Sonic Acts is one of those festivals that you don't "just grab" as a single night, because it behaves like a layer over the city. From February 5 to March 29, 2026 pops up in more than fifteen to twenty places, with concerts, listening sessions, exhibitions, films, workshops, clubs and conversations. The scale is large (80+ events), but the experience is often actually intimate: works that force you to dwell on sound, space and how you feel welcome (or not) somewhere.
Sonic Acts once began in 1994 and grew into a biennial where art, technology and research do not "touch," but intertwine. It remains a festival that prefers to open questions rather than glue answers shut, and you notice this in the choice of venues and formats: one minute you're in a performance, the next you're in a talk or at a film block that makes your ears do as much as your eyes.
The 2026 edition bears the title Melted for Love and starts from the idea of "home" - not as a cozy word, but as something to be made, lost, shared, guarded, or reinvented. Sonic Acts itself writes about technologies of welcome, friendship and proximity, and about the world as a network of human and non-human life intertwined.
From Feb. 5 to March 29, the city will be a "field of listening," with 200+ makers in 20+ locations.
If you want to pinpoint one moment: the program mentions a intensive festival weekend from Feb. 26 to March 1, 2026, with extra many performances and readings close together. That's the weekend when you feel Sonic Acts most strongly as a festival, rather than a scattered itinerary.
The main exhibition Melted for Love lands in several anchorages at once: W139, Arti et Amicitiae and Rose Street, supplemented by satellites and collaborations, including a program at The Documentary Pavilion / IDFA Institute and a special collaboration with Framer Framed. That "multiple orbits" idea fits Sonic Acts exactly: you don't get a single venue that sums everything up, but a set of spots that together build the story.