Red Dawns curiously enters its 27th year of existence!

The 27th International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns will take place between 27 February 2026 and 8 March 2026.

For the 27th year in a row, the diverse festival programme will offer our curious visitors concerts, performances, exhibitions, literary evenings, gatherings and film screenings that showcase feminist and queer representations and FLINTA* experiences.

This March, we will leave narrow-minded beliefs, stereotypes and judgments at the door, and surrender to curiosity, inquisitiveness and diverse interests. We will embrace life to the fullest, we will be enthusiastic, we will make friends with strangers and those who think differently and hug our haters. We shall accept the festival as an opportunity for friendship, not hatred.

We will start on Friday, 27 February, with the programme Weird Films: Queer Landscapes of Body and Memory at the Slovenian Cinematheque, where we will question identity, belonging, pleasure, the subversion of masculinity, trans and queer bodies, kink, decolonial views on sexuality, the environment and the body – two programme units will be presented, charged with sharpness and intimacy. The audience will also vote for the best film, which will receive the Audience Award.

On Sunday, 1 March, on the glittering stages of PLAC, we will feature the 20th DIY Cabaret: Feminism Is No Joke! A series of cabarets that open up a space where performers create without the censorship and restrictions of classic stages – where the ‘ugly’ is beautiful, the non-normative is desirable, the ‘unattractive’ is attractive. Content, desires and pleasure are at the forefront, whilst mistakes are not only permitted, but rather even encouraged.

One of the most pleasurable highlights of the festival, the opening of two exhibitions, will take place on Monday, 2 March. First, at the Night Window Display Gallery Pešak, we will open the exhibition by the artist, graphic designer and musician Janu Krohm: Tender Shapes, where the author curiously questions the relationships between intimacy, discomfort, identity and instability through abstractions. The evening will continue with the opening of the exhibition by Petja Muck, Lazar Simeunović, Nal Kocjan and Nuka Horvat: Unframed Subjects. The main exhibition of the 27th International Feminist and Queer Festival Red Dawns at the Alkatraz Gallery will focus on works by a younger generation, which, at the intersection of the charmingly affirmative and activist, deeply devote themselves to social realities through the theme of gender, and address its fluidity, non-normativity and non-binarity. The opening will begin with the performace by Lazar Simeunović: Unaligned.

We will continue the week with curiosity with round tables and guided tours. On Tuesday, 3 March, we will dedicate ourselves, with the Utopia Institute, to the topic of Violence in the Queer Community in the Project Room SCCA-Ljubljana, and on Wednesday, 4 March, to the Mapping Anti-gender Movements in the Western Balkans and Strategies of Resistance Against Them in the Škuc Gallery. 

We will also once again look curiously towards Maribor, where we will prepare a varied programme of workshops, theatre plays, performances, concerts and round tables between 28 February and 8 March. Starting on 28 February, with the Impro workshop: The Politics of Creation in Viktrink Court Maribor, continuing with the performances From the First to the Last (ZIZ Collective), Son (City of Women), Broken Rib (Trupa-Drž’ ne daj), The Street of Happiness (Csiky Gergely Hungarian State Theatre), Matkopolis (Kobietostan) and Whose Eyes (Patricija Crnkovič), the event D.R.I.F.T. / Drive Real International Feminist Transition (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3) and the round table (Non)hierarchical and Community-oriented Models of Action In Performative Practices, as well as, last, but not least, the concert Ginger in Guerrillas. The Maribor part of the festival will take place at several locations, more information can be found at https://ziz.si/event/rdece-zore-v-mariboru-2026/

On Thursday, 5 March, we will be getting to know ACC Metelkova Mesto with a Guided tour of the Gesamtkunstwerk Metelkova with curator and producer Nataša Serec, and we will also open the newly created mural Beyond the Binary by artist Etaja (Jana Röttger), created during a one-month residency at Studio Asylum, which will become part of the Gesamtkunstwerk Metelkova.

The trilogy of Cabaret Dawns, following the electrifying Punx’n’kweenz (2024) and the moving Evening with the Dames, with guest Chiqui Love (2025), will be rounded off with the event Cabaret Dawns: Among the Shadows and an international lineup of performers who glide through the dark parts of cabaret, pierce through pain and show what lies beyond beauty through a kaleidoscope of tears. Mona LaDoll between freakshow and eroticism, The Ljilja in the ritual of cleansing the sins of humanity, kat orcutt through pain into catharsis and Barbara Blok from the dark side of love, shall provide an adventure for the annals, while the guide Anđa Rupić will ensure orientation in the dark.

We will not forget about literary events, as on Friday, 6 March, in the Project Room SCCA-Ljubljana, we will host the groundbreaking British transgender writer Juliet Jacques at the main literary event, where she will present her new book of short stories, Woman in the Portrait. The conversation with the author will be held by Ana Makuc.

The evening will continue with A Night of DIY Feminist and Queer P0rn0graphy at the Tiffany Club. This year’s programme brings for the first time two hours of exclusively pornographic films, authored by trans, non-binary, non-white and queer authors from around the world, who, with an emphasis on authenticity, bodily autonomy and ethical production, offer alternative images of sexuality and power relations. The audience will also vote for the best film, which will receive the Audience Award.

Also on Friday, our ears will be calibrated by shape(s)witch at the Monokel Club, the sorceresses of broad-spectrum sound therapy. Their soundscape is sometimes dreamy, other times apocalyptic and rhythmically danceable, with which Lora and Ebe express the tensions and anxieties of modern post-capitalist hell. The evening will continue until the early hours with a DJane event, titled Club Dawns: Krohm, Ribero.

We will continue our reflections through the presentation of the anti-award Thorny Thistle and at the Pioneer Theatre on 7 March, and as part of the Fem TV 8.0 performance, we will vote for the winner of the anti-award. In the feminist year 2025/26, the Red Dawns collective and the Spol.si web portal have again selected 20 statements, five of which deserve a nomination for the most sexist! You can also help decide by voting, until 28 February at www.bodeca-neza.spol.si.

We will reflect on everything we have experienced at the end of the festival, on 8 March, with the traditional Brunch: Potluck and Swap Shop at PLAC, and will go together to the protest and the Open Roller Derby Ljubljana Training and to Cirkulacija2 for the performance by Tatiana Kocmur and Eva Mulej Vrabič: chrysalis.

We will hug each other for the last time during the festival week and wish each other an activist 8 March!

Full programme and info at
www.rdecezore.org

*The term female and other words written in the feminine grammatical gender are used inclusively and address anyone who identifies with the female gender, as well as non-binary, trans-, a- and intergender people.