Kampnagel International Summer Festival (Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival) takes place for three weeks each August at various superb venues in the city of Hamburg. The epicentre of the festival is, as the name suggests, Kampnagel, the extensive theatre housed in a post-industrial building.

Since the festival's inception in the mid-80s, it has been known as one of the foremost European arts festivals, involving theatre, dance, visual arts, performance, music and theory from all over the world.

Photo: Anja Beutler

Theatre, dance, visual arts and music at the International Summer Festival

The main venue of the Kampnagel International Summer Festival (commonly known simply as the International Summer Festival) is Kampnagel, a spacious theatre housed in a former factory. It is the largest independent production venue for performing arts in the whole of Germany!

No wonder it has been such a well-known site of fertile creativity in theatre, dance and visual arts - it attracts artists and audiences from all around the globe. The expansive outdoor area transforms each year into a festival park with leisurely seating areas, food vendors and some free installations where festival-goers can mingle and soak up the unique festival atmosphere.

Photo: Anja Beutler

World premieres and new roads into avant-garde in Kampnagel

The programme explores the interplay of pop culture and avant-garde and the bending of genres and mingling of different artistic disciplines. Eminent artists are invited to participate in the festival each year, where over 65 different works are produced, attracting around 30.000 visitors from Hamburg and abroad.

What makes the International Summer Festival stand out from the rest is the high number of world premieres and co-productions, as well as European and German premieres. It's the perfect festival for audiences who are curious about the art, music, theatre and dance of the present day and who are fascinated by radical aesthetics and experimental approaches.

Get your tickets to Kampnagel International Summer Festival 

Get your tickets to Kampnagel International Summer Festival! There are different kinds of tickets available, from special prices for students to multi-day tickets. Worth checking out is the International Summer Festival Pass. This pass gets you a 50 percent discount on all tickets at the festival, except for those in partnership with Elbphilharmonie. If you want to see more than a couple of higher-priced events, this will definitely save you money.

Photo: Anja Beutler

Thumb photo: Anja Beutler