From Angélica Liddell to Emma Vilarasau: The 15 essentials of Grec 2026

In 1976, the first edition of the Grec Festival of Barcelona was held. And this 2026, the city's best-known performing arts festival reaches its 50th edition. Fifty years in which our city has committed to spreading the culture made at home, but has also shown us new European trends by bringing artists, works, and productions that have triumphed in other parts of the world.

The Grec 2026 program is full of very interesting proposals: from the premiere with the classic by Bertolt Brecht by Marta Pazos in L'òpera de tres rals, to the most groundbreaking theater by Angélica Liddell. As its director, Leticia Martín, told us, this year there is a trend in the programming that invites us to look to the past to reflect on the present.

Theater, dance, music, and circus come together in this very special anniversary that, for the first time, will feature the collaboration of a space as mythical and emblematic as the Sagrada Familia which, this year, is also celebrating the Gaudí Year. In the basilica, we will be able to enjoy Arrels de llum, a free concert in which the Cor Cererols, Marc Díaz, Lídia Pujol, and Maria Arnal will participate.

1. L'òpera de tres rals

• Where: Teatre Grec
• When: From June 29 to July 1

Marta Pazos and Dani Espasa join forces to inaugurate the festival in style with the text by Bertolt Brecht and the music by Kurt Weill. Pazos, known for her great visual power on stage, signs a show that promises to be an aesthetic feast, without losing an iota of the original mordancy of the work. The plot places us in a marginal and Victorian London to narrate the story of Mackie the Knife, a character who illegally marries the daughter of the king of beggars and whose story interweaves a Marxist critique of the capitalist system. This large-format production has been chosen to commemorate the 50th anniversary of both the Grec and the Teatre Lliure.

2. L'Albada

• Where: At the Teatre Biblioteca de Catalunya
• When: From June 25 to July 30

Oriol Broggi directs this text by Jaume Viñas, which comes to life ten years after its conception at the hands of a company of eleven actors. The plot places us in the midst of the effervescence of the preparations for the Barcelona '92 Olympic Games, where Alba, a History student, undertakes an investigation into her origins. What begins as an academic work becomes a labyrinth of family secrets that directly connects the Civil War and the post-war period with the Olympic euphoria. A choral work that sends a message against oblivion and the silence inherited between generations.

3. La Ruta

• Where: Teatre Akadèmia
• When: From June 17 to July 5

The company La Ruta 40 celebrates its 15 years of trajectory in style: with playwright Lluïsa Cunillé and director Carlota Subirós. The play transports us to a desolate landscape marked by an abandoned road after the closure of a quarry. There, three men full of wounds, silences, and universal enigmas are forced to coexist and confront essential questions about their own existence. A top-level reunion between Cunillé and Subirós that promises suggestive theater, shared doubts, and an enormous poetic charge.

4. La truita

• Where: Teatre Poliorama
• When: From June 27 to October 18

Under the direction of Ferran Utzet and adapted to Catalan by Carles Batlle, this brilliant text by French author Baptiste Amann arrives in Barcelona. The play features a cast led by Emma Vilarasau and Jordi Boixaderas and places us at a family meal that takes place to celebrate the father's birthday. Here, in an apparently everyday setting, there will be an announcement that will change everything... Originally structured in three acts (starter, main course, and dessert), La truita is a play with emotional ups and downs where everything the family has kept silent for years threatens to come to light in the most visceral way.

5. El retrat de Dorian Gray

• Where: Teatre Romea
• When: From June 30 to August 2

Marc Rosich writes and directs this original reinterpretation of Oscar Wilde's classic, presented in a musical theater format. Actress Àngels Gonyalons stars in a tour de force, as she steps into Wilde's shoes to defend his work from the criticisms of the time, but also embodies all the characters in the novel: from the young Dorian and his pact with the devil to maintain eternal youth, to the depraved Lord Henry. The performance will be accompanied by a male vocal trio and a string quintet with original music by Jordi Cornudella, to tell us a story that, today, seems more relevant than ever: the importance of aesthetics and the cult of the ego.

6. Grans bardisses

• Where: Teatre Lliure de Montjuïc
• When: From July 1 to 3

Among the best works of Grec 2026, we must also highlight the winner of the Quim Masó 2025 Award: Grans bardisses. It is a proposal written and directed by Llàtzer Garcia that presents an honest and human portrait of absence. The story brings together three sisters (played by the trio formed by Anna Alarcón, Clàudia Benito, and Carlota Olcina) in an inhospitable refuge built by their father, whose name is Grans bardisses. The piece is conceived in the purest style of a Chekhov story: a silence that will explode after a completely unexpected twist. A play that invites us to face the ghosts of the past.

7. Kulunka Trilogy

• Where: Teatre Condal
• When: From July 1 to August 2

The Kulunka company presents a trilogy of its shows this Grec 2026 at the Teatre Condal. This company is well known for its shows of mask theater, poetry, and silence. After having been part of the festival in previous years, this edition offers us the opportunity to discover three stories that move between drama and comedy without the need to articulate a single word:

• André y Dorine: From July 1 to 9, we will be able to discover the moving love story of an elderly couple shaken by the advance of illness and the weight of oblivion.
• Solitudes: From July 10 to 19, we will enjoy this reflection on old age, prejudices, and the need for affection of a widowed grandfather who ends up finding companionship in a street prostitute.
• Forever: Concluding the trilogy, from July 22 to August 2, we will be able to enjoy this work that addresses with irony and tenderness the lack of communication and contradictions of a family. A show that won the Max 2024 award for Best Direction.

