ISCM World New Music Days Festival 2026 to take place in Bucharest in May
The international event dedicated to new music worldwide, the International ISCM World New Music Days – “The Endless Column,” will take place this year in Bucharest, between May 23 and 31.
The festival is organized every year by a different host country that is a member of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). Since its founding year, 1923, more than 90 editions of this festival have been organized.
The music festival will return to Romania after 27 years in May. It is organized by the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania (UCMR), the Romanian National Section of the International Society for Contemporary Music (SNR-SIMC), in partnership with ARTEXIM.
This year’s ISCM World New Music Days Festival will be centered on the theme of the endless column, a tribute to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the great Constantin Brâncuși, whose masterpiece resembles the shape of sound waves.
“Brâncuși’s Column contains 15 octahedral cast iron modules, with half a module at the ends. At the top, there is an opening, suggesting an infinite continuation toward the sky. We like to believe that from there the flow of new music begins. After all, if we look at the shape of Brâncuși’s column and rotate it horizontally, it actually takes the form of sound waves, the visual image of musical sound,” said Dan Dediu, president of UCMR and artistic director of the festival.
The festival program will include 22 chamber and electronic concerts, which will take place in eight key venues of Bucharest’s cultural life: the Romanian National Opera, the Romanian Athenaeum, Radio Hall, the National University of Music, Control Club, ArCuB, Tinerimea Română and the Cervantes Institute, and for one day (Sunday, May 24, 2026), the concerts will take place at the Mogoșoaia Palace.
Conductors Cristian Măcelaru, Cristian Mandeal, Tiberiu Soare, Gabriel Bebeșelea; soloists Diana Moș (violin), Ion Bogdan Ștefănescu (flute), Valentin Șerban (violin), Emil Vișenescu (clarinet), Cătălin Răducanu (cimbalom and piano), Adriana Maier (piano); the string quartets ARCADIA (Cluj- Napoca) and GAUDEAMUS (Brașov); the ensembles PROFIL (Bucharest), ATEM (Timișoara), Couleurs (Cluj-Napoca); the Orchestra and soloists of the Bucharest National Opera, the Radio Orchestras (National and Chamber, Bucharest), the “George Enescu” Philharmonic Orchestra (Bucharest), the “Concerto” string orchestra of UNMB; the Madrigal Choir and the Madrigal Children’s Choir (Bucharest) will perform the 70 international works selected for this edition’s program, together with 25 Romanian works.
The festival program will also include two world premieres commissioned by ISCM from the winners of the important ISCM Young Composer Award in 2023 and 2024: Madli Marje Gildemann Sin from Estonia and Samuel Hvozdík from Slovakia.
More than 50 official delegates from 48 countries and regions and over 50 contemporary composers, whose works will be performed on Bucharest’s stages, will be present in Bucharest for the festival.
(Photo source: Horia Stan/ISCM World New Music press release)
