Festival Grec returns to ‘analyze contemporary society’ with 90 shows across Barcelona

The 49th edition of the performing arts festival Festival Grec was presented on Wednesday, with 90 shows coming to Barcelona between June 26 and August 4. 

The festival is also starting a new chapter in its history this year under the direction of Leticia Martín Ruiz, who explained the new festival program to around 100 people gathered at the Teatre Grec in Montjuïc on Wednesday afternoon. 

There, she told the crowd of artists, journalists, and industry professionals that the festival this year aims to “analyze contemporary society” through the lens of the performing arts acting as a critical and poetic tool. This year’s festival is also an opportunity for the organization to “reinforce our relations in society,” according to the new director.

Dramatic theatrical performances will make up the heart of the festival, but Grec also boasts an ample offering of dance and music shows to enjoy, as well as some cinema screenings and circus and acrobatics spectacles. 

Festival Grec 2025 aims to place the critical and poetic gaze of artists at the service of the public, trusting in the living arts as a meeting space capable of generating unique and shared experiences. 

Issues such as the search for identity, critical reflection on human relationships, and introspection of the self, family structures, and community life emerge strongly. They are shared concerns, fears, and desires that are omnipresent in contemporary society. The festival aims to be the channel for artists, the public, and the city to meet and give meaning, together, to the experience of the shows.

The whole city is a stage this year, as in total there will be more than 50 spaces in Barcelona hosting shows, with a program that connects cultural institutions and the local artistic spaces. 

Among the venues that will form part of this year’s festival are Teatre Lliure, Mercat de les Flors, the Palau de la Música, Liceu, Sala Beckett, Antic Teatre, as well as the Fundació Miró, the CCCB, the Arc de Triomf, the Botanic Gardens, the Picasso Museum, DHUB, and the Filmoteca de Catalunya.

Montjuïc mountain reaffirms itself as the heart of the festival once more this year, with the Teatre Grec acting as the epicentre of the festival. Grec 2025 opens with Marie and Yoann Bourgeois collaborating with the singer-songwriter Pomme in a proposal for all audiences. Names from the local and international scene such as Clara Peya, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Max Richter, and Tiago Rodrigues will also take to the Teatre Grec stage.

Major international figures will also perform at this year’s festival, such as William Kentridge, Milo Rau, Carolina Bianchi, and Christos Papadopoulos, with contemporary proposals that explore new narratives and dramatic limits, and address the fears of today.

See the full programme for the Festival Grec here, while tickets for shows can be purchased here.