The Festival Música Viva 2026 establishes itself as a stage for aesthetic and ethical resistance in a world marked by deep crises: the consolidation of hegemonic powers, the worsening of inequalities, the normalisation of tyranny, massacre, and the progressive erosion of humanity and nature. In the face of this state of the world, the festival embraces insurgency as a vital necessity—a conscious gesture against inertia, silencing, and indifference.
In this 32nd edition, Insurgency is both poetic and political. Musical creation emerges as an act of confrontation, deviation, and refusal, asserting art as a sensitive weapon against structural violence, dehumanisation, and the logic of fear. The works presented do not seek comfort but rather friction: they question, expose wounds, open fissures, and summon new forms of listening, thinking, and presence.
The programme crosses languages, generations, and geographies, bringing together artists who challenge dominant models, explore the limits of sound, body, word, and technology, and affirm contemporaneity as a space of urgency, plurality, and risk—encounters that propose and construct a path of intense listening and critical reflection on our time.
At the Festival Música Viva 2026, to insurg is also to resist the uniformization of taste, to create against the violence of repetition, and to affirm art as a place of freedom, radical imagination, and responsibility. In a world in collapse, music becomes an act of insubordination and active hope.
Programme
28 April | Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble
Conductor: Guillaume Bourgogne
Tuesday, 8 p.m.
Sala Luis Miguel Cintra
29 April | Ensemble MPMP (programme to be confirmed)
Wednesday, 6pm
Sala Bernardo Sassetti
29 April | José Pedro Ribeiro (piano recital)
Wednesday, 8 p.m.
Sala Luis Miguel Cintra
30 April | Duo Nada Contra
Mrika Sefa (piano) _ Francisco Cipriano (percussion)
Thursday, 8pm
Sala Bernardo Sassetti
30 April | Portuguese Chamber Orchestra Percussion Group
Conductor: Pedro Carneiro
Thursday, 8 p.m.
Sala Luis Miguel Cintra
2 May | Miso String Quartet (programme to be confirmed)
Saturday, 6pm
Sala Bernardo Sassetti
2 May | Braga Sinfonietta
Saturday, 8 p.m.
Sala Luis Miguel Cintra
3 May | Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra
Conductor: Pedro Neves
Sunday, 5.30pm
Sala Luis Miguel Cintra
