Greenwich+Docklands International Festival Celebrates 30 Years with Free Outdoor Events

Celebrating three decades of awe-inspiring open-air performance, the Greenwich+Docklands International Festival (GDIF) has unveiled the first wave of programming for its landmark 30th edition.

Running from Friday 22 August to Saturday 6 September 2025, the free festival promises a globe-spanning lineup of 30 companies delivering theatre, circus, and dance that truly lives up to this year’s theme: Above and Beyond.

From dizzying rooftops in Woolwich to floating platforms in Thamesmead, GDIF 2025 will transform the cityscape into a vast and thrilling stage for world premieres, UK debuts, and collaborative innovations across Greenwich, Newham, and the Thamesmead.

Opening Act: Parkour Across the Skyline

The festival launches with a literal leap into the extraordinary. French parkour collective Lézards Bleus will perform Above and Beyond, a vertigo-inducing journey across the rooftops of Woolwich, set to new music by Roma Yagnik and featuring a live finale by the Citizens of the World Choir (Friday 22 August). This bespoke commission celebrates GDIF’s 30th anniversary with gravity-defying choreography that reflects the city’s rich spirit of community and reinvention.

Dance, Identity & Waterborne Spectacle

Among the headline performances:

• Fragments of Us (4 September, Woolwich): A new dance-theatre collaboration between pioneering Black British companies Talawa and Fubunation, directed by Sonia Hughes, exploring the multiplicity of Black masculinity through poetry and movement.

• The Weight of Water (5–6 September, Thamesmead): Dutch company Panama Pictures delivers a daring, floating performance about climate change, where dancers cling to a tilting stage set atop water in a blend of circus, dance, and live music.

• Turning Worlds (30–31 August, Greenwich Peninsula): A weekend of kinetic experimentation where circus meets robotics, physics meets performance, and dancers spin on spirals and vertical walls in a futuristic collision of art and engineering.

Greenwich Fair Returns & Dancing City Reimagined

GDIF’s beloved Greenwich Fair makes its much-anticipated return (23–24 August) with an eclectic mix of family-friendly performances, street theatre, and international acts. Highlights include:

• Epiphytes by Belgium’s Des Chaussons Rouges – an all-female high-wire act performed above London’s skyline at Greenwich Park’s iconic General Wolfe Piazza.

Also returning is the ever-popular Dancing City (6 September), this year featuring a powerful new partnership with New York’s Fire Island Dance Festival, spotlighting world-class LGBTQIA+ artists alongside premieres from disabled and international dance companies. Full details for Dancing City will be revealed in the coming weeks.

A Commemorative Book for 30 Years of GDIF

Coinciding with the festival, Unicorn Publishing Group will release Above and Beyond: 30 Years of Greenwich+Docklands International Festival, a limited-edition, large-format book written and edited by Fiona Hughes. Launching on 22 August, the 160-page volume captures GDIF’s most breathtaking moments with behind-the-scenes stories and never-before-seen photographs. Preorders are now open.

Bradley Hemmings MBE, Artistic Director of GDIF, reflected on the milestone:

“This year’s theme grows out of 30 years of creating art that defies boundaries. In challenging times, we invite people to pause, look up, and be part of something joyful, inclusive and extraordinary—where parks, rooftops, and rivers become places of transformation.”

A spokesperson for the Royal Borough of Greenwich added:

“We’re proud to continue our partnership with GDIF, bringing the biggest and best free culture to the heart of our communities. Just show up—something spectacular is waiting.”

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