Rewire is delighted to share the first 44 artists and projects for its 15th edition, taking place from 9 to 12 April 2026 across 20+ cultural venues throughout the city of The Hague. This initial announcement offers a glimpse of the musical adventures and encounters that will animate the festival next spring. Bringing together artists who push beyond conventional boundaries, embrace experimentation, and pursue new modes of performance, composition, and collaboration, Rewire 2026 promises four days of sonic exploration. From stalwarts of the experimental avant-garde and defining musicians of our era to bristling new acts and premieres. Tickets are available via rewirefestival.nl/tickets

The festival opens on Thursday 9 April at Amare, where artist and composer Caterina Barbieri presents two premieres of new music. First, she performs in collaboration with ONCEIM, an orchestra of over thirty musicians for whom she has written a new composition. Then she presents another premiere of new music as a solo artist, showcasing her vivid modular synthesis and expanded electro-acoustic formats, accompanied by guest musicians. Also performing are Actress & Suzanne Ciani, an exciting collaboration between composer Suzanne Ciani, an icon and early pioneer of electronic music composition, and producer Actress. Together, they present Concrète Waves. Between Actress's R&B concrète and Ciani's evocative and organic Buchla synthesis, they create a sonic world of bubbling contradictions. 

Rewire’s 15th anniversary edition welcomes several other Netherlands-exclusive concerts, including the return of Oneohtrix Point Never, appearing with visual artist Freeka Tet to present a new audiovisual show based around his newly released and critically acclaimed album Tranquilizer. In another exclusive, legendary innovators Einstürzende Neubauten finally make their debut at Rewire, continuing their lifelong exploration of self-made instruments, unconventional materials, and radical approaches to composition. Rewire is honoured to host a rare performance by Beverly Glenn-Copeland, presenting a set that spans his celebrated catalogue alongside new material from his upcoming album. Glenn-Copeland will be joined by Elizabeth Copeland and additional collaborators, bringing an atmosphere of generosity and deep musical connection to the festival. Also performing is the influential group Tortoise, whose shape-shifting blend of minimalism, post-rock, jazz, and electronics has elated listeners since their self-titled debut in 1994. 

A core part of Rewire over the years has been a drive to bring artists together across generations, genres, disciplines, and geographies. In these zones of cross-pollination and exchange, new ideas and unheard sounds can emerge. A standout cross-genre project at the festival comes from the formidable pairing of Sumac & Moor Mother. Their collaboration fuses Sumac’s crushing, experimental metal with Moor Mother’s incisive spoken word. Also joining the line-up are Jim O’Rourke & Eiko Ishibashi, where two stalwarts of experimental improvised music join together to share their deconstructed orchestral sounds, glitchy electronics, and warm fuzz. Rewire hosts an intergenerational collaboration between poet and performer Katalin Ladik and composer and sound artist Svetlana Maraš. In the world premiere performance of Civilistjävel! & Mayssa Jallad, the icy tech-ambience of producer Civilistjävel!, and the warm, gentle lustre of Lebanese musician and architect Jallad's voice come together as an intriguing contradiction of coexisting forces. Mayssa Jallad also performs with her trio at the festival, presenting new music. 

More collaborations lie in wait at Rewire 2026, among them: Joanne Robertson, whose newest album Blurrr has been causing a stir, is joined by long-time collaborator Oliver Coates, a cellist, composer, and producer, to bring the album to life in a rare collaborative performance. The festival also hosts a collaboration between Cara Tolmie & Rian Treanor where Treanor's crisp, bassy, and minimal productions form the bedrock upon which Tolmie builds pillars of sound with her voice. In another Dutch premiere, composer, musician, and producer Raül Refree & Niño de Elche, a key contemporary flamenco figure, perform their dreamlike electronic reimagining of flamenco and beyond, in a collision of tradition and futurity.

At Rewire 2026, Los Thuthanaka – the sibling duo of Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton – take listeners into a parallel world of indescribable texture and rhythm, creating a collage of hopeful mayhem that draws on ancestral wisdom and traditional sounds while sounding completely new. Joshua Chuquimia Crampton also performs his incomparable experimental guitar music at this year's edition, where crashing waves of grunge maximalism and layers of distorted riffs coalesce as a new form of "power ambient." Another distinct artist working with ways of reimagining traditional guitar joins the line-up: a fresh link in the timeworn chain of post-blues instrumental solo fingerstyle guitarists, Hayden Pedigo performs twice at the festival – solo and with a string accompaniment.

