Edinburgh International Festival reveals 2025 programme

Spring might just about be with us, but we’re already looking ahead to late summer as Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) reveals its 2025 programme today. Titled The Truth We Seek, this is Nicola Benedetti’s third programme as head of the International Festival, and she’s inviting audiences on “a journey into the elusive nature of truth, in our personal and public lives”. 

In the press release introducing this year's Festival, she writes: “In an era of 'alternative facts’ and manipulated narratives, the arts offer us something deeper: a poetic and metaphorical wisdom that is both more nuanced and more precise… Join us this summer as we seek and find truth together. Your curiosity will be rewarded with thought-provoking, and potentially transformational, experiences that you simply won't find anywhere else."

Theatre

You’ll find plenty of truth-telling in this year’s EIF theatre programme, which sees several playwrights holding a mirror up to the world. In Make It Happen, James Graham explores the state of modern capitalism with a new satire looking back at the greed and hubris that led to the global financial crash of 2008. The play specifically looks at the role of Royal Bank of Scotland and its CEO Fred Goodwin in the crash, although the only cast member to be revealed so far is Brian Cox, who’ll be back on the Scottish stage for the first time in a decade to play the ghost of Adam Smith. 

Other theatre highlights look to be Works and Days, a wordless piece inspired by Vivaldi's The Four Seasons from Belgian theatre collective FC Bergman, and a revival of Faustus in Africa! from Handspring Puppet Company, best known for their extraordinary work on War Horse. This is a reworking of Handspring’s original 1995 production, with William Kentridge helping bring the show to new life with his much-celebrated animation to tell the tale of the title character’s journey of greed and excess while on safari. 

Also look out for Cliff Cardinal’s As You Like It, A Radical Retelling; as the title suggests, it's a bold subversion of the Bard that promises bawdy humor, raw emotion and a bit of audience participation. And if you really want a show with political bite, there’s Cutting the Tightrope, a collection of short plays written in direct response to Arts Council England’s warnings last year that artists shouldn’t be overtly political.

Dance

The highlight of the International Festival’s dance calendar looks to be Scottish Ballet’s Mary, Queen of Scots, which tells the story of the fraught relationship between Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary, a rivalry that ended in blood and betrayal. We’re told the production takes place during a Scottish Renaissance where punk meets haute couture. 

The busy dance lineup also includes Breaking Bach, a show looking at the great composer from a fresh perspective where classical music meets hip-hop and contemporary dance; Figures in Extinction from Nederlands Dans Theater, which we’re told confronts hard truths about humanity's impact on the world and art's meaning in the face of mass destruction; and The Dan Daw Show, a bold and sexy performance from Australian dancer Dan Daw who challenges preconceptions about his disability to explore ideas around bodies, consent and kink. And if you wanna move your own body as well as watch others move theirs, make it to Omar Rajeh and Mia Habis’ Dance People, an outdoor show in the Old College Quad where the line between audience and performer will be distinctly blurred.

Music & Opera

The International Festival kicks off with music, with The Big Singalong at Princes Street Gardens' Ross Bandstand on the opening weekend. This is a free event – Stephen Deazley, artistic director of Edinburgh's Love Music Community Choir, will be leading this mass-sing-a-long. 

As ever, the classical music lineup is completely stacked. You can hear everyone from London Symphony Orchestra to Carnegie Hall's trailblazing youth orchestra NYO2. There are family concerts, a focus on Poland and John Tavener's magnum opus The Veil of the Temple, which will be performed in its full eight-hour glory – don’t worry, you’ll be seated on bean bags and free to come and go across the epic concert.

There’s also world-class Opera in the form of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s classic Orpheus and Eurydice, with this ancient myth of love and death brought to life by Opera Queensland with the help of Australian contemporary circus company Circa. Another opera highlight looks to be Huang Ruo’s reimagining of the Chinese myths in Book of Mountains and Seas. The show blends opera with puppetry designed by Basil Twist, who created the puppets for the Olivier Award-winning My Neighbour Totoro.

This year’s contemporary music programme is considerably slimmer than usual, but we do hope that it will be filled out as August approaches. Of those artists already announced, there’s Scottish singer-songwriter Kathryn Joseph, who’ll be performing songs from her forthcoming album We Were Made Prey; American composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith will be in town with her synth-driven soundscapes; and English jazz musician, saxophonist, spoken word poet, composer and activist Alabaster DePlume brings his five-star new album A Blade Because A Blade Is Whole to the Festival. After her celebrated show at the International Festival last year, bassist and composer Endea Owens is back performing original renditions of jazz standards alongside her own compositions. There’s also a collaboration between Dutch pianist Joep Beving and Dutch cellist Maarten Vos, who’ll be blending classical piano, experimental electronics and avant-garde textures.

There’s a good showing for traditional music. Look out for Norwegian trio Østerlide, Irish fiddle player Aoife Ní Bhriain and Welsh harpist Catrin Finch. There’s also Glasgow string musicians The Kinnaris Quartet, Celtic supergroup Ímar and Poland's VOŁOSI. The festival's press release also teases a new project from three award-winning musicians from Glasgow's music scene; Greg Lawson, Phil Alexander and Mario Caribé (formerly of fusion band Moishe's Bagel).

The above is just a taste of what’s on offer from across the International Festival’s 24 days of world-class opera, dance, music and theatre. For the full programme, head to eif.co.uk