Seventeen days of free theatre, dance and circus across Greenwich, Newham and Thamesmead, no ticket required for most of it.
Greenwich+Docklands International Festival is back for its 31st year, running from 21 August to 6 September, and it’s landing with genuine ambition: three world premieres, five UK premieres and ten London premieres from more than 25 companies, all of it free.
Run by Festival.org, the UK’s leading outdoor arts production company, GDIF has spent three decades turning streets, squares and riverside sites into stages. This year’s theme, “We Move,” leans into resilience and community, and the programme backs that up with some genuinely striking work.
What’s on
360
Woolwich town centre, 21 August
GDIF opens with French choreographer Mehdi Kerkouche’s new large-scale dance ritual, staged on a towering circular platform right in the centre of Woolwich. Expect a properly rave-inflected atmosphere for the festival’s official kickoff.
Efectos Especiales
Greenwich Peninsula, 29 and 30 August
Argentinian filmmaker Alejo Moguillansky and choreographer Luciana Acuña put audiences inside the making of an action film, complete with weather effects, cinematic storytelling and a genuinely rumbling truck at the centre of it all.
Epiphytes
Greenwich Park, Wolfe Statue Piazza
An all-female high wire performance from Belgian company Des Chaussons Rouges, its UK premiere, framed by one of London’s best views over the city. Part of Greenwich Fair, GDIF’s festival-within-a-festival returning to the newly relandscaped piazza at the top of Greenwich Park Hill on 22 and 23 August, alongside puppetry from Theatre-Rites, Miguel Altunaga’s Eshu at the Crossroads, and Miss High Leg Kick’s ecology-themed Lady Garden.
The Aunties: The House of Masks
Beresford Square, 31 August
Oluwatosin Omotosho’s dance-theatre piece celebrates the strength, humour and influence of West African aunties, one of the more purely joyful entries in this year’s programme.
The Weight of Water
Thamesmead, 5 and 6 September
Dutch company Panama Pictures stage a genuinely nail-biting piece of physical theatre on a huge floating structure that tips back and forth on the water, dancers fighting to hold on as it moves, built around the climate crisis.
(In)Visible Dancing
6 September
The festival closes with a large-scale community performance from Luca Silvestrini’s Protein, developed with local dance groups from across Greenwich, a proper send-off built by the community the festival serves.
Two festivals within the festival
Beyond the individual shows, GDIF runs two mini-festivals of its own this year. Greenwich Fair (22 and 23 August, Greenwich Park) brings family-friendly circus, street theatre and games, ElevateHer’s feminist circus spectacular, BUG’s outsized street-dancing insect powered by an electronic soundtrack, and Kismat Walla’s puppetry cart of fate and fortune among the highlights. Dancing City spreads outdoor dance across the festival’s other sites, including Benched, Danish company Uppercut Dance Theater’s piece presented with Sadler’s Wells on 5 September, alongside Garbh, Kokkon and As, Was, Is.
Worth knowing: Nature Speaks, in Thamesmead on 4 and 5 September, is a ticketed strand, but free specifically for residents of Thamesmead and the Royal Borough of Greenwich, one of the few entries in the programme that isn’t simply free-for-all. It includes I Have No Name, an outdoor installation from Catalonian collective El Conde de Torrefiel that turns a field into a stage for nature itself, an illuminated screen displaying text as if the landscape were speaking back to its audience.
The London x London Take: with 25-plus companies and world, UK and London premieres scattered across 17 days, don’t try to see everything. Pick one weekend, anchor it around Greenwich Fair or Dancing City, and let the rest be a bonus if your route happens to cross paths with it.
Need to know
- Where: Across the Royal Borough of Greenwich, Newham and Thamesmead
- When: 21 August to 6 September 2026
- Price: Free (Nature Speaks is ticketed, free for Thamesmead and Royal Greenwich residents)
- Website: festival.org/gdif-2026
