About Ruhrtriennale

The Ruhrtriennale is an annual Festival of the Arts in the Ruhr area in late summer. For around a month, artists from all over the world perform in remarkable industrial heritage sites, including former mining and steel industry halls, coking plants and machine houses. These locations become impressive stages for music theatre, theatre, dance, performances, concerts as well as visual arts.

The festival focuses on new productions developed specifically for the area's monumental spaces. Music theatre in all its diversity plays a key role, ranging from new forms of opera to innovative music productions. The Ruhrtriennale operates at the intersection of the arts, connecting artistic disciplines on an international level. This creates new aesthetic experiences in extraordinary locations.

The Ruhrtriennale sees itself as a festival of artistic excellence and social openness. Its aim is to engage a broad regional and international audience with its sophisticated productions. The programme provides access for people from a variety of backgrounds and gives artists the opportunity to experiment, change their perspectives and try out new narrative forms.

The festival’s artistic director changes every three years. While the emphasis on music theatre as a unifying element remains the same, the programme's focus shifts with each change. Chorwerk Ruhr, Urbane Künste Ruhr and Tanzlandschaft Ruhr — the three other pillars of Kultur Ruhr GmbH — each contribute productions to the festival every season.

The selection of venues follows the thematic ideas of the respective season. Particularly important venues include the Jahrhunderthalle Bochum, the Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord and the UNESCO World Heritage Site Zollverein in Essen. Due to their size and history, these venues have a significant impact on the festival, serving as spaces of artistic transformation and places of identification for the Ruhr area.

The Ruhrtriennale 2027 will take place from mid August to mid September. The artistic director for the 2027–2029 seasons is the American opera director Lydia Steier.