Another project making its world premiere this year at Rewire is Beatrice Dillon & Explore Ensemble, who present together a major new composition by Dillon that incorporates her digital synthesis with the ensemble's acoustic instrumentation: among piano inflections and minimal string lines, an ecosystem of organic, murmuring sounds comes alive in this Rewire-commissioned piece. Pursuing a similarly meditative vein, French composer and vocalist Malibu will perform at the festival this year. Her euphoric ambient music muses on cities, seas, and the self, pillowing these themes in pianos and woodwinds, strings and pads, with hints of club and pop sensibilities.

A trailblazer of the underground dance scene for the last 15 years, Blawan (live) needs little introduction. The producer and DJ, who just released his latest album SickElixir on XL, performs his fuzzed-out club music full of clamouring beats and distortion-drenched bass as a special live set at Rewire 2026. Dave Huismans, formerly known as 2562 and A Made Up Sound, presents the world premiere live performance of his ex_libris project as a special A/V show in collaboration with graphic and motion designer Bernie van Vlijmen.

At Rewire 2016, Xiu Xiu, presented what is now considered a cult classic performance: Xiu Xiu Plays The Music of Twin Peaks. 10 years on, Rewire proudly invites Xiu Xiu back into a Lynchian world of intrigue, darkness, and monstrous strangeness in the form of Eraserhead x Xiu Xiu. This intense homage to a lost idol delivers a singular tribute to David Lynch’s masterpiece debut film. Through field recordings, custom-built instruments, organ, modular synths, voice, electrical interference, and musique concrète, Xiu Xiu offer a radical reinterpretation of Eraserhead's iconic soundtrack, accompanied by evocative visuals.

Actress, composer, songwriter, producer, and cult performer Juana Molina just released the eighth full-length of her prolific career, DOGA. She performs her one-of-a-kind art pop at the festival. The Peruvian-born artist Alejandra Cárdenas creates music that bursts with eagerness and playfulness. Formerly releasing under the moniker Ale Hop, in A Body Like a Home, Cárdenas performs under her own name, offering confessional songs that are moving and personal while also feeling abstract and uncanny. Cárdenas will be joined live by Gibrana Cervantes on violin and Ignacio Briceño on guitar at Rewire 2026.

Also joining the line-up is ganavya: a vocalist and composer whose transcendent and fluent music brings the Hindu storytelling tradition of harikatha into the twenty-first century. Listen closely as her sincere vocals lead into a warm world of song where jazz, traditional, and folk instruments concatenate and murmur together softly. The Indonesian duo KUNTARI reinterpret and create new forms from traditional instrumentation. Resurrecting tribal Indonesian rhythms from the sixteenth century, they blend traditional sounds from their homeland with field-recorded soundscapes and pulsing somatic rhythms to create new industrial sounds.

Anyone who was there to witness their performance at Rewire 2022 can attest to the intimate curiosity and generous sonic experimentations at the core of JJJJJerome Ellis's practice. For our 15th edition, Ellis performs their experimental jazz, spoken word, and improvised musique concrète in the halls of Lutherse Kerk – a place where time has a way of standing still. Bridging the gap between traditional British folk and contemporary lo-fi production, the folkloric trip-hop group Milkweed will perform at the festival. Part slacker-trad and part crust-academic, their explorations in folk, ritual, and tradition echo with haunting resonances.

Smerz also join the line-up, bringing their brand of off-centre electronic warble pop. Smerz deftly use nostalgia to paint their songs with a wispy curiosity, but their music is anything but backward-looking: they transform familiar sounds into new forms, birthing yet-heard kinds of poppy sensitivity and open-hearted experimentalism. james K is a key figure in New York's underground scene; her brand of soft shoegazy pop and undulating trip-hop sits gracefully atop a cushion of expansive ambience and broad bass – hear it at Rewire 2026. From softly sung country ballads and jangling slacker rock to warm lo-fi folk and gleaming dream pop, Fine offers a trove of hypnagogic harmonies. She performs her dreamy music at the festival

Raunchy yet thoughtful, bassy yet subtle, London-based duo Tracey create an anomaly of sounds. Their mutant R&B is playfully dancey and bouncy yet it has lots of moments of sincerity and sensitivity too; listen to their Dutch premiere at this year’s edition. People can also expect an explorative and sensitive approach to blissful minimal dub-techno at Purelink with Mika Oki. They perform with multidisciplinary artist Mika Oki, who adds radiant scenography and kinetic visuals to the show. 

