Baku: From October 28 to November 8, 2026, the capital of Azerbaijan will become the epicenter of the global art world, welcoming the Baku International Arts Festival. This large-scale, multi-genre festival, held annually since 2025, will bring together key figures of the contemporary international scene, including artists, choreographers, dancers, musicians, acclaimed performers, and directors.
According to Azerbaijan State News Agency, the festival's theatrical program will open with the production of The Seagull, directed by Lev Dodin and based on the play by Anton Chekhov. This recent premiere by the Maly Drama Theatre - Theatre of Europe (St. Petersburg, Russia), which has been honored with the Golden Sofit and Golden Mask awards, will be performed on October 29 and 30 on the stage of the Azerbaijan State Academic Musical Theatre. The director has been associated with Chekhov's work for many years, and this performance offers a deep reading of the classics, where Chekhov's reflections on art and life are woven into the play. The ensemble of actors includes Igor Chernevich as Trigorin, Elizaveta Boyarskaya as Arkadina, Sergey Kuryshev as Sorin, Anna Zavtur as Zarechnaya, Evgeny Zayfrid as Treplev, Oleg Ryazantsev as Medvedenko, and Polina Sevastianikhina as Masha. The scenography by Alexander Borovsky, featuring a lake stage and swaying boats, embodies Chekhov's sense of the fragility of human ex istence.
Following The Seagull, the festival audience will experience another interpretation of world literary classics. On November 1 and 2, the Gesher Theatre (Tel Aviv, Israel) will present a new production by Dmitry Krymov. The production Bloody Mary, first performed in June 2026, is neither a stage adaptation nor an illustration of Friedrich Schiller's drama Mary Stuart. Instead, it creates a new artistic world from the fragments of a tragic plot, contemporary realities, and shared memory. The main characters, performed by Sasha Demidov (Queen Elizabeth) and Evgenia Dodina (Mary Stuart), are fictional, grotesque, and almost circus-like. In Krymov's theatre, the comical coexists with the tragic, where play becomes a form of existence and a means of navigating tangled lives.
The productions on the stage of the Azerbaijan State Academic National Drama Theatre will also be compelling. On November 5 and 6, choreographer Shahar Binyamini will combine two of his works, New Earth and Bolero X, into a single evening. New Earth is a hypnotic experience where dancers' movements create continuously disintegrating patterns. Bolero X, originally created in 2023 for Ballet BC, explores the tension between individuality and collective power through Ravel's score. Binyamini will select and mentor dancers from the Azerbaijan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre and the Baku Choreography Academy, integrating them into the stagings.
The second Baku International Arts Festival (BIAF), supported by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan, will feature more than 20 events across Baku's venues. These include concerts, ballet and theatrical productions, film screenings, artist talks, and masterclasses. This celebration of the arts will unite artists and creative companies from Azerbaijan, Canada, France, Israel, Monaco, Russia, the UK, the USA, and other countries.