From the versatility of the guitar to the power of storytelling, three major cultural events bring fresh experiences to audiences across Malta. Their artistic directors reveal the ideas shaping this year’s programmes and the spaces that bring them to life.
Autumn brings a varied new chapter in Festivals Malta’s calendar, with three festivals offering very different routes into music, heritage and the arts. The season includes two established highlights – Notte Bianca and The Three Palaces Festival – alongside the first edition of the Valletta Guitar Festival, a new addition.
Each performance is conceived in dialogue with its surroundings
Festivals Malta CEO Francis Agius says the three events are designed to reach a wide and varied array of audiences, while reflecting the agency’s wider commitment to excellence, innovation and collaboration across its annual programme.
The Valletta Guitar Festival
“The Valletta Guitar Festival introduces a distinct concept to an already rich cultural calendar by placing the guitar at the centre of the conversation,” Agius starts off. “Its strength lies in an ability to move naturally between cultures and genres, from classical music, jazz and tango to Brazilian music and gypsy swing.”
The festival will bring these musical worlds together across three days, through performances by internationally acclaimed artists and Maltese musicians. A series of workshops offers local guitarists direct access to visiting performers and different traditions.
“The programme culminates in a large-scale symphonic concert with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, with Valletta remaining central to the festival’s identity. We’re holding events at different venues around the city, including Teatru Manoel, the Malta Society of Arts and Pjazza Teatru Rjal. The aim is for this first edition to establish a recurring meeting point for local talent, international artists and new audiences during an especially busy cultural season,” Agius says.
For artistic director Simon Schembri, shaping the Valletta Guitar Festival meant defining an identity that could grow. The challenge was to create an event that reflected the guitar’s range while celebrating Valletta as a city of culture and artistic exchange.
“We want the festival to be a place of discovery, where audiences encounter unfamiliar artists and musicians form connections that may continue beyond the event.”
Unexpected pairings are central, bringing together performers who would not ordinarily share a stage so as to produce what he describes as “magical moments”, giving each concert its own character while contributing to the festival as a whole.
This first edition is set to establish a foundation for a stronger focus on Malta’s guitar community in future years, but the long-term plan is to develop concerts geared more specifically towards young people, making the programme increasingly accessible.
“Future editions will become more closely integrated with the local community through open calls aimed specifically at Maltese acts,” Schembri says. Meanwhile, this year, audiences can expect three unforgettable evenings filled with extraordinary music and inspiring artists. The programme features several internationally acclaimed musicians including Yamandu Costa, Rudi Flores, Sébastien Giniaux, Quatuor Eclisses, and Schembri himself.
“The guitar has this wonderful ability to bring people together, regardless of their background or musical taste, and that’s exactly the spirit we wanted to capture,” he concludes, adding that his hope is for this first edition to be the beginning of a long journey, with the festival becoming a place where audiences return every year to discover something new.
The Valletta Guitar Festival takes place between September 10 and 12.
NOTTE BIANCA
The artistic direction for Notte Bianca is now managed by a collaborative three-person team made up of Yanis Azzopardi, Daniel Cauchi and Rodney Gauci. The three artistic directors each bring different strengths to the table, which allows them to look at the programme from different angles and ultimately create something more balanced.
“The Notte Bianca audience is quite unique because the event caters for so many different
tastes and artistic genres. Our aim is to keep the programme accessible to the public, while also introducing more niche and unexpected work. It is about giving audiences something they already connect with, while creating opportunities for them to discover something they might not normally experience,” they start off.
The programme itself is influenced by Valletta’s own streets and buildings, with the palaces, convents and historic locations becoming part of the artistic experience.
“A performance can take on a completely different meaning depending on where it is presented, and Valletta gives us the opportunity to think about that relationship between the work, the space and the audience. The city itself becomes part of Notte Bianca.”
Of course, the artists themselves are also at the heart of the festival, with the artistic team providing direction and a framework, then giving artists the space to bring their own ideas, disciplines and creative identities into the mix.
“We want the artists to see Notte Bianca as an opportunity to create, experiment and present something that has been conceived with this particular night, audience and city in mind,” they conclude.
Notte Bianca takes place on October 3.
THE THREE PALACES FESTIVAL
Michelle Castelletti, artistic director of The Three Palaces Festival, describes how her process starts with a simple premise: Malta’s ordinary is actually extraordinary. Surrounded by magnificent buildings, people can easily pass them every day without noticing their beauty. Castelletti’s aim is to place heritage front and centre, making it accessible while creating an international festival firmly stamped with a Maltese identity.
Under her direction, the historic space is never simply a venue. “The space is the expression,” she says. “Each performance is conceived in dialogue with its surroundings, creating connections between architecture and style, stone and dance, history and the present. Emerging artists appear alongside leading Maltese and international performers, reflecting the Mediterranean’s cultural melting pot.”
The 2026 theme, Once upon a time, provides the basis for narratives that interpret and validate both yesterday and today. This year’s programme ranges from Renaissance polyphony and contemporary commissions to puppetry, silhouettes, dance, Shakespeare, haute couture and Maltese folktales, including Ġaħan.
“There’s whimsical storytelling on Baroque period instruments, and even a newly-composed jazz suite by none other than the music director of Ronnie Scott’s Postcards from Malta, based on his memories of Malta when visiting in his younger years, finished off with a wine and Timpana evening,” she says.
Several spaces enter the festival for the first time, including Auberge d’Aragon, the Sala dei Cavalieri at Palazzo de La Salle and the 16th-century St John’s Cavalier. The programme also returns to Palazzo Parisio and extends across St John’s Co-Cathedral and the presidential palaces.
The Three Palaces Festival takes place between October 27 and November 1.
