Amsterdam has for many years ranked among the leading cultural centres of Europe. This city owes this partly to its prominent position as a festival city. Amsterdam offers an impressive total of 75 festivals every year. So it’s not surprising that the city likes to present itself as Amsterdam Festival City. The range of festivals is broad, powerful, diverse and attractive for Amsterdam’s own occupants, Dutch visitors and foreign visitors alike, with many of the festivals being based on a ‘language no problem’ principle. About one third of all the festivals take place in the summer months. They then make Amsterdam an even more attractive city to visit and regularly revisit.

For detailed information on Amsterdam’s festivals, go to www.amsterdamfestivals.com

Amsterdam Festivals Listing:

The Vondelpark Open-Air Theatre

7 June – 23 August 2009
Amsterdam’s Vondelpark Open-Air Theatre lies bang in the middle of one of the most famous parks in the Netherlands – a unique part of Amsterdam.

De Parade

31 July- 16 August 2009
The Parade is a mobile theatre and music festival featuring shows performed in tents. The Parade has been touring the Netherlands and other countries for eighteen years, enhancing each town it visits with a ‘temporary street’ with colourful tents for theatrical performances, music, bars and restaurants and attractions such as an antique whirligig.

Grachtenfestival

15 – 23 August 2009
The Grachtenfestival (Canal Festival) is an annual music festival based on performances of (classical) music at remarkable venues in Amsterdam. The remarkable venues are characterised by extraordinary or monumental architecture and cultural-historical value. The audience gets to enjoy both big names and talented young musicians.

De Uitmarkt

28 – 30 August 2009
The Uitmarkt is the Netherlands’ national opening of the cultural season, organised to introduce a broad public to what will be on offer in the way of cultural entertainment in the months to come.

Dutch Theatre Festival

3 – 13 September 2009
TF, the Theatre Festival of the Netherlands and Flanders, marks the end of the old and the beginning of the new theatre season. Besides a jury selection, the festival offers an in-depth programme, a Flemish selection and the Amsterdam Fringe Festival.

Cinekid

14-23 October 2009
Cinekid, the Film, Television and New Media Festival for Children, is specially intended for young film lovers of 4 to 14 years of age.

Amsterdam Dance Event

21 - 24 October 2009
Amsterdam Dance Event is the most important conference for electronic and dance music in the world and also the largest club festival worldwide, boasting more than 700 acts and DJ performances on 40 platforms.

International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA)

19 - 29 November 2009
IDFA is a ten-day festival in Amsterdam’s city centre where more than 250 creative documentaries are shown every year.

Amsterdams Kleinkunst Festival

29 March – 22 May 2010
The Amsterdam Kleinkunst Festival is the annual highlight of the cabaret season in the Netherlands. Since its founding in 1988, the festival has focused on stimulating the future, honouring the past and crowning quality.

Imagine

14-24 April 2010
Imagine is unique among Dutch film festivals: featuring the most remarkable films from mainstream to arthouse, the festival is at the same time an ideal meeting place for film makers and film aficionados.

Holland Festival

June 2010
The Holland Festival is the largest performances festival in the Netherlands. Every June it offers a survey of impressive, much-talked-about artistic projects from all over the world: theatre, music, dance, opera, musical theatre and visual arts; Western and non-Western. With two common denominators: high artistic quality and an international dimension. The festival also pays attention to the many potential forms of cross-fertilisation between the various disciplines.

Amsterdam Roots Festival

18 - 20 June 2010
For more than ten years the Amsterdam Roots Festival has ranked among the leading international music festivals, presenting frontier-crossing developments in world music to a large, varied audience.

International Theatre School Festival (Its Festival)

June 2010
In ten days’ time the ITs Festival presents the latest crew of performers ‘fresh’ from Dutch and foreign theatre and dance schools.

Sensation

July 2010
The 20,000 dance lovers that visited the first edition of Sensation in the Amsterdam ArenA, probably had no idea that this event would become the unprecedented spectacle that it is today. Now, almost ten years later, over half a million clubbers have partaken in this eight-hour long breathtaking night life experience.

Julidans

July 2010
In July lovers of adventurous dance will be delighted by what they will find on offer during Julidans, the international dance festival that takes place in and around Leidseplein. For two weeks every July Amsterdam’s Leidseplein is the beating heart of contemporary dance.

Over het IJ Festival

1-11 July 2010
This festival at the NDSM quay in the northern part of Amsterdam features exciting, poignant and amusing theatrical performances at extraordinary, surprising venues.