The 36th Macao Arts Festival (MAF) will run from next Friday to June 27 themed “New Streams of Inspiration”, featuring a wide range of performances and exhibitions across the city, the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) announced in a press conference at the Macau Cultural Centre (CCM) in Nape yesterday.
A total of 15 programmes and exhibitions, along with nine outreach activities, will be presented. The line-up includes local, national and foreign productions spanning theatre, dance, music and visual arts, aiming to offer audiences a broad artistic experience.
Addressing the press conference, IC President Deland Leong Wai Man noted that this year’s festival celebrates the 2026 China-Kazakhstan Year of Cultural Exchange, with a Kazakh group invited to deliver the opening performance, striving to showcase Central Asian cultural aspects.
The festival will open with “Lotus on the Silk Road – Traditions in Motion”, performed by the BIRLIK Song and Dance Ensemble from Kazakhstan. Another Kazakh group, the Jolda Dance Theatre, will also stage a double bill featuring “Tamyr” and “Timeless”. Several productions highlight the fusion of tradition and innovation in Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, the musical theatre production “The Starry Night – The Musical”, by the Hong Kong-based Actors’ Family troupe, incorporates aspects of Cantonese opera and ceramic art, while “1014 – Nanyin x Jazz” blends traditional Nanyin* music with jazz to explore themes of memory and technology.
Local cultural heritage will also be showcased through the Patuá** theatre production “Como Agora?” (“Now What?”), as well as the Cantonese opera “Lotus Heart”, which integrates AI into stage design. Meanwhile, international productions include “Between the Lines”, a solo play directed by Portuguese theatre-maker Tiago Rodrigues, to be staged at the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Dom Pedro V Theatre.
Another highlight is “The Night of Zheng Guanying”, an environmental dance theatre performance to be held at the – also UNESCO World Heritage-listed – Mandarin’s House, aiming to offer an immersive experience within a historic setting. Classic and contemporary works will also take to the stage, including an interpretation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” by Italy’s NoGravity Theatre and a large-scale production of “Swan Lake” by the Shanghai Ballet.
Moreover, the play “Her Dynasty” by Beijing’s Nine Theatre will revisit the life of Empress Wu Zetian (624-705) through a circular narrative structure.
Leong also noted that five local original productions are included, aiming to reflect Macau’s cultural identity and urban memory, adding that outreach initiatives will extend performances into the community, with workshops, talks and activities designed to engage audiences of different ages.
Running for nearly two months, the festival aims to bring arts closer to the community while strengthening Macau’s position as a cultural hub, inviting residents and visitors to engage with diverse artistic expressions.
Tickets will go on sale on Saturday at ticketing.enjoymacao.mo.
*Nanyin (“Southern Sounds”) is a 1,000-year-old traditional musical art form from Quanzhou, Fujian Province, renowned as a “living fossil” of Chinese musical history. – DeepSeek
** Patuá is a critically endangered language, spoken fluently by only a small number of families in Macau and the Macanese diaspora (primarily in Hong Kong, North America, and Australia). – Gemini
Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC) President Deland Leong Wai Man (fourth from right) poses with other representatives at the Macau Cultural Centre (CCM) during yesterday’s 36th Macao Arts Festival press conference in Nape. – Photo: Khalel Vallo
