From Planetarium to Palác: Festival Spectaculare returns to Prague with five weeks of other-worldly arts

Prague's most adventurous multi-arts festival is back. The 13th annual Spectaculare Festival runs from March 5 to April 10, 2026, spreading across some of the city's most atmospheric venues: MeetFactory, Palác Akropolis, the Mirror Chapel of Klementinum, CAMP, and (A)VOID Gallery, among others.

This year's edition introduces eight artists and projects to Czech audiences for the first time, and spans concerts, immersive audiovisual shows, film screenings, workshops, and an exhibition. "This year we are stretching widely across genres—from ambient to jazz to electronic experimentation," says festival curator Josef Sedloň.

The festival opens on March 5 at MeetFactory with two leading figures of contemporary electronic music, Rival Consoles (UK) and Ben Lukas Boysen (DE). On March 7, French producer Thylacine performs at Lucerna Music Bar, while Czech duo Beata Hlavenková and HRTL open the evening with a charged performance of acoustic piano and modular synthesis.

The festival's biggest draw arrives on April 8, when Berlin multi-instrumentalist Apparat (Sascha Ring) takes over SaSaZu with his new album A Hum of Maybe, performed live with a full band. "His new record is fantastic and I can't wait to hear how it translates live," says Sedloň.

Other highlights include British trio Mammal Hands (March 18), whose jazz-electronic grooves share a bill with Danish duo Bremer/McCoy, and Canadian composer Flore Laurentienne (April 10), who closes the festival at Palác Akropolis.

On March 31, the Prague Planetarium hosts three evening screenings of Infinite Space, a 360-degree audiovisual show created by Italian-American ambient composer R.A. Irisarri alongside Czech visual talents Dalibor Cée and Alex J. Jindrák.

Running from March 18 to April 1, the audiovisual exhibition Acta Rationis at (A)VOID Gallery brings together visual artist Jan Hladil and HRTL in a spatial installation that translates a recorded chess game into a composition of objects, light, and sound. Fans of minimalism can also catch Norwegian composer Otto A. Totland celebrating Piano Day in the breathtaking Mirror Chapel of the Klementinum on March 28.

For those who want to understand how the music is made, the festival offers two hands-on workshops: a deep dive into synthesizers with HRTL and Mary C on March 22 at Synth Library Prague, and a creative workflow session with Sonority on March 11 at Palác Akropolis. Note, however, that these workshops are in Czech.

The film programme at Bio Oko screens four significant music documentaries across the festival's run, covering Ryuichi Sakamoto's final concert chapter, Detroit techno pioneer Carl Craig, experimental composer Meredith Monk, and the transgressive artist Genesis P-Orridge.

Spectaculare has always trusted its audience to follow it somewhere unfamiliar—this year, that somewhere includes outer space. Now in its thirteenth edition, it remains, in Sedloň's words, a place where music can "resonate in full depth." Tickets and the full programme are available at www.spectaculare.cz.