Next year's French festival to spotlight performing arts beyond K-culture hype
The Avignon Festival, one of the world’s most vibrant performing arts festivals, announced Wednesday that it has selected Korean as its official guest language for the 2026 edition.
This is the first time an Asian language has been chosen as the guest language.
“The Avignon Festival welcomes an Asian language that is now enjoying worldwide popularity. South Korean culture fascinates the world: K-pop, cinema, series, literature. But beyond this soft power, we want to show the richness of Korean performing arts,” the Avignon Festival said in its announcement on Facebook on Tuesday.
Held annually in July in the historic city of Avignon, the festival, founded in 1947, attracts more than 100,000 visitors and showcases performances spanning theater, dance, music and interdisciplinary works.
The guest language initiative was introduced by current artistic director Tiago Rodrigues to spotlight the arts and culture of a specific linguistic region. The previous guest languages were English (2023), Spanish (2024) and Arabic (2025).
With the guest language selected, a slew of Korean theater works are expected to be invited to the festival’s IN (main) program. The Korea Arts Management Service, as the official partner, is working closely with the Avignon Festival on a co-curated program.
Whereas the OFF section is open to independent participation, the IN program is curated by the festival. This will mark the first time in 28 years that Korean works are officially invited to the IN program, following the 1998 “Desire of Asia (Desir d’Asie)” project.
Rodrigues’ decision follows his visit to Korea in October 2023, when he attended the Seoul Performing Arts Festival, organized by KAMS. During the trip, he also performed his work "By Heart," a piece centered on memorizing poetry.
"There’s something about the power of trying to translate, trying to understand the other, which is extremely important nowadays in theater — but also in society,” Rodrigues said in the 2023 interview with The Korea Herald.
“This is a rare opportunity to share the emotional depth, experimental energy and spirit of Korean performing arts with the world,” said Kim Jang-ho, president of KAMS.
“Through continued exchange between Avignon and SPAF, we aim to strengthen the international ecosystem for Korean performing arts and expand cultural dialogue through the medium of language.”
hwangdh@heraldcorp.com
