Soft Power Festival

About

Soft Power is a transdisciplinary festival and permanent platform at the intersection of art, music and social dialogue. Presented as a special project of Berlin Art Week 2026, the festival brings together exhibitions, performances, concerts, DJ sets, conversations and shared meals into one open Gesamtkunstwerk. At its centre are questions of diversity, resilience and cohesion, approached from both a local and an international perspective. The title Soft Power refers to the ability to exert influence through culture, values and persuasion, rather than through coercion or economic pressure. Initiated by Anahita Sadighi, Soft Power understands art as a collective practice, one that opens spaces for encounter, resonance and new forms of living together. Its curatorial choreography follows a temporal progression: Arriving → Listening → Remembering → Imagining → Coming Together → Hosting → Ritualising → Resonating → Celebrating → Becoming, a process in which cultural and political influence emerges from encounter, trust and shared experience. The exhibition, co-curated with María Inés Plaza Lazo, forms the conceptual core of the festival. It brings together around 40 artists working in visual art, performance and food art. Alongside the exhibition, Sonnenraum hosts a 48-hour dancefloor, while an extensive talks programme addresses questions of collective imagination, the role of culture as political practice and the relationship between art and nightlife. A further framework is provided by the 72-hour radio programme developed together with Refuge Worldwide, bringing together international voices, artistic contributions, conversations and musical positions. For the first time, Haus der Visionäre will be activated at this scale: two industrial halls, the Sonnenraum and the outdoor area will all form part of the three-day festival, around 4,200 square metres in total, bringing together art, music and nightlife. In parallel, Galerie Anahita Sadighi on Schlüterstraße 16 will show a satellite exhibition that continues the festival's programme.