival tickets are available at an early bird discount of 10 percent until 11 May.