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Whether you consider yourself a theatre fan or not, Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is always a highlight of the annual London calendar, bringing together spectacular, essentially unclassifiable outdoor entertainment to the open spaces of Thames-side London. In recent years shows have included a recreation of the Northern Lights, a bevy of glowing swans, and a performance on a melting artificial iceberg.
Now it’s back for 2025, and the first tranche of announcements for this year’s festival are upon on. First things first: we have dates! The festival will run in its traditional late summer slot, this year August 22 to September 6.
There’s basically too much stuff to list in full, but I’ll pick out a few highlights and you can catch up with the full bill here.
You can always rely on GDIF for a spectacular opener, and this year it comes from hench French parkour troupe Lézards Bleus, who will get things underway with Above and Beyond (Aug 22, pictured top), a dazzling opener in which eight performers will astound gathered crowds as they leap over the roofs of central Woolwich.
Great news for families: the beloved Greenwich Fair (Aug 23 and 24) will return to central Greenwich after skipping last year. It brings family friendly games and street performance to the heart of the borough; there’s stuff on all day with highlights within the programme including all-female Belgian circus company Cie Des Chaussons Rouges’s high wire show Epiphytes in Greenwich Park.
Down on Greenwich Peninsula there will be another sub festival entitled Turning Worlds (Aug 30 and 31) that will include four collaborations between the world of technology, engineering and performance, including the delightfully named Robopole, a human/robot acrobatic act from German company ULIK.
Perhaps the most spectacular show of the rest of the bunch is Dutch company Panama Pictures’s performance The Weight of the Water (Sep 5 and 6), a physical theatre piece on the subject of climate change that will take place of a seesawing platform in the middle of Birchmere Lake in Thamesmead.
Loads of other stuff has also been announced and more will be announced in the future. As everything at GDIF is free and none of it is bookable there’s not a whole lot you need to do for now other than pay attention to further announcements and remember the dates.
Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is at various venues, Aug 22-Sep 6. See full current line up here.