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Iván Macías and Félix Amador bring Carmen to Brno City Theatre
The new musical Carmen: A New York Story, which will have its world premiere at Brno City Theatre, transforms the free-spirited Gypsy woman of the late 19th century into a Hispanic immigrant living in present-day New York. Carmen works in a bar alongside other young women seeking happiness and a new identity in America. The man who falls under her spell is Joey, a police officer who also comes from Mexico. He hopes to make something of himself in his new country and finally feel that he truly belongs. Kristýna Daňhelová and Lesana Krausková will alternate in the title role. more
Leoš Janáček Foundation to honour four leading figures with Memorial Medals
The 10th edition of the biennial Janáček Brno festival in 2026 features performances of all nine of Janáček’s operas. To mark this unique occasion, the Leoš Janáček Foundation will award the Leoš Janáček Memorial Medal to directors Robert Carsen, David Radok and Jiří Heřman, and pianist and composer Kryštof Mařatka. more
October 2026 Cultural Newsletter from the Culture Department of Brno City Municipality
Brno’s cultural newsletter provides an overview of upcoming events and opportunities involving the city’s theatres, clubs and wider cultural scene. more
Janáček Brno 2026, the festival’s 10th edition, opens tomorrow with all nine of the composer’s operas
The 10th edition of the international Janáček Brno Opera and Music Festival opens tomorrow, Tuesday 13 October 2026. Held under the motto Roots, the five-week celebration of music will feature the most extensive programme in the festival’s history. Twice named Festival of the Year at the prestigious International Opera Awards (2018 and 2024), Janáček Brno will turn the city into a meeting place for some of the biggest names in international opera. The festival will open with a performance of Janáček’s opera Fate. more
Thalia Awards go to Brno: Magdalena Kožená and Marco Salvadori honoured
Magdalena Kožená has won the Thalia Award in the opera category for the title role in Handel’s Alcina at the National Theatre Brno. In the production, the mezzo-soprano portrayed the sorceress Alcina, the central character in Handel’s opera. An award is also going to Brno City Theatre in the musical category, where Marco Salvadori was honoured for his portrayal of Nicholas Winton in the musical Winton, with the jury also taking into account his performance as Enjolras in Les Misérables. more
Brno Contemporary Orchestra: Periods, chess and index of metals in a garage
Brno Contemporary Orchestra will open the Ars Spectrum edition of the Exposition of New Music festival with the first work of spectral music. Two chess players will then open a game with the Falkbeer Countergambit, before their moves begin to shape the course of the world premiere of Michal Rataj’s A Game of Chess. After the interval, three abstract video projections will complement Fausto Romitelli’s legendary video opera An Index of Metals. The programme is inspired by an extract from a poem written by Ivan Blatný while he was living in a psychiatric hospital. The concert will take place in a former garage complex that is now home to an underground dance venue. more
Ballet NdB heads to Bangkok. Coco Chanel to appear at prestigious international festival
Ballet NdB will present Coco Chanel, choreographed by Mário Radačovský, at Bangkok’s International Festival of Dance & Music. A 64-strong delegation is travelling to Thailand for the performance. more
Janáček with TIC BRNO: walks, trips, screenings and food
For this year’s anniversary edition of the Janáček Brno festival, TIC BRNO is offering a programme of accompanying activities that will introduce visitors to the composer not only through his music, but also through places, flavours and stories. There will be guided walks and tours, a trip to Hukvaldy, film screenings – and this year, an experience in the striking setting of the Žlutý kopec Water Tanks. more
Brno heads to the Rosengarten Mannheim Guitar Summit
Mannheim, Brno’s partner city in the international UNESCO Creative Cities of Music network, is becoming the centre of the global guitar scene this weekend. From 25 to 27 September 2026, the Rosengarten Mannheim is hosting the Guitar Summit, one of Europe’s leading events for guitars, bass guitars and the music industry. Brno – City of Music is represented by singer-songwriter and guitar maker Jan Fic and guitar maker Lucie Přichystalová. more
This year’s Exposition of New Music explores spectral music, with street sounds, chess players and brainwaves shaping the performances
What can form the starting point for a musical composition? The human voice, a single note, sounds from the world around us, a synthesiser or an algorithm? Where does the composer end and technology begin? These are some of the questions explored by this year’s Exposition of New Music festival, subtitled Ars Spectrum. more
The international Janáček Brno festival has put together a packed programme for its 10th edition in 2026, held under the motto Roots. At the heart of the festival are performances of all the operas of Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), staged by the Janáček Opera company of the National Theatre Brno. Thursday’s programme featured The Excursions of Mr Brouček, conducted by Marko Ivanović. The production’s director, Robert Carsen, also travelled to Brno for the occasion. more
