Manipulate Festival reveals 2026 programme

Next year’s edition of Manipulate, we’re told, will see the animation, puppetry and visual theatre festival deliver one of its most ambitious programmes yet. “We are thrilled to bring back Manipulate Festival in 2026, bigger and better, working in partnership with more organisations across Edinburgh than ever before,” says Manipulate Arts artistic director Dawn Taylor. Some of those venues and organisations include Summerhall, Traverse Theatre, Dance Base, WHALE Arts and Out of the Blue Drill Hall, as well as new venues to Manipulate like Filmhouse – which will host an expanded animation programme – and Lyra in Craigmillar. In terms of shows, Taylor says to expect an eclectic array of work covering a wide range of themes, from “our relationship with time, to the awesome power and beauty of nature, and the enduring legacies of colonialism.” The festival runs from 4-10 Feb 2026.

Brand New Shows from Scotland-based Theatre Makers and Performers

Ten new live performances come to this 19th edition of Manipulate, and half of these shows will be brand new works from Scottish and Scotland-based creatives. For example, Edinburgh-based performance artist Mamoru Iriguchi teams up with Glasgow production company Vanishing Point for the world premiere of Size Matters. Described as a “wildly inventive blend of puppetry, science and surrealism”, the show features Iriguchi and Julia Darrouy, who’ll be joined on stage by puppet versions of themselves, and we’re told they’ll “take a mind-bending journey through time, size and perception to explore how we convey the importance of the things in life that feel big or small.”

Another homegrown highlight looks to be Tell Me, a narrative-driven circus piece from the Sadiq Ali Company (led by Edinburgh-native Sadiq Ali), which promises to bring a fresh perspective on HIV. The show features Chinese Pole and aerial artistry, and draws on Ali’s own lived experience as a queer circus artist and HIV activist. And before it goes on tour across the UK, Julia Taudevin and Kieran Hurley’s Edinburgh production company Disaster Plan will premiere clown show Auntie Empire, which is described as “an outrageous, dark satire on Britannia and the grotesque absurdity of imperial self-regard”. Taudevin stars as the eponymous Auntie, and we’re told to be braced for bouffon, comedy, and copious audience interaction.

New Scottish animation competition

Manipulate will also rock up at Edinburgh arthouse cinema Filmhouse with a programme of imaginative animated storytelling from all over the world, and the festival will also be launching its new competition to find the best in Scottish animation, which will be chosen from a programme of Scottish animation made over the last three years, titled Animated Scottish Shorts. There are also programmes dedicated to Animated Horror Shorts, Animated Documentary Shorts and Animated African Shorts. The latter is curated in partnership with the Jali Collective, a new programming group that aims to widen access to African cinema in Scotland. Also included in Manipulate's animation programme is a double bill from animation genius Don Hertzfeldt: his dark, poignant, hilarious masterpiece It’s Such a Beautiful Day and his new short, ME, which has been described as “a 22-minute musical odyssey about trauma, technology, and the retreat of humanity into itself.”

The above is just a taste of what to expect at Manipulate next year when it returns from 4 to 10 February. Get the full details at manipulatearts.co.uk/festival