On Tuesday 27 October 2026, the Adelaide Festival 2027 program was announced and it contains several events with links to France and the Francophonie. At Adelaide Festival 2027, you can watch a conversation with a French-Moroccan author; theatre by a French playwright and director; work from a Belgian dance-theatre company; an opera based on a French story; classical music by a Belgian violinist; experimental music by a Canadian composer. An Adelaide ensemble will perform French composer Ravel alongside Mozart. Read on to discover these events.
Adelaide Writers’ Week: Between the Lines: Randa Abdel-Fattah and Leïla Slimani
Australian Randa Abdel-Fattah and French-Moroccan Leïla Slimani are fearless writers whose work challenges assumptions about identity and power.
Drawing on their very different histories, they explore what it means to live between worlds, and to resist the limitations others would impose upon them.
In this wide-ranging conversation with Jan Fran, Abdel-Fattah and Slimani reflect on the relationship between the personal and political, the freedoms afforded by fiction, and the responsibilities of the writer in turbulent times.
Superstar writer and director Caroline Guiela Nguyen (Lacrima, Saïgon) brings this beautiful work exclusively to Adelaide Festival, featuring a remarkable cast of European performers and musicians.
One evening, on her way home from school, Valentina discovers a doctor’s note on the table. Written in French to her Romanian mother who cannot understand it, she will need to translate, word for word. Standing before her, Valentina now holds an unbearable truth on the tip of her tongue, one capable of changing everything.
Valentina is a joyous contemporary fairy tale of the love between a mother and daughter, inspired by the children who carry the whole world in their throats and hearts for their parents. Performed in French and Romanian with English surtitles.
While this may be Hungarian composer Béla Bartók and and Hungarian librettist Béla Balázs’s opera, directed by Italian Romeo Castellucci, the story originates with Charles Perrault’s Barbe bleue.
This landmark 20th century opera follows Judith, newly married to Duke Bluebeard, as curiosity draws her deeper into his castle where seven locked doors promise revelations both unsettling and wondrous. Performed on a water-filled stage illuminated by erupting fire, Castellucci reimagines this psychological thriller through Judith’s eyes, revealing a journey inward through chambers of memory and mystery.
Visually breathtaking and musically awe-inspiring, this unmissable production showcases a bold and daring operatic masterpiece.
DIPTYCH: The Missing Door and The Lost Room
Created by Belgian dance-theatre company Peeping Tom, DIPTYCH combines two of their most celebrated dance works into a single hair-raising experience. Enter the fractured dream worlds of two couples, one confined to a ship’s cabin, the other a hotel room, where hidden fears take physical form.
Co-creators Gabriela Carrizo and Franck Chartier’s signature choreography pushes the ensemble of dancers’ bodies to the absolute limit as they navigate shifting interiors that seem to move and conspire against them.
Reminiscent of Pina Bausch’s surreal choreography, David Lynch’s hallucinogenic screen dreams, and set to spine-chilling music, this is an exhilarating fusion of dance, theatre, visual poetry and horror that will disturb and astound you.
Marc Bouchkov and Aura Go: Schubert, Bach and Beethoven
Belgian violinist Marc Bouchkov shines brightly among the next generation of musicians. In honour of the bicentenary of Beethoven’s death, Bouchkov unites with Australian pianist Aura Go for a performance that explores his influences and legacy. After the 1816 Sonatina in D by Franz Schubert, a devotee of Beethoven, we are invited into Bouchkov’s exploration of JS Bach’s transcendent Partita No. 2. A microcosmic symphony contained in one violinist’s hands, the work unveils the harmonic genius that would later inspire Beethoven.
The concert culminates with Beethoven’s incomparable Kreutzer Sonata. Pairing the violin and piano in a setting reminiscent of a violin concerto, Beethoven woos us with the timeless melodies and daring passion that have won over audiences for the past 200 years.
Deep in the spaces between melody and noise, dissonance and song, Tim Hecker is drawing out sounds. The Canadian composer’s pursuit of sound from seemingly other realms is incomparable in the world of ambient music. His latest national tour confirms his place as a creator of sonic worlds that amplify emotions and saturate the senses.
In the past two decades, Hecker has redefined the experimental music scene, vibrating the floorboards of Sydney Opera House and filling the industrial warehouse of Kraftwerk in Germany. Now, the man who popularised ambient music (he swears he didn’t mean to) brings his latest album to Adelaide Festival. Surrender to its sound.
Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet rightly sits at the top of any list of audience favourites, adored for its sunny outlook and warm world of sound. Ensemble Lumen, comprising faculty artists from the Elder Conservatorium of Music & School of Performing Arts, showcases this masterpiece for you with artistry, imagination and distinctive musicianship.
Alongside Mozart’s timeless work, hear the dazzling virtuosity of Ravel’s Tzigane and the 2027 John Bishop Memorial Commission, a new work by Australian composer Alice Chance, who draws together ancient and contemporary sounds in striking and original ways.
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KEY INFO FOR ADELAIDE FESTIVAL 2027
WHAT: Adelaide Festival 2027
WHEN: 26 February – 14 March 2027
WHERE: Various venues across Adelaide
HOW: Purchase tickets via the links above
HOW MUCH: Ticket prices depend on the event and seats chosen
Within Adelaide Festival, there is another festival the beloved WOMADelaide. Among the first artists announced are several from France and the Francophonie too.