8. Seppuku. The funeral of Mishima or the pleasure of dying

• Where: At the Teatre Lliure
• When: From July 24 to 26

The most radical and ceremonial ritual of Angélica Liddell arrives at Grec Barcelona. The creator from Figueres, National Theater Award 2025, returns to the festival with one of the most extreme and anticipated proposals of the summer. Liddell moves away from any dramatic convention to sign a high-impact scenic poem inspired by the samurai code Hagakure and the figure of the writer Yukio Mishima, who planned his own ritual suicide in 1975. This show is groundbreaking even in its schedule: it will take place on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 4:45 AM, with a duration of 120 minutes. It promises to be a mystical and provocative experience that considers the end of life as the most sincere act of human freedom.

9. SPAfrica at the Centre de les Arts Lliures

• Where: Centre de les Arts Lliures
• When: July 7 and 8

The Studio Julian Hetzel and the creator Ntando Cele bring to Grec one of the most provocative and conceptual multidisciplinary proposals of the season. Through a mix of theater, music, and video, the work presents SPAfrica, the first "empathic drink" on the market: bottled water from sub-Saharan Africa that is exported to Europe as a luxury product. The business twist comes when, in the opposite direction, Europe sends to Africa the tears of grief professionals who cry for the suffering of migration. A fierce critique full of black humor that denounces how rich countries exploit Africa's resources and trade with the bad conscience of European consumers.

10. Nosaltres mortals at the Teatre Eòlia

• Where: Teatre Eòlia
• When: From July 3 to 12

Another of the great works of Grec 2026 is this piece of documentary theater with a feminist perspective on oblivion in prisons. Sara Sors signs a journey through time that connects the reality of current women's prisons in Spain with the origin of the female penitentiary system in the 18th century. Through an integration of text and audiovisual language, Nosaltres Mortals gives voice to real and fictionalized testimonies to raise uncomfortable questions: how is isolation experienced and what social punishment do women drag even after serving their sentence? A poetic work that was born thanks to one of the Barcelona Awards scholarships.

11. La fortaleza at the Lliure de Gràcia

• Where: Teatre Lliure de Gràcia
• When: July 9 and 10

Lucía Carballal directs Natalia Huarte, Mamen Camacho and Eva Rufo in La fortaleza, a contemporary dialogue with the classic El castillo de Lindabridis by Calderón de la Barca. This work has been co-produced by the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico and uses as a mirror the Calderonian princess who travels in a flying castle to inherit a kingdom. Carballal constructs a piece of autofiction about her own experience: the search for an absent father, an architect, through the buildings he left standing. A reflection on material inheritances, emotional heritage and the validity of tradition in our days.

12. Arrels de llum

• Where: Basílica de la Sagrada Familia
• When: July 17

For the first time in the 50-year history of Grec Barcelona, the Sagrada Familia joins as a stage. This year, we will be able to enjoy a free concert that unites music, architecture and spirituality to pay tribute to Gaudí. It will be on July 17 and is celebrated on the occasion of the centenary of the death of Antoni Gaudí, the completion of the Torre de Jesús and the anniversary of the festival. The concert invites us to take a musical journey from the 14th to the 21st century, under the direction of Marc Díaz, the voices of the Cor Cererols and the most current voices of Lídia Pujol and Maria Arnal. Registrations for the ticket draw will be between July 1 and 5 from the Grec website.

13. Um julgamento

• Where: Teatre Lliure de Montjuïc
• When: July 30 and 31

The renowned Brazilian director Christiane Jatahy once again breaks the boundaries between theater and cinema with an ambitious deconstruction of An Enemy of the People by Ibsen. Actor Wagner Moura steps into the shoes of Thomas Stockmann two years after having denounced that the thermal waters of his city were contaminated. On this occasion, he returns to demand a second chance and deliver his final defense. The most interesting aspect of the production is that it transforms the room into a fictional courtroom where the audience acts as a jury, examining evidence and debating live about the pitfalls of populism, post-truth, and the tensions between morality and economy.

14. Després de nosaltres

• Where: Teatre Texas
• When: From July 30 to August 2

Després de nosaltres is a musical in Catalan that talks about love after a breakup. It is a newly created musical by Jumon Erra and Miquel Tejada and starring Xavi Navarro and Júlia Jové, with live music by Andrea Mir. A year after their separation, two people try to find out if it is possible to continue loving each other and nurturing their bond without the label of being a couple. A sincere look at breakups and the difficulty of letting go of someone who has been fundamental in your life.

15. L'esquerda en el món

• Where: Sala Versus Glòries
• When: From July 15 to 26

Rodrigo García Olza directs one of the most recent texts by Roland Schimmelpfennig, the most performed contemporary playwright in Germany. L'esquerda en el món is a play that begins when a magnate invites an artist to his high-mountain mansion in search of funding, but the unexpected appearance of his new partner dynamites the idyllic weekend. An acid comedy that portrays without filters the decadence of the upper classes, but at the same time opens a small window of hope through art and dialogue between cultures.

This is just a sample of the shows and plays that we will be able to see in the 50th edition of Grec Barcelona, but there are many more! Our recommendation is clear: consult the complete program and start making room in your agenda, because this summer, culture will fill the streets of our city.