Armand Hammer are confirmed for Rewire 2026. The New York City duo of rappers Elucid and billy woods just released Mercy, where legendary hip hop producer The Alchemist paves soulful sample-heavy cuts for the duo to tread on joyfully. Their sound pays homage to old school rap yet is truly of-the-moment, extrapolating east-coast hip hop flavours out towards infinity. billy woods performs elsewhere at the festival as part of a rare collaborative performance with ØKSE – an international all-star team of avant-garde musicians made up of drummer Savannah Harris, saxophonist Mette Rasmussen, electronic musician Val Jeanty, and Petter Eldh on bass, synths, and sampler. 

Panning the camera closer to home, Rewire happily announces that hip hop misfits La Rat are joining the line-up. Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Goya van der Heijden and producer Tobias Jansen are La Rat. With pitch-shifted vocals accompanied by Madlib-esque beats, they take well-loved hip hop sounds and drench them in the murky Dutch canals. Experimentalist traversers of noisy jazz sounds, WRENS is a quartet made up of musicians Ryan Easter, Jason Nazary, Elias Stemeseder, and Lester St. Louis. At the festival, hear their noise-encrusted free jazz which is rich in diabolic rap sonics and mutant hip-hop new-jazz sounds.

For Animal, Ash Fure plays before a rig of speaker cones, manipulating them with a large sheet of polycarbonate – which acts as a reflective surface that filters sound and light simultaneously in this kinetic, visceral, and frenetic audiovisual performance. The Glasgow-based artist KAVARI presents a live A/V show at Rewire 2026. Her thrilling combination of unconventional club sounds has cemented her as a key figure in the UK underground.

Fluttering autoharp notes, softly plucked guitar, and shimmering ambience cascade around Irish artist Hilary Woods's angelic and powerful voice. She performs her acclaimed new album Night CRIÚ at the festival. Working with similar sonic curiosity and expression is vocalist and multidisciplinary artist feeo, who joins the line-up. On her debut album Goodness on AD 93, wrinkled synth lines are bit-crushed into insectoid murmurs, and organ chords are stretched out into boundless waves of ambience.

While you can certainly expect to hear some of the most distinct and new voices in experimental pop at Rewire, it is also a festival which pays homage to the deep instrumental tradition of underground music. Apparitions make their European debut at Rewire 2026. A holy trinity of drums, guitar, and modular synthesis combine to create the unholy and glorious wall of cataclysmic percussion, distortion-drenched guitars, and droning sound. Also joining the line-up is Flur, a London-based experimental jazz trio who create sonic worlds of macro-minimal spiritual jazz.

This is but a glimpse at the first of many more artists and projects expected at Rewire 2026. Keep an eye out for the forthcoming announcements where more artists will join the line-up and news will be shared about Rewire’s context programme, installations, workshops, and film programme.

The first artists & project for Rewire 2026:

Alejandra Cárdenas ‘A Body Like Home’
Actress & Suzanne Ciani ‘Concrète Waves’
Apparitions
Armand Hammer
Ash Fure ‘Animal’
Beatrice Dillon & Explore Ensemble world premiere
Beverly Glenn-Copeland with special guest Elizabeth Copeland
Blawan (live)
Cara Tolmie & Rian Treanor
Caterina Barbieri world premiere
Caterina Barbieri with ONCEIM world premiere
Civilistjävel! & Mayssa Jallad world premiere
Einstürzende Neubauten*
Eraserhead x Xiu Xiu
ex_libris world premiere
Feeo
Fine
Flur
Ganavya
Hayden Pedigo
Hilary Woods
JJJJJerome Ellis
James K
Jim O’Rourke & Eiko Ishibashi
Joanne Robertson & Oliver Coates
Joshua Chuquimia Crampton
Juana Molina
Katalin Ladik & Svetlana Maraš
KAVARI (live)
KUNTARI
La Rat
Los Thuthanaka
Malibu
Mayssa Jallad
Milkweed
ØKSE & billy woods world premiere
Oneohtrix Point Never*
Purelink with Mika Oki
Raül Refree & Niño de Elche
Smerz
Sumac & Moor Mother
Tortoise
Tracey
WRENS

Tickets
A limited number of 3-Day Passes, and 4-Day Passes are still available, with the 4-Day Pass offering a €15 discount on Thursday tickets. Day Passes for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are now available as well. With tickets selling fast, make sure to book yours soon via rewirefestival.nl/tickets

*For both the Oneohtrix Point Never concert on Friday 10 April and the Einstürzende Neubauten concert on Sunday 12 April, a Plus Ticket for the price of €4,50 (including service and transaction costs) is required. Read further here.