Barcelona will host the 33rd edition of Ciutat Flamenco from October 16 to 25, 2026, with eleven performances spread across several venues and a programme focused on flamenco created in Catalonia and on artists who continue to expand the language of the genre. Organised by Taller de Músics, the festival brings together dance, guitar, cante, contemporary creation and new stage formats, combining established figures with a new generation of performers.
The festival opens on October 16 at SAT! Sant Andreu Teatre with the Catalan premiere of Guacamayo, by José Maldonado. The bailaor, choreographer and visual artist approaches flamenco and painting as parts of the same creative process, using the body almost as a brush and transforming the stage into a changing visual surface. Dance, cante, guitar and percussion become part of a work in which movement leaves both an emotional and pictorial trace. The production includes original music and a special collaboration from guitarist Juan Gómez “Chicuelo”, with Ana Brenes on vocals and Jacobo Sánchez on percussion.
Dance remains one of the major axes of the programme. On October 22, also at SAT!, Ana Morales, winner of Spain’s National Dance Award in 2022, will present Más que baile for the first time in Catalonia. Her appearance is one of the central events of an edition that continues to explore how flamenco can interact with contemporary movement and new theatrical languages. Both Maldonado and Morales appear in collaboration with the Dansat festival.
The programme also gives significant space to younger creators. Esperanza Garrido and Lorena Oliva will perform at La Farinera del Clot on October 17, while Cádiz guitarist Víctor Franco will give an intimate solo recital at Nau Bostik on October 18. Raised in Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Franco approaches the guitar from a deep respect for flamenco tradition while maintaining an open relationship with other musical languages, with a style marked by clarity, sensitivity and the musical landscape of Cádiz.
That same evening, Nau Bostik will host Districte Flamenco, one of Ciutat Flamenco’s main platforms for emerging creation. Daniela Martín Heras, Adrián Gómez and Marina Walpercin will present three small-format pieces that offer different ways of thinking about and inhabiting flamenco today. The project reinforces one of the festival’s long-standing aims: not merely presenting established artists, but creating a space in which younger performers can develop new languages from within the tradition.
Other venues across Barcelona will extend the festival geographically and artistically. Jordi Latorre will perform at Ateneu Popular 9 Barris on October 23, while Yoel Vargas will take the stage at the Centre Artesà Tradicionàrius on October 24. The 2026 edition therefore moves through spaces including SAT!, La Farinera del Clot, Nau Bostik, Ateneu Popular 9 Barris, the Tradicionàrius and L’Auditori, turning the festival into a small map of contemporary flamenco across the city.
Ciutat Flamenco will also bring back Ciutat Batalla, its competition devoted to dance and movement connected to flamenco. The format places particular emphasis on improvisation, individuality and the ability of performers to respond creatively in the moment, complementing the more structured stage productions elsewhere in the programme.
Los Aurora say goodbye after ten years
The most symbolic moment of the 2026 edition will arrive on Sunday, October 25 at L’Auditori, when Los Aurora x Catalunya Flamenca brings the festival to a close. The concert has been created especially for Ciutat Flamenco and will mark the farewell of Los Aurora after a decade of activity.
The band emerged in 2016 from musicians who had met through Taller de Músics, initially coming together for a commission from L’Auditori dedicated to the music of Manuel de Falla. Over the following decade, Los Aurora developed one of the most recognisable flamenco-jazz projects to emerge from Catalonia, taking classical references into freer and more experimental territory and touring internationally with a sound shaped by jazz improvisation, flamenco tradition and the artistic environment of Barcelona.
Their farewell concert also functions as a celebration of the wider generation of artists described as the “post-Flamencs”, musicians and dancers who have helped reshape contemporary flamenco in Catalonia through high-level training, composition and experimentation. For the occasion, Los Aurora — Pere Martínez on vocals, Max Villavecchia on piano, Javier Garrabella on bass, Joan Carles Marí on drums and Pol Jiménez on dance — will be joined by a substantial group of guests.
Among them are guitarist Juan Gómez “Chicuelo”, singer Ana Brenes, and dancers Jose Manuel Álvarez, Marina Paje and Miranda Alfonso, alongside Comando Reus, dancers from the Conservatori Professional de Dansa de l’Institut del Teatre and a choir drawn from the Taller de Músics. The concert will also feature a special collaboration with Mario Gas, underlining the celebratory nature of a performance conceived not simply as a final concert, but as a collective portrait of a generation.
With flamenco painting, solo guitar, contemporary dance, emerging creators and one of the most significant farewells in recent Catalan flamenco, Ciutat Flamenco 2026 once again presents the genre as something in movement rather than a fixed tradition. Across ten days, the festival will connect artists who work from flamenco’s historical vocabulary with those pushing it towards new visual, theatrical and musical territory, while maintaining Barcelona and Catalonia as the central point of reference.
Los Aurora will bid farewell to the stage with a special concert at L’Auditori, closing ten years of one of Catalonia’s most influential flamenco-jazz projects.