London’s most spectacular free outdoor festival has announced its line-up for the summer

Photo: Matheus José Maria

No London summer is complete without the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival – aka GDIF – which as ever brings a spectacular array of gargantuan street theatre shows and spectacular installations to the streets of Greenwich and the Docklands for a couple of weeks in late summer. 

Now we have most of the information about this year’s edition, which will run Aug 21-Sep 6 at multiple venues, with its end of the summer timing ensuring that it’ll be dark by the time the most vivid night time work is staged. 

With the 2026 theme of ‘We Move’, the festival will get underway with 360 (Aug 21), a new work from French choreographer Mehdi Kerkouche that will turn General Gordon Square in Woolwich into a dance arena ‘where propulsive movement, immersive set design and electronic music collide in an expression of the aspirations and challenges of a generation on the edge of change’.

Photo: Thanh Ha Bui360

There’s usually one ‘big show’ in the festival and this year that title probably goes to Efectos Especiales (Special Effects) (Greenwich Peninsula, Aug 29 and 30), a theatrical spectacle created by Argentinian filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky and choreographer Luciana Acuña that attempts to immersive the audience in a full-on action movie, complete with a rumbling truck and wild weather changes.

And there's plenty more stuff besides – with more still to be announced – running the gamut from Oluwatosin Omotosho’s dance-theatre show The Aunties: The House of Masks (Beresford Square, Aug 31), a celebration of West African ‘aunties’ to such GDIF staples as the two days of family fun that comprise the Greenwich Fair (all over Greenwich, Aug 22 and 23) and the multiple dance events of Dancing City (all over Stratford, Sep 5).

The Greenwich + Docklands International Festival 2026 runs Aug 21-Sep 6. For full line-up, go here.

The best outdoor theatre shows to see in London this summer.

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