The Auckland Arts Festival is the city's premier international arts event and one of the largest arts festivals in Aotearoa, held biennially in March across venues throughout Tāmaki Makaurau. Over three weeks, it brings together theatre, dance, music, opera, circus, visual art and interdisciplinary performance from New Zealand and around the world in a programme that reflects the ambition, diversity and creative energy of New Zealand's largest city.
Since its founding, the festival has established itself as a major platform for both international work and New Zealand artists, with a particular commitment to Māori and Pacific voices that reflects Auckland's unique cultural identity. The programme spans everything from large-scale productions at the Aotea Centre and Town Hall to intimate performances, free outdoor events and site-specific work that uses the city itself as a stage.
For arts lovers in Auckland and visitors from across the country and beyond, the Auckland Arts Festival is one of the essential events on the New Zealand cultural calendar. It is the festival that reminds us what a city can be when it commits fully to the arts — generous, surprising, challenging and deeply alive to the world around it.