The Berlin Poetry Festival is one of the largest and most important poetry festivals in Europe. It takes place annually in June over a period of three to four weeks and brings international poetry to the stage at many different venues throughout Berlin.
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Haus für Poesie
From May 15 to 31, the decentralized festival program offers a variety of different formats throughout the city, including film screenings, book launches, poetic interventions in exhibitions, and poetic walks.
Events will take place at twelve venues, including the daadgalerie, PalaisPopulaire, the Museum of Natural History, Silent Rixdorf, and the Kotti-Shop.
At the heart of the 2026 program are three major thematic focuses that unfold throughout the festival and to which three evenings are explicitly dedicated:
Myth, mourning, and a critical rewriting of a European literary “canon” that is predominantly white and male.
What connects all three themes is that they productively disrupt systems of representation, make power relations visible, and find new forms of poetic speech through confrontation and friction.
They run through the entire program of the Berlin Poetry Festival 2026, which takes place from May 15 to June 14.
