Save the dates for Elevate 2026! With its unique combination of critical-political discourse and art, contemporary electronic music and audio-visual experiments, the festival opens up a space for innovative content. From 5 to 8 March 2026, Elevate transforms Graz into a vibrant centre of contemporary festival culture. In addition to performances, concerts, installations and DJ sets, the interdisciplinary program offers workshops, film screenings, lectures and discussions. The guests include human rights experts, climate researchers and activists from all over the world, who gather in Graz once a year with musicians and artists, illuminating pertinent issues of our future.

Among the boundary pushing acts, Elevate presents several performances in the framework of Re-Imagine Europe: New Perspectives for Action: 
-Benedikt Alphart presenting a new live performance Soft Collisions.
-DÄ LIVER. Behind the evocative name DÄ LIVER are two interdisciplinary artists, Maja Osojnik and Stina Fors. For a specially developed commission, they intertwine bass and drums, gestural vocals, physical intensity, and poetic ruptures into a performative sonic language that can repeatedly tip into the unexpected or the comic. Their work blurs the line between sound, movement, and theatricality, creating experiences that are both visceral and intellectually engaging.

Elevate Discourse 2026: Vital Signs – Between Collapse and Renewal
The festival’s discourse programme places the signs of life of our time at its centre: How can vitality be conceived within systems that appear exhausted – in economics, climate, media, politics and human relationships?

Through lectures, panels and workshops, signs of regeneration will be made visible – from social life beyond screens to new forms of resistance, alternative economies, mental health and networks of solidarity.

Vital Signs explores the tension between farewell, transition and renewal, between overload and agency. The festival searches for bright spots – moments in which hope and the power to act flicker back into life.

For more information about the 2026 programme and tickets, head to the website of Elevate.