The latest concert in the Exposition of New Music festival, held yesterday at Brno’s Besední dům, was devoted entirely to piano music. It took listeners into the fascinating world of spectral music, the instrument’s internal acoustic structures and the phenomena of resonance. To bring the instrument’s hidden transformations of sound and natural inharmonicity fully to the fore, two different types of piano stood in the centre of the hall: a standard grand and a modified piano, with rubber inserts and beaters placed among the strings. more
A deep dive into the world of spectral music, acoustic experimentation and free improvisation awaited audiences at a concert held on Tuesday at Brno’s Besední dům as part of the 38th Exposition of New Music festival, subtitled Ars Spectrum. The evening brought together three works exploring the limits of listening, the inner structure of sound and the interplay between the concert hall and the world outside. A defining feature of the concert was the unconventional use of space: rather than sitting on stage, the musicians were positioned in the middle of the hall, surrounded by the audience, microphones and loudspeakers. more
As part of the 23rd edition of the early music concert series Barbara Maria Presents, a chamber concert devoted to Dvořák’s early songs took place on 1 October. The Brno audience had a unique opportunity to encounter Antonín Dvořák from a different perspective – not as the mature master of the great symphonies, but as a composer who, in the 1870s, was still experimenting and searching for his own musical language, while also exploring the foundations of effective Czech declamation. Soprano Martina Janková and harpsichordist, organist and fortepianist Barbara Maria Willi presented a programme of songs complemented by piano miniatures by Robert Schumann. more
Brno Philharmonic opened its 2026/2027 concert season on Sunday 20 September at the Janáček Theatre. The orchestra was joined for the occasion by guest conductor Petr Altrichter, its former chief conductor. Under the motto All Roads Lead to Brno, this season’s repertoire brings together composers and musical events with connections to the city and its rich cultural life. The opening concert therefore featured Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No. 2, a particularly fitting choice given that Brahms performed as a pianist at Brno’s Reduta in 1867. The programme opened with César Franck’s symphonic poem Psyché, for which the orchestra was joined by the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno under the direction of Petr Fiala. more
The tenth edition of the international opera and music festival Janáček Brno 2026 will take place from 13 October to 17 November 2026. With Janáček’s complete operatic output at its heart, alongside a programme of concerts and accompanying events, the festival offers a unique celebration of the composer’s work on an international scale. As part of the festival preview, National Theatre Brno is presenting four operas by Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) ahead of the festival itself. The series began on Saturday, 5 September, with The Makropulos Affair, which also opened Brno’s 2026/27 opera season. more
The fifth edition of the Štetl Fest of Jewish culture in Brno began on Wednesday, 26 August. And the very first day had a great deal to offer. Among other things, it showed that even an alternative theatre venue can host a world-class concert – and one that is free of charge. The opening ceremony featured a performance by the band Der Šenster Gob, with Jewish singer Lea Kalisch, in the courtyard of the Husa na provázku theatre. more
The summer open-air Festival Špilberk, organised by the Brno Philharmonic, brought classical music and other genres to the grand courtyard of Brno’s Špilberk Castle during the third week of August. The festival’s 27th edition culminated on Sunday, 23 August, with Carl Orff’s cantata Carmina Burana, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies with the Czech Philharmonic Choir Brno. The concert also marked a symbolic farewell to trombonist Jiří Vydra, who brought his 45-year career with the Brno Philharmonic to a close that evening. more
The Špilberk Festival organised by the Brno Philharmonic has put together a rich programme for the third week of August. This year’s 27th edition of the traditional open-air festival will once again fill the grand castle courtyard with music, with the aim of making classical music accessible even during the summer holidays. Tenor Štefan Margita chose this occasion to celebrate his 70th birthday. Together with soprano Jana Šrejma Kačírková and conductor Jan Kučera, Margita presented a concert of opera and musical arias on Saturday, 22 August. more
Every year, ahead of the new concert season, the Brno Philharmonic organises the week-long open-air Špilberk Festival in the great courtyard of Brno’s Špilberk Castle, featuring a diverse programme of genres and ensembles. On Thursday, 20 August, the festival project entitled Erik Truffaz & Gustav Brom Czech Radio Big Band: Around Miles was performed to commemorate the centenary of the birth of jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. This third concert in the series was co-produced with JazzFest Brno and Czech Radio and broadcast live on Czech Radio’s Vltava station. more
