Bang Bang! Disarm us with laughter!

What if the stage wasn’t a stage, but the whole city? The supermarket? The bank? Halsema’s office? During Amsterdam BANGS, the autonomous theatre and performance festival taking place for the third time during October 1-4, 2026, this ludicrous dream might just become reality – at least for as long as we don’t get kicked out!

Amsterdam BANGS is like the Fringe (you get it?! BANGS and Fringe?): Shows happen everywhere, and it’s fun, and it’s funky. But also – it’s not like Fringe at all! Because BANGS does many things very differently from other art festivals. 

While the whole art world is decrying the loss of its precious funding, Amsterdam BANGS has been going steady and growing each year – without a single cent behind us, but with a small organising team of no more than ten people at a time, coordinating with more than a hundred volunteers. This is an art festival that wastes no time trying to appease bureaucrats who have always been more interested in funding war than art. Instead, we put our time and energy into reclaiming this city so hollowed out by gentrification, while at the same time raising funds for occupied territories.

During BANGS, art does not act as an advertisement for capital or the state, as proof of the value of art funding, or as art-washing for displacement, whether in the form of gentrification or genocide. During BANGS, art is not exclusive. 

We, as the organisers of the festival, don’t curate BANGS: we try to make every submission to our open call happen within our means – because we have no clue what good art is, and we are not interested in finding out only to police its boundaries. We are organizing the festival to come together, practice mutual aid, fight for our right to the city, and raise money and awareness against militarisation and occupation. We want to turn Amsterdam inside out and use our art practice as one among many tools to transform the city from a place of exclusion into a ground for solidarity.

We are more than delighted to see you in a cramped-up room filled with loud music, or on the street, when you’re least expecting it. Follow clowns into de Bijenkorf, join the witches of de Wallen in fighting for their rights, get married to yourself on the ferry, and make magic happen as it happens to you. 

For just four days in October, expect over 120 plays, concerts, failed DIY constructions, bad acting, good acting, laughs, tears, public confrontations, and awkward, private silences. 

It’s all hi-ha-happening, if we’re hi-ha-happening together.


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