This autumn, EUROPALIA celebrates its 30th edition with a large-scale Spanish biennale. Exactly forty years after its first edition in 1985, EUROPALIA ESPAÑA will unfold a multidisciplinary programme from 8 October 2025 to 1 February 2026 uniting heritage and contemporary art forms and providing fascinating perspectives on themes that connect and challenge us.

With Francisco de Goya as its main focus and inspiration, it highlights the cultural richness of Spain through visual art, architecture, theatre, dance, music, performance, film, and literature, featuring big names and lesser-known figures alike. The artistic teams from both countries have also made a conscious choice to select artists of different generations, and not only artists from big cities like Madrid and Barcelona, but also, for example, from Asturias, or from the Balearic or the Canary Islands.

Together, they reflect a multifaceted Spain and a multifaceted world, which EUROPALIA aims to connect with a diverse audience, in collaboration with a rich network of partners.

GOYA

It all kicks off with the main exhibition Luz y sombra: Goya and Spanish realism (Bozar, 8 October 2025 – 11 January 2026): an exhibition built around one of the grandmasters of Spanish art, whose modern sensibility is more topical today than ever.

Goya (1746–1828) is known, on the one hand, for his impressive portraits and for folk scenes that bear witness to a Spain of traditions and folklore. His oeuvre is also characterised by images with a socially critical vision, and by indictments against war and against the general abuses of his time.

The exhibition brings together Goya’s paintings, drawings and engravings with works by previous masters and those that were to follow in Goya’s footsteps. In addition, new multidisciplinary creations such as those by sound artist Francisco Lopez help to demonstrate the relevance of Goya’s oeuvre today. The ensemble of some 120 works explores Goya’s legacy and the significance of his oeuvre in the image of Spain.

CAPRICHOS, DESASTRES DE LA GUERRA AND DISPARATES AND FOUR UNDERLYING THEMES

Caprichos, Desastres de la Guerra and Disparates [Quirks, Mischief of War and Madnesses] are titles to three series and three terms that imbue Goya’s critical and visionary spirit, all of which have inspired the EUROPALIA ESPAÑA programme as a whole and allowed it to connect the past with the present, and the local with the global. This results in themes that are certainly alive today in Spain, but which, from a broader perspective, concern us all: the Collective; (Re)presentation; Water; and Democracy.

THE COLLECTIVE

Southern European and Mediterranean societies are perceived from the outside as societies in which family, interpersonal, intergenerational, and intracommunity bonds all are very strong. Many artists and artistic practices, including those that are traditional and collective, focus on creating, nurturing, and enhancing bonds, or on questioning them, and reflecting on societal needs, evolution, and transformations.

In Rituales, during All Saints Week, traditions that connect us to our deceased loved ones merge, with Tarta Relena and Lore Binon singing together, among others, and Sara García Fernandez developing an accompanying ritual with bread in Ostend and Tournai.

In some regions of Spain, flamenco is a unifying factor. Curator and artist Pedro G. Romero develops a focus on flamenco between November 24 and 30 in Brussels. At the Concertgebouw in Bruges, Marcos Morau choreographs the Ballet Nacional de España in Afanador, an overwhelming performance with thirty-seven dancers, inspired by flamenco and by Andalusian folklore.

In the creation Chapters of Celebration by Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, Wouter Deltour and B’Rock Orchestra (a co-production with Muziektheater Transparant and DE SINGEL, Antwerp, also performed at the Palais des Beaux-Arts Charleroi and Wintercircus Ghent - in collaboration with VIERNULVIER), the music of the 17th-century La Folia crosses over into rave rhythms, in a combination of Spanish and Belgian choreographies that depict collective ecstasy, the power of music and dance, and the connectedness of queer communities.

(RE)PRESENTATION

The theme of (re)presentation explores how images and identities are created and perceived, focusing on social media and the construction of ideals. Candela Capitan denounces the ‘male gaze’ and plays with challenging female poses in her performance Solas (DE SINGEL, Antwerp).

The expo Resolución at MoMu (Antwerp) picks out Spanish cinema and shows how a woman is presented at the moment of an important decision in her life; a departure, a divorce, a murder… And Cristina Garrido plays with the visual representation and photographic reproduction of visual art in The White Cube is Never Empty at the MACS (Hornu).

WATER

Artists and authors start out from the theme of water to address its beauty and to examine related issues such as climate change, migration and tourism – issues that are on the agenda not only in Spain, but also worldwide.

Artists go into residency at Morpho (Antwerp) and at Tabakalera (San Sebastian) to work on the theme of water. Edurne Rubio’s Niebla, will premiere at WIELS, a film about a landscape and fertile land transformed by the construction of a dam. As the title suggests, Ça Marche’s Fires is about the antithesis of water, fire. An immersive installation-performance in Ghent’s Astridpark (in collaboration with Campo) that works not only around the destructive power of fire, but also around our primary relationship with an element that has shaped both our evolution and imagination.