Manipulate Arts – Scotland’s home for animation, puppetry and visual theatre – will see the 19th edition of the Manipulate Festival return from Wednesday 4 – Tuesday 10 February 2026 .
With this ambitious programme Manipulate Arts continues its commitment to nurture and raise up homegrown Scottish talent as a key factor in the sustainability of Scottish arts, particularly in the fields of animation, puppetry and visual theatre.
We are thrilled to bring back Manipulate Festival in 2026, bigger and better, working in partnership with more organisations across Edinburgh than ever before.
Bringing the work of such a fearless, inventive, diverse and talented group of artists to stage and screen is both a privilege and a joy, and whether you’re looking for gripping stories, stunning visuals, rollicking entertainment or political provocation, there’s truly something for everyone in this year’s programme.
Dawn Taylor, Artistic Director & CEO of Manipulate Arts
Live Performance
Manipulate Festival 2026 presents 10 groundbreaking works of puppetry and visual performance on stage. Five brand-new works from Scottish and Scotland-based creatives make their premiere, all of whom have received support and development from Manipulate Arts throughout their careers, ranging from seed funding to work in progress presentations as part of the festival’s long running Snapshots series. Manipulate Arts’ commitment to nurturing homegrown visual theatre talent sees the Festival present Four World and one Scottish premiere from top class Scottish makers. A further five Scottish premieres come from leading International companies, whose work brings a global outlook to the festival, asking universal questions of our world.
Acclaimed performance artist Mamoru Iriguchi and Vanishing Point return to the festival with the World Premiere of Size Matters. Sadiq Ali Company presents the Scottish Premiere of Tell Me exploring connection to the self, to friends, to community in the face of stigma and silence. Disaster Plan, led by Julia Taudevin and Kieran Hurley, will kick off a Spring tour of Auntie Empire as part of Manipulate Festival while The Raft of the Crab, presented by circus artist Ninon Noiret, brings a captivating exploration of life first being diagnosed with, and then recovering from, cancer. Bruno Gallagher’s Europe, Meine Liebe, Mon Amour: A performance in Five Absurdities fuses together five absurdist vignettes and will be presented for free at Lyra, vignettes will also pop-up for free in city locations to be announced.
Germany’s KMZ Kollektiv, an international collective based in Berlin with ties to Latin America, presents Coffee with Sugar? while Italian dance and performing arts collective Dewey Dell bring The Rite of Spring following a sellout run at the Southbank Centre. Studio Daumza’s Kar invites audiences to a funeral dinner, steeped in Russian theatrical flair, while England’s Opposable Thumb Theatre and Norway’s Nordland Visual Theatre, present Don Quixote (is a very big book). The Wood Paths from Latvia’s Theatre on Gertrude Street sees two performers, two logs, and two axes interweave on stage to bring a joyful and poetic journey to life.
Film Programme
In 2026, the Manipulate Festival film programme will be bigger than ever, based for the first time at Edinburgh’s iconic home of independent cinema – Filmhouse, showcasing the best and the bold from the imaginative world of animated storytelