Rewire Festival 2026: A Guide to The Hague's Most Adventurous Four Days

There is a particular kind of anticipation that builds around Rewire Festival each spring. It is not the hype of a mainstream festival announcement or the casual scroll of a what's-on listing. It is the slow realisation, as the lineup fills in across the weeks, that something genuinely considered is being assembled, a programme where every name is there for a reason, and where the connections between them tell a story about where music is headed.

Rewire Festival 2026 marks the 15th anniversary of one of the most respected experimental music festivals in Europe. Running from 9 to 12 April across venues throughout The Hague, this edition is the most extensive the festival has ever staged. Oneohtrix Point Never, Kim Gordon, Einsturzende Neubauten, Caterina Barbieri, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, and dozens more will perform across concert halls, galleries, churches, and clubs in the city centre. Explore Rewire Festival on Outhere and discover more festivals, concerts, and cultural experiences happening across the Netherlands and beyond.

Most of the festival has already sold out. Four-day passes, three-day passes, and Friday through Sunday day tickets are gone. Only Thursday day passes remain in limited quantities. That near-total sellout is not just a logistical note, it is a signal of how seriously this festival is taken, and how far its reputation has grown since its founding in 2012.

This guide covers what to expect from the 2026 edition: the lineup, the venues, the context programme, and the practical details you need whether you are still deciding on a Thursday pass or already planning your four days.

The festival treats experimental music not as a genre but as an approach, a willingness to cross boundaries between electronic, acoustic, industrial, ambient, jazz, noise, dance, film, and performance. The result is a programme where a pioneering synthesist shares the same weekend as a metal-drone collaboration and a Kenyan ambient producer.

The other thing that sets Rewire apart is its relationship with The Hague itself. This is not a festival that builds a temporary site and operates within it. Rewire uses the city's existing infrastructure, the Amare performing arts centre, the experimental Grey Space in The Middle, the bookshop-turned-performance-space Page Not Found, West Den Haag's contemporary art galleries, Filmhuis Den Haag's cinema screens, and a rotation of churches, clubs, and public spaces. Attending Rewire means moving through The Hague, and the city becomes part of the experience.

After 15 editions, that model has proven itself. Rewire has been consistently cited by Resident Advisor, Crack Magazine, The Wire, and The Quietus as a benchmark for adventurous programming. The 2026 edition is the largest programme to date.

The Rewire 2026 lineup resists neat categorisation, but certain clusters emerge. Understanding them helps navigate a dense programme.

Oneohtrix Point Never, is the kind of artist who redefined what electronic music could do with narrative and texture, and his Rewire appearance is one of the festival's headline draws. Alongside him, Caterina Barbieri performs with ONCEIM, the Paris-based large ensemble, in a collaboration that translates her modular synthesizer work into orchestral scale. Moritz von Oswald, the Berlin dub techno architect behind Basic Channel and Rhythm & Sound, brings a different electronic lineage entirely.

Laurel Halo appears in collaboration with visual artist Julian Charriere, a pairing that positions sound within a broader environmental and sculptural practice. And KMRU, the Kenyan-born ambient and field recording artist now based in Berlin, continues a run of work that has made him one of the most compelling voices in electronic music under 30. Several of these artists are also featured on Outhere, discover more about their upcoming performances across Europe.

Kim Gordon needs little introduction, but her solo work since leaving Sonic Youth has been its own project, rawer, more direct, deliberately uncomfortable. Einsturzende Neubauten, the Berlin industrial pioneers, have been active for over four decades and still perform with an intensity that makes most younger bands sound polite.

Smerz, the Oslo duo, sit at the intersection of pop, noise, and electronic production, their live shows are unpredictable in the best way. For those drawn to heavier territory, Sumac and Moor Mother perform together in a collaboration that fuses Sumac's metal-drone weight with Moor Mother's poetry and vocal presence. Aaron Dilloway rounds out this cluster with his confrontational noise sets.

Jim O'Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi perform together, two artists whose individual work spans experimental rock, composition, film scoring, and improvisation. Supersilent, the Norwegian improv trio, collaborate with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, an artist whose work uses audio forensics and sound evidence in political and legal contexts. It is one of the festival's most intellectually provocative pairings.

Actress and Suzanne Ciani, Darren Cunningham's abstract electronic productions meeting the pioneering Buchla synthesist, is the kind of collaboration that could only happen at a festival like Rewire. These are not tour dates. They are one-off encounters.

Nihiloxica, the Ugandan-European percussion ensemble, brings a rhythmic intensity that bridges Kampala's club scene with European experimental contexts. AsianDopeBoys and Civilistjavel! with Mayssa Jallad extend the programme's geographic reach.

Chunky Move, the Australian dance company, presents U>N>I>T>E>D, bringing choreographic work into the festival's frame. And Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the Canadian singer, songwriter, and trans elder whose late-career rediscovery has been one of the most moving stories in contemporary music, performs in what promises to be one of the weekend's most emotionally resonant sets.

Rewire runs from Thursday afternoon through Sunday evening. Rather than an exhaustive schedule, these are curated picks for each day, the sets worth building your day around.

Thursday is the one day with tickets still available, and it is a strong entry point. Beverly Glenn-Copeland performs, an artist whose music, lost for decades and rediscovered through a collector community, has become one of the most celebrated reissue stories of the last ten years. Shapednoise brings a harder industrial edge. Thursday's shorter hours (the festival opens at 14:00 and closes at 22:30) make it a focused, digestible day, a way to experience Rewire without committing to the full marathon.

If you have not got tickets yet, Thursday is your window. Limited day passes remain at Rewire official website or at Ticketswap.

Friday is where the festival's collaborative spirit comes into full focus. Caterina Barbieri with ONCEIM is the kind of large-scale production that Rewire can programme because it treats these moments as commissions, not bookings. Smerz brings their unpredictable live energy. And the context programme runs its conversations and workshops throughout the day, offering a different register between performances.

Saturday is the festival's heaviest day by reputation. Oneohtrix Point Never performs. Kim Gordon performs. Einsturzende Neubauten perform. Any one of those would anchor a festival night. Together, they represent three distinct approaches to challenging, uncompromising music, electronic composition, post-punk abrasion, and industrial construction. Supersilent with Lawrence Abu Hamdan is the one to prioritise if you want something you will not see anywhere else.

Sunday brings the festival to a close with a slightly earlier finish (22:00). Jim O'Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi perform, a pair whose combined catalogue is vast and whose live collaborations are rare in European settings. Actress and Suzanne Ciani is another Sunday highlight, two artists from entirely different electronic traditions meeting in real time. The film programme at Filmhuis Den Haag also runs through Sunday, with screenings including Carlos Casas's Krakatoa.

Rewire has always been more than concerts. The 2026 context programme is built around four axes: the politics and poetics of staging sound, further listening, times and territories, and instrumental ecologies. Each axis generates conversations, lectures, audio walks, workshops, and listening sessions that run alongside the music programme.

The framing is deliberately political, the programme addresses listening and sonic practice in what it describes as "times of ongoing war, colonialism, and environmental collapse." This is not a festival that avoids difficult subjects. The context programme is where those subjects are engaged directly, and it is worth building time for it into your schedule alongside the performances.

Events take place at venues like Page Not Found and West Den Haag, and many are included in the festival pass.

The Hague's main performing arts centre and Rewire's primary hub. Multiple concert halls and theatre stages under one roof. This is where the largest-scale performances happen.

An experimental space that functions as both club and gallery. Grey Space is where Rewire's more intimate and boundary-pushing sets tend to land, expect tighter rooms, louder volumes, and a different energy from the concert hall programme.

A bookshop and performance space that hosts readings, small concerts, and context programme events. Page Not Found represents the literary and discursive side of Rewire.

A contemporary art institute that hosts installations and cross-disciplinary projects. West Den Haag is where Rewire's visual art programme lives.

The city's arthouse cinema, hosting Rewire's film programme, including screenings of Gianluca and Massimiliano De Serio's Canone effimero and Carlos Casas's Krakatoa.

The venues are distributed across The Hague's city centre, and moving between them is part of the experience. Most are within walking distance. Bring comfortable shoes and allow time between sets, the transitions through the city are part of what makes Rewire feel different from a single-site festival.

• Thursday 9 April: 14:00-22:30
• Friday 10 April: 12:00-00:00
• Saturday 11 April: 12:00-00:00
• Sunday 12 April: 12:00-22:00

The reality: most passes are sold out. Four-day passes, three-day passes (Friday-Sunday), and individual Friday, Saturday, and Sunday day passes are all gone. Thursday day passes are the only tickets still available, in limited quantities. Purchase at rewirefestival.nl/tickets.

If you already have your pass, the programme is deep enough that scheduling conflicts are inevitable. Prioritise the one-off collaborations, those are the sets you cannot catch on any other tour date.

The Hague is 50 minutes by train from Amsterdam Centraal and 25 minutes from Rotterdam Centraal. Den Haag Centraal station is the main hub, with most Rewire venues within a 15-minute walk. Trains run frequently and late services are available on Friday and Saturday nights.

If you are coming from outside the Netherlands, Schiphol airport connects directly to The Hague by train (30 minutes). Rotterdam The Hague Airport is closer but has fewer international connections.

Most venues are clustered in the city centre. Walking is the best way to get between them. The Hague also has an extensive tram network if you need to cover longer distances. HTM operates the local public transport.

Rewire Festival is one of the cultural highlights of April in the Netherlands, and one of the reasons the month is worth planning around. If you are attending, explore the full April in the Netherlands cultural guide on Outhere for more events happening across Dutch cities that same week, from exhibitions to nightlife. If Rewire has introduced you to artists like Oneohtrix Point Never, Kim Gordon, or Caterina Barbieri, follow them on Outhere to see where they are performing next across Europe.

For more context on what is happening this month, read "April in the Netherlands: Events, Festivals & Cultural Highlights 2026" and "April in Europe: Cultural Guide to the Month's Best Events 2026" on the Outhere blog. Outhere is a platform that helps you discover arts, culture, and experiences worldwide, from experimental music in The Hague to dance in Rome, film in Nijmegen, and everything between. Find your next cultural moment on Outhere.