Sonica 2026: Glasgow's pioneering arts and music festival returns

Fans of music and art, it's time to get freaky. Sonica, Glasgow’s much-loved festival of arts and music, returns 24 September to 4 October for its 12th edition. Self-billed as “the biennial festival for curious minds and adventurous spirits”, Sonica 2026 will showcase over 170 artists and musicians from 21 countries across the globe. Performances intersecting music, technology and visual art will take place in myriad corners of the city, with venues including historic buildings, churches, galleries, and various other unusual spaces around town.

Pollok House takeover with Auntie Flo, Konx-om-Pax

We’re told the heart of this year’s Sonica will be a festival-within-a-festival taking place within Pollok House, the grand mansion within the lush and leafy confines of Pollok Park that’s been closed to the public since 2023 due to renovation work. Renamed The Listening House, Pollok House will host various immersive installations, including singing sculptures, wandering sonic experiments, mechanical birds, and audiovisual environments, across three floors of the mansion and in its gardens.

At The Listening House you’ll find artists like DJ Brian d’Souza aka Auntie Flo who’s back collaborating with flora and fungi for Plants Can Dance, a sonic art piece that uses biosonification technologies that turn signals from the plants into synth compositions. Electronic musician Konx-om-Pax – aka Tom Scholefield – will also be there with Colour Sound, an immersive installation shaped by his experience of synaesthesia. Listening House will also feature the “monumental” video installation Mundus Inversus from collective AES+F. We’re told their artwork “updates medieval imagery of the world turned upside down for an age of grotesque inequality and social collapse”.

They've Got Your Eyes by Rachel Maclean

Another focal point will be Buchanan Galleries, which will be the site of a new installation from Glasgow-based artist and filmmaker Rachel Maclean. Titled They’ve Got Your Eyes, this is described by Sonica as an “AI-driven commission” and we’re told it’ll feature “four artworks that will take shoppers out of their expected reality, asking them to pause, consider or listen”. Surprise robotic sculptures that follow shoppers around are going to be involved somehow, and it sounds freaky and fascinating. We also love the sound of Ceci est Mon Coeur (This is My Heart) from artists BLIESBRO. Taking place at Offline in Govanhill, this interactive performance will see audience members wear illuminating capes and headsets that light up progressively as a narrative of love and self-acceptance is told amid a swirl of light projections.

Dinos Chapman opens festival, Suzanne Ciani's Scottish debut closes

The festival’s opening event is a new audiovisual presentation from Dinos Chapman, who in the 90s was dubbed Britart's enfant terrible. We’re told to expect a work that begins with idyllic visions of the British countryside before collapsing into disturbing psychedelic hallucinations. Sonica closes, meanwhile, with the first-ever Scottish performance from legendary American electronic composer Suzanne Ciani. Titled Improvisation on Four Sequences, it’ll see Ciani drawing out the emotional and sonic possibilities of the Buchla synthesiser, a piece of equipment she’s been exploring since the 1970s.

Paraorchestra | image: Maarten Mooijman

Other highlights look to be Thalassa, a new audiovisual performance from the mighty SHHE, inspired by the Dundee artist’s thwarted attempts to record the sounds of the Mediterranean sea while on a residency in Egypt; a performance from experimental drone choir NYX,  sure to sound incredible at their show within the cavernous surroundings of St Ninian’s Church; Hymnal, a new live performance from the legendary experimental musician Lyra Pramuk, which will blend the music of her religious upbringing with the ecstatic collectivism of Berlin nightlife; and a concert from Paraorchestra, the UK’s pioneering integrated orchestra of disabled and non-disabled musicians, who’ll give a rare rendition of Steve Reich’s monumental Music for 18 Musicians, with Charles Hazlewood conducting.

Sonica also pays tribute to the great David Bowie on the tenth anniversary of his death, with The Royal Scottish National Orchestra performing Philip Glass’s Symphony No.4 “Heroes”, the great American composer’s orchestral response to Bowie’s landmark 1977 album recorded during his fruitful Berlin era.

Cathie Boyd, the founding Artistic Director of Sonica's producers Cryptic, said: “We are thrilled for audiences to discover this year’s Sonica Glasgow festival… above all, we are proud to present the highest quality audiovisual work from exceptional artists from both Scotland and around the globe whose work challenges perceptions, sparks imagination and truly ravishes the senses.”

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Sonica 2026 takes place from 24 Sep to 4 Oct at venues across Glasgow. For the full lineup, head to sonic-a.co.uk