From Laurie Anderson to Elfriede Jelinek, from Carolina Bianchi to Miet Warlop, from Lia Rodrigues to the Red Army Fraction, from Japan to Palestine, from the Rammstein case to the Pelicot trial and from #MeToo to Revolutionary Love: The Vienna Festival | Free Republic of Vienna declares the Austrian capital a REPUBLIC OF LOVE in spring 2025!

Last year, Vienna experienced the rebirth of Europe’s biggest crossover festival: the Vienna Festival was declared the Free Republic of Vienna – the first festival ever to have its own anthem, parliament, flag and constitution!

100,000 visitors live and several millions online made Milo Rau’s first year as Artistic Director of the legendary festival the most successful edition of all times: “Vienna is a hotspot of the theatre world once more”, cheered DER SPIEGEL, Agence France-Presse witnessed an “institutional revolution”.

This morning, Rau unveiled his 2025 programme at Vienna’s mythical Funkhaus, the former Reichssender, founded by Adolf Hitler. After an antifascist fire ritual, the artistic director, together with the iconic group SIGNA, directors Lisaboa Houbrechts, Kurdwin Ayub and Itay Tiran, the Band of the Republic LUV and many other guests guided through their sinful and radiant programme for upcoming spring.

Can artificial intelligence create real emotions? Can there be love between right and left wing activists? Should the band Rammstein, ex-terrorists and radical shamans be given a stage? Can we make art about the Gaza war? And what are the classics of the future?

From 16 May to 22 June, Vienna will be transformed into a republic of the arts. Activists, musicians, performers and philosophers from all continents will stage hundreds of theatre and music productions, installations and rituals, accompanied by a broad philosophical programme, including f.e. Laurie Anderson’s State of Love, Lea Ypi’s Europe Speech or the Revolutionary Love symposia.

In the Viennese REPUBLIC OF LOVE, everything is to be mixed! The ritual series Campfire meets the Brand New Classics, the newly founded Band of the Republic LUV joins the female composers of the Academy Second Modernism. Brass bands play with Congolese tenors, an Eurovision Song Contest winner meets an Iraqi Oud player: because V is for loVe!

Artistic Director Milo Rau himself presents four new shows: Elfriede Jelinek’s scandal-ridden piece Burgtheater; The Seer, a radical play about war-photography, coproduced with the Venice Biennale and Schaubühne Berlin; the three-day-events Congresses of Vienna on Cancel Culture and #MeToo; and The Pelicot Trial about the eponymous case that shocked the world last winter.

Be there when all the secrets of the REPUBLIC OF LOVE are revealed – and when the Vienna Festival opens with a 90-minute music-politics-mystery ritual in front of 50,000 people on 16 May 2025. Join the REPUBLIC OF LOVE, as sinful as it is revolutionary, as profound as crazy!

For as Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger, Vienna Festival regular, likes to say: Only sinners are winners!