This year’s programme for the Barcelona Grec Festival brings big international names and local names to the city from 25 June to 4 August, as well as some very promising young talents. Artists coming to Barcelona include Milo Rau, Carolina Bianchi Y Cara de Cavalo, Max Richter, William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, Alessandro Sciarroni, Christos Papadopoulos, Mario Banushi, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Lisaboa Houbrechts, as well as Rozalén, Clara Peya, Llorenç Barber, Lucía Fumero and a host of others. There are 91 shows in all (44 theatre, 24 music, 15 dance, 5 circus and 3 cinema) around 42 venues, plus activities for spectators and professional activities.

The festival opens its 2025 edition with the show Le Petit Cirque, combining music, dance and circus in a celebration of nature for all audiences, inviting us to be children again for a while.

Soon to reach half a century of life, and under the new stage headed by the artistic director Leticia Martín Ruiz (the first woman to direct the festival in the last 30 years), El Grec sets itself some new goals, including the involvement of the whole city, with street shows and new stages. Thus Arc de Triomf will have a free and open show where, on 5 and 6 July, the city itself becomes a giant music score that Marc Salicrú will turn into an experimental and chaotic concert entitled Interferència 02: breu inici d’aproximació a l’acomiadament del trajecte comtal per la porta de l’arc del darrere. Trajecte a 110 bpm, by Teatres de Campanya. The first Interferència came as part of La Mercè last year,

This year’s Grec also reaches two little-known corners. One is the Santuari de la Mare de Déu del Carme, in L’Eixample, a building from the start of the 20^th century by Josep Domènech i Estapà (and his son), where on 12 July there’s a performance of the complex vocal composition by John Tavener, The Veil of the Temple, with the Orfeó Català conducted by Simon Halsey. The other is the Casa Studio de Leopoldo Pomés, where the Bachcelona festival, hand in hand with El Grec, will be organising a concert by the formation Breaking Bach (24 July).

Yet the epicentre for the festival, as ever, will be the Teatre Grec. After the opening show, the venue will be offering shows by Clara Peya (3 July), Lucía Fumero (5 July), Rozalén (7 July), the German composer Max Richter (15 July) and an evening to celebrate the 55^th anniversary of the disc Dioptria, by Pau Riba (22 July, directed by Caïm Riba). The open-air theatre in Montjuïc will also be hosting a big name in current dance, Sidi Larbi Ckerkaoui (11 and 12 July), plus a night with William Shakespeare watching the show by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod with the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico of the play Los 2 hidalgos de Verona (18 and 19 July). The Teatre Grec will also be hosting performances by the Barcelona Municipal Band with La Nit del Músic Alt (25 July) and Portugal’s Tiago Rodrigues (director del Festival d’Avignon),

With more than 160,000 tickets on sale, 8,000 of them purchased in advance, you can find the  full programme for El Grec, which extends far beyond Montjuïc, and purchase tickets on the festival website.