By Elke Porter | WBN News Vancouver | November 3, 2025
Subscription to WBN and being a Writer is FREE!

Vancouver's beloved PuSH International Performing Arts Festival invites the culturally fearless to its highly anticipated public launch event on November 19, 2025, at the Birdhouse. The evening promises to unveil the full lineup for the 2026 festival alongside a live performance preview, offering audiences their first glimpse of the boundary-pushing programming ahead.

The 2026 festival returns from January 22 to February 8, transforming stages across Vancouver into spaces for bold, boundary-defying performance. Artistic Director Gabrielle Martin describes the upcoming season as an invitation to explore fresh futurities and uncharted possibilities. Artists will prototype new ways of knowing and being through Indigenous cosmologies, feminist remappings of the gaze, AI-age grief rituals, and magic-realist reckonings where myth and memory blur.

The festival will feature 25 performances and events spanning theatre, dance, music, multimedia, and film, with presentations from Canada and around the world. For over two decades, PuSH has established itself as the Lower Mainland's signature mid-winter cultural event, delivering audacious and innovative contemporary works by acclaimed artists.

The festival typically attracts over 20,000 attendees and features around 24 original works at various venues, including free events alongside ticketed shows. Early bird passes go on sale November 1st, with full ticket sales launching when the complete lineup drops on November 20, 2025.

Martin emphasizes that these performances serve as laboratories for reimagining how we live and relate to one another. "This is urgent work," she shares, "where imagination is not escape, but infrastructure for the future."

For more information about the November 19 launch event and the 2026 festival season, visit pushfestival.ca

Contact Elke Porter at:
Westcoast German Media
LinkedIn: Elke Porter or
WhatsApp:  +1 604 828 8788.
Public Relations. Communications. Education

 TAGS: #PuSH Festival #Vancouver Arts #YVR Events #Performing Arts #PuSH 2026 #Vancouver Culture #WBN News Vancouver #Elke Porter

Share this article
The link has been copied!