Forecast Festival 2026

Following its cancellation in March due to budget cuts, the festival will bring together six prominent mentors, their 18 international nominees, several Forecast alumni, and the Berlin audience at Radialsystem in July 2026.

The 11th Forecast Festival will take place from July 16 to 19, 2026, over four days and with a new concept at Berlin’s Radialsystem. For the first time, with the festival in July, there will be only one central event during the year, where the creative energy of all participating artists is brought together and “unfinished” work is also deliberately showcased.

The festival will center on presentations by the six renowned mentors and their respective three selected nominees from the open call. Starting in the fall, following the selection of the six final mentees, decentralized public premieres will take place in Berlin, including at the Berlinische Galerie and the CTM Festival.

The Forecast Festival, featuring an interdisciplinary program this year that includes performances, music, film, visual arts, design, and stand-up comedy, invites the audience to experience new artistic perspectives and unexpected encounters with international artists. Since 2015, Forecast has served as a platform dedicated to supporting, mentoring, and promoting groundbreaking creative practices and bold artists.

Featuring:

Artist and filmmaker Keren Cytter (IL), composer and sound artist Heinali (UA), sci-fi artist and body architect Lucy McRae (AU), multimedia artist Almagul Menlibayeva (KZ), author and comedian Vidura Bandara Rajapaksa (LK), and performance artist Tom Cassani (UK), as well as the 18 nominees selected this year with their new projects and Forecast alumni from the past ten cohorts.

Over the past few weeks, the six international mentors for 2026 have selected a total of 18 nominees from 15 countries and various artistic fields from among several hundred applications:

Fields, Mentors, and Nominees 2026

Playing with Risk

Mentor: Author and comedian Vidura Bandara Rajapaksa (LK)

Nominees: Siming Lu (China), Brandon Aguirre (Costa Rica), Xabiso Vili (South Africa)

Authentic Deception

Mentor: Performance artist Tom Cassani (UK)

Nominees: Hsiang-Sheng Teng (Taiwan), Christopher Yarnell (UK), Emilie Largier (France)

Constructing Delusions

Mentor: Artist and filmmaker Keren Cytter (IL)

Nominees: Helen Anna Flanagan (Ireland), Nadir Sönmez (Turkey), Mahesh Subramaniam (India)

Introspective Futurism

Mentor: Sci-Fi artist and body architect Lucy McRae (AU)

Nominees: Jiaqing Mo (China), Amy Chiao (USA), Lena Becerra (Italy/Argentina)

Unruly Images

Mentor: Multimedia artist Almagul Menlibayeva (KZ)

Nominees: Ana Mikadze (Georgia), Camila Flores-Fernández (Peru), Poyuan Juan (Taiwan)

The Distant Mirror

Mentor: Composer and sound artist Heinali (UA)

Nominees: Pablo V Cazares (US), Anna Ivchenko (Ukraine), Mariana Carrilho (Mozambique)

Further detailed information on the projects of the Forecast nominees can be found here: https://forecast-platform.com

In addition, this year’s Forecast Festival offers workshops and experimental walks led by fellows of the LINA network, as well as guest appearances by Forecast alumni who look back on ten years of the Forecast program’s support for creative practices.

Forecast Mentoring

Forecast offers artists and creative minds from around the world the opportunity to work with experienced mentors on bringing their projects to life. Forecast transcends clearly defined disciplinary and genre boundaries, provides insights into creative production processes, and creates space for questions that concern the next generation of trailblazers. For each edition, Forecast selects six mentors from various fields who use their expertise to support selected participants in developing and implementing their project ideas over several months.

From the idea competition to the Forecast Festival and individual premieres

Each year, an open call invites submissions of project proposals from various disciplines. The selection process is two-stage: First, the mentors each invite three nominees to participate in joint workshops and rehearsals in Berlin and to present their ideas at the Forecast Festival. At the conclusion of the festival, each mentor selects one mentee. The six mentees then receive comprehensive mentoring, which includes a short residency during which mentor and mentee meet in person for up to two weeks for an intensive exchange at a host institution. At the end of this mentoring phase, the mentees present their final productions to the public for the first time.

About Forecast

Forecast was founded in 2015 by Freo Majer, who remains the program’s artistic director to this day. In addition to the “Forecast Mentorships,” it includes the workshop series “Forecast Condensed” and initiates collaborative projects with various institutional partners, such as the recently launched “Grounding the Human: Lower Saxony” (2026–28), “Driving the Human” (2020–2023), and “Housing the Human” (2018–2019).

Since its founding, the non-profit organization Skills e.V., the organizer of Forecast, has been supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR), the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV), the EU’s Creative Europe program, the Goethe-Institut, the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa), as well as by numerous international foundations and funding organizations, including the Australia Council for the Arts, the Mondriaan Fund, the Austrian Cultural Forum, the British Council, the Institut Français, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.