Greetings

Currents, the city, the time

This year, the Dimitria Festival completes 61 years of continuous presence, confirming its timeless role as one of Thessaloniki’s most important cultural institutions. For the municipal authority, the organization is not merely an annual artistic event, but a steady investment in creativity, extroversion, and the active participation of citizens in cultural life.

This year’s theme, “CURRENTS,” captures a city that is changing, conversing with its era, and remaining open to new ideas, new forms of expression, and new collaborations. Through the program of the 61st Dimitria Festival, contemporary artistic creation meets the public life of the entire city of Thessaloniki and appeals to diverse audiences.
With 34 productions and 33 artistic ensembles, this year’s organization shapes a multifaceted program that will be hosted across 14 venues, while two outdoor events will bring the festival’s pulse outside conventional cultural spaces. The opening DJ set at MOMus, within the TIF grounds, and the “Streets of Music” in various locations across the city reinforce the open and participatory character of the institution.

We want Culture to be present in the daily life of Thessaloniki, accessible to residents and meaningful for younger generations. We want it to function as a field of communication, knowledge, and free expression, but also as an element of identity for a city that aims to be a creative protagonist in Greece and abroad.
Our goal is for Dimitria to continue serving as a meeting point for acclaimed creators, young artists, and the public, featuring proposals that spark interest, cultivate dialogue, and highlight Thessaloniki as a city of culture with an international orientation.

I would like to extend my warm thanks to the Artistic Committee, the contributors, the collaborating institutions, and everyone who worked towards the implementation of this organization. I invite the people of Thessaloniki and the visitors of the city to explore this year’s program and actively participate in the great celebration of the 61st Dimitria Festival.

Stelios Angeloudis
Mayor of Thessaloniki

61st Dimitria and “Currents” —the keyword around which the repertoire of Thessaloniki’s most historic cultural festival is articulated and structured once again this autumn. Currents like those of our marine landscape, so definitive for our psyche. But also more metaphysical ones: currents as directions, flows of time and stories, intensities, and movements. Currents of ideas and bodies, of voices and creation that shift and transform, generating osmoses and perpetual energies. Currents because Thessaloniki has never been a static city; for yet another year, a variety of arts and cultural forms intersect at the 61st Dimitria. Images, sounds, bodies, gestures, and movements—theatre, music, literature, dance, cinema, opera, and performance—compose the whole from the particular. Contours, condensations, abstractions, and multicultural artistic paths arrive to meet the artistic curiosity of the audience.

Currents: fields of continuous motion. In their 61st year, the Dimitria Festival invites Thessaloniki to be swept away by their flow and to experience, through 34 Greek and international productions across 15 different cultural venues, events of high prestige and calibre. The urban landscape is transformed into an open, living stage. From the port and the New Waterfront to the historic monuments, theatres, and alternative spaces of the city, the “Currents” of Dimitria redefine our relationship with culture, giving meaning to a different “now.” The city turns into a grand, illuminated stage upon and within which the “Currents” give life and form to artistic works of all genres. A river of exchanging ideas, where different cultures and pioneering forms of expression enrich the city’s identity. Every performance, every exhibition, and every note functions as a subtle undercurrent that awakens the senses, generates questions, and challenges our certainties. In an era where everything changes at a breakneck pace, Dimitria challenges Thessaloniki to dive into the waters of contemporary creation.

Vasilis Gakis
Deputy Mayor of Culture, Tourism Development and Interdepartmental Cooperation
 

In the Flow of Time

Sometimes it is the waters that connect it to the world. Sometimes it is the people who come and go. The languages that blend together. The ideas that travel. The arts that transform.

And today, more than ever, it is also the invisible currents, the energy that drives us, the digital networks that connect us, the information that traverses the planet at the speed of light, the images that shape our memory, and the algorithms that organize our daily lives.

The 61st Dimitria Festival is born out of this ceaseless and beneficial convergence. That is why we chose the keyword “Currents” for this edition
Not as a mere metaphor. But as a way to interpret our era, its places, its ways, and its arts.

Thessaloniki has always been a city of currents. Ocean currents brought goods, people, languages, and cultures. Historical currents have shaped it as a place of coexistence, movement, and exchange. Today, new currents—technological, social, and artistic—are reshaping the way we create, communicate, and exist.
The Dimitria do not stand in opposition to these changes. They are at the heart of them. The Dimitria are not interested in stagnation. They are interested in transition—the journey and the hidden charm it holds.

Where theater converses with dance. Music with the visual arts. Cinema with literature. The performing arts with digital forms of creation. Where boundaries become more porous and every encounter gives rise to a new possibility.

Because these currents do more than just carry us along. They shift our certainties. They alter our paths. They create unpredictable encounters. They know no borders nor do they adhere to divisions. They traverse places, eras, and aesthetics, connecting yesterday with today and the local with the global.
This is how we view this year’s Dimitria Festival. Not as a series of events, but as a space of circulation. A challenging space where works, creators, and the audience do not merely coexist, but influence one another. A place without predetermined paths, where art does not offer ready-made answers but generates energy, raises questions, and opens up new avenues of thought and experience.

The 61st Dimitria Festival invites you to discover together not only what unites us but also what moves us. Because art is not a harbor. It is a current. And currents change us.

Artistic Committee of Dimitria Festival