We’re celebrating! Shouldn’t we be? We have to! Without a formal occasion —because we are the occasion.

Germany’s largest producing festival of Black perspectives – Black Berlin Black at Ballhaus Naunynstraße – takes place this year under the theme: Festivity! After Resistance in 2022 and United Polyphonic in 2023, this year we are celebrating: we will dance, discuss and enjoy art. In panels, we will reflect on the accessibility and openness of festivities, seek joy in art and everyday life and celebrate its power of resistance. We will honour trailblazers through performances, and connect through shared experiences in the moment.

Black Berlin Black – Festivity: From September 2025 to February 2026, Ballhaus Naunynstraße presents theatre plays, films, panels, workshops, visual arts and concerts. As a producing festival, Black Berlin Black focuses on artistic works that are not yet part of the international festival circuit. Black Berlin Black is a program for Berlin, for this post-migrant city — it highlights the significance of Black artists for Berlin.

On September 12^th, the world premiere of Unfolding the Sky opens the festival. It is the first theatrical work by visual and performance artist Lerato Shadi, following numerous performances in galleries and biennials from Johannesburg to London. The piece tells the story of her grandmother’s home in South Africa, and with it, of a creative will unfolding over decades and its formative power.

In the weeks that follow, Fabienne Mahwane — legal scholar, moderator and speaker — invites guests and audiences to a multi-part panel series on needs and joy, resistance and celebration. With the revival of Toks Körner’s production Aesthetics of Color, realized as part of the festival, one of the most important Afro-German dramas returns to the Ballhaus Naunynstraße repertoire. Additional programming includes film evenings with discussions, networking events from the akademie der autodidakten and a concert-lecture by saxophonist and music historian Harald Kisiedu! A never-before-seen collaboration will form the musical highlight of the festival: The String Archestra featuring Bona and Gonza Ngoumou.

Festivity is the seventh edition in the more than ten-year history of the Black Berlin Black festival. With unique consistency, the festival demonstrates the diversity of Black positions and the power of artistic self-expression and visions of the world. It continuously offers space for the transformative potential of art and cultural production to unfold. Already back in 2013, at the very beginning, a celebration was already on the program: Black Lux – A Homeland Celebration from Black Perspectives. Then as now, it’s time to celebrate — because celebration is an act of claiming space and imagining another kind of society. Here, art interrupts the everyday, and community can unfold differently.

It’s time for festivity!