Today, the Barbican enters a new era as it shares its Artistic Vision for 2025-2030, brought to life in its Autumn 2025 Season.
Reimagining the Barbican’s programming model with ideas-led seasons that find synergies across its many artforms – cinema, creative collaboration, immersive, music, theatre and dance, and visual arts
Building on the Barbican’s legacy as a design icon, with a renewed focus on fashion and design
Expanding the Barbican’s role on the international stage as a centre for contemporary discourse, literature and bringing together diverse voices
A commitment to learning, artistic development, community and public programmes, positioning the Barbican as a civic space at the heart of the City of London
The Vision is reflected in the Barbican’s 2025 Autumn season, which renews the Barbican’s purpose as a leading space for contemporary discourse and critical conversations in our changing world. The season will include a cross-disciplinary focus on the environment in all its aspects, inviting audiences to explore decay and destruction; sustainability, renewal and ecological restoration; the right of land ownership, its story, memory and language; and the rise of authoritarianism in our current global political moment. The season will also bring audiences bold, joyful experiences, the opportunity to gather and connect, and share in the transformative potential of art.
Season highlights include:
The launch of Dystopia is not the Future, a series addressing our current geopolitical moment, with a talk by Andreas Malm, a ScreenTalk with filmmaker Asif Kapadia, and a panel debate with emerging filmmakers, alongside the second instalment of Encounters: Giacometti with artist Mona Hatoum.
The UK premiere of Vietnamese-French director Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s exploration of fashion and labour in a gripping and cinematic theatre piece LACRIMA
Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion, the first Barbican fashion show since 2017, a daring new exhibition that challenges what is beautiful, featuring icons like Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, and Maison Margiela
Fragile Earth, a major new concert series running through to March 2026, which explores our relationship with the natural world, with works by, John Luther Adams, Sandeep Bhagwati, Kathy Hinde, Monthati Masebe, Anna Meredith, Einojuhani Rautavaara and Julia Wolfe, and featuring BBC Symphony Orchestra, Renee Fleming, Ligeti Quartet, Robert Macfarlane, Gabriela Montero, Theatre of Kiribati, and many more
Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages, the first festival in the UK celebrating the creative impact art has on languages, and the endangered dialects and languages from around the world
This ambitious autumn programme reflects the Barbican’s Artistic Vision for the next five years. Developed by Director for Arts & Participation Devyani Saltzman alongside the Barbican’s arts and participation teams, it aims to find synergies between artforms, creating cross-disciplinary conversations, that provide not only extraordinary cultural experiences but invite audiences to look at our increasingly complex world from multiple vantage points. Other prominent strands of the Vision [see full summary below] include a focus on commissioning and co-commissioning new projects from artists around the globe.
Barbican Autumn season 2025
Working in collaboration with artists and companies from around the globe, the Autumn programme is rooted in themes exploring vital topics relating to our world, our society and ourselves.
Supporting this cross-disciplinary, thematic lead approach, Barbican looks at sustainability and the environment through multiple programmes, including Fragile Earth, a major new concert series running through to March 2026, which explores our relationship with the natural world in the concert hall and the conservatory, with works by John Luther Adams, Sandeep Bhagwati, Kathy Hinde, Monthati Masebe, Bint Mbareh, Anna Meredith, Lemi Ponifasio, Einojuhani Rautavaara, and Julia Wolfe, and featuring BBC Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia, Renee Fleming, Hand to Earth, The Hermes Experiment, Ligeti Quartet, Robert Macfarlane, Gabriela Montero, Louis VI, Stevens & Pound, Theatre of Kiribati, and Hayden Thorpe.
Alongside the concerts, Writing Ecologies, a series of five monthly salons and writing workshops set in the Barbican Conservatory, brings established authors and local writers to create work centred on ecology and the rich diversity of our natural world.
In the Curve, Rounds, the upcoming commission from Lucy Raven, brings together moving image and sculpture to examine themes of cyclical violence and unrelenting force in the formation of the Western United States.
In October, Barbican presents Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages, a visual, music and literature festival exploring the world’s endangered languages and the people who speak them. The first of its kind in the UK, Voiced will host leading poets, artists, and writers to explore how we say the things that are most important to us through endangered texts, newly commissioned poems and unique visual scripts.
Barbican Cinema presents Land Cinema, a four-part film series presenting works by non-fiction filmmakers and film collectives spanning the 1970s and 80s based on a forthcoming publication by Dr Becca Voelcker, who funded environmental justice in the face of extractive capitalism, with selected features and shorts exploring an expansive array of themes from indigenous land, ecological as opposed to economic growth, through to organicism, and 70s back-to-the-land initiatives.
Meanwhile, in the monstrous weekend All Kaiju Save the World! special guests introduce a selection of their favourite Kaiju films through an ecology lens, where un-natural mutations abound, including the rarely screened Godzilla vs Biollante.
As part of the seasonal focus on contemporary discourse, autumn also launches the series Dystopia is not the Future, addressing the current change in the world order, the rise of authoritarianism, and its resistance, challenging the supposed inevitability of a dystopian future. Its first season features a talk with Swedish writer Andreas Malm, a Screentalk between Carole Cadwalladr and Asif Kapadia on his new film 2073 and a panel debate with emerging filmmakers.
Linking to these conversations, Encounters: Giacometti sees the second instalment of this series exploring themes of displacement, exile and homelessness in the work of Alberto Giacometti and Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum.
Additionally, the Barbican’s renewed commitment to fashion and design sees our material world come under the spotlight. In October, Barbican Art Gallery launches Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion, a major new fashion exhibition challenging what is beautiful, featuring icons like Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood, and Maison Margiela, alongside emerging designers such as Elena Velez, Yuima Nakazato and IAMISIGO. Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s gripping and cinematic fashion and labour piece LACRIMA makes its UK premiere in the Barbican Theatre in September, with the Barbican hosting the World Design Congress the same month, while Dirty Weekend, a curated programme of talks, events and performances exploring the dirty side of life, love and identity takes over the centre in November.
Further autumn highlights and UK premieres include: trailblazing Polish director Łukasz Twarkowski’s ROHTKO, fusing theatre, tech and live cinema to create a monumentally spectacular production exploring art and authenticity in a fast-changing world; and New York-born, Tamil Nadu-raised singer ganavya, sharing a transcendent live journey through Daughter of a Temple, an immersive blend of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional music. Coinciding with autumn’s hottest films releases in the lead up to awards season, Barbican Cinema ScreenTalks feature conversations with important voices in the cinema industry and beyond.
This autumn also sees the UK premiere of Bushra El-Turk’s music theatre Oum – A Son’s Quest for his Mother, a collaboration with the Dutch National Opera, starring Ghalia Benali and Gesualdo: Passione by Les Arts Florissants and Compagnie Amala Dianor, marking Barbican’s commitment to present new opera, dance and music theatre as a core pillar of its programme.
Finally, the Barbican is proud to continue its long-term partnerships with its Resident and Associate Companies, including the London Symphony Orchestra, whose 2025/26 season kicks off with four concerts with Sir Antonio Pappano, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, who are bringing two exciting shows for this year’s Theatre autumn/winter season, both of which will be announced shortly.
Tickets for the autumn season will go on sale soon.
