Summer Shakespeare festival brings the Bard back to Prague Castle in English

All the world’s a stage? For the next two months, Shakespeare’s vision will at least come true across Prague and Czechia.

The oldest and largest open-air fest dedicated to the Bard’s works organized annually in the Czechia since the late 1990s, the Summer Shakespeare Festival is back this year with a program spanning the entire oeuvre and career of the 16th-century poet and playwright.

In 2026, Shakespeare’s most renowned works such as Othello or Macbeth will share the summer stage with lesser-known plays including the Bard of Avon, while a Slovak premier of Much Ado about Nothing heads to Bratislava.

This year, English-speaking theater goers will enjoy double the bard with the premier of Twelfth Night from the Prague Shakespeare Company and restaging of the company's As You Like it.

Running until Sept. 5, the 29th annual festival brings more than 150 open-air performances to Prague, Brno, Ostrava and Bratislava throughout the next couple of months, as well as Litomyšl, Loket, an Kuks as well as the Litomyšl and Hluboká nad Vltavou chateaus.

The festival opened in Prague on June 24 with a production of The Comedy of Errors from 1593, one of Shakespeare’s early, little-known and deliciously playful works.

In the capital, most of the festival's performances are staged in the courtyard of the Supreme Burgrave House a building with Gothic roots dating back to the 14th century.

Originally started off by Václav Havel in 1990s in an effort to open Prague Castle to artists and attract visitors, the long-running Summer Shakespeare Festival is largely intended to present the work of the English poet to a Czech audience.

The festival uses the texts of Martin Hilský translator of the complete works of William Shakespeare, which adheres to Shakespeare's iambic verse.

Last year, almost 88,000 spectators visited them, which was about 12,000 fewer than the year before due to rainy weather.

For the Prague Shakespeare Company premier of Twelfth Night (July 18), a tale of shipwrecks, twins, mistaken identities and love, directors Guy Roberts and Kiara Pipinová have cast multi-national group of actors including American actress Jessica Boone, who will also play Countess Olivia and can also be seen in As You Like It (July 17).

Boone is also a producer and member of the Prague company. "It is an honor for us to perform Shakespeare in the original version at Prague Castle," she said.

Beyond these performances, there's still plenty of Shakespeare on other summer stages. The Prague Shakespeare Company will continue performing throughout July and August at venues across the city, including Divadlo Bez Zábradlí, Divadlo Na Prádle, and Kampa Park.

The program features many of Shakespeare's best-known plays, including Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and Richard III, alongside lesser-performed works such as Cymbeline, All's Well That Ends Well, Love's Labour's Lost, and Timon of Athens. See their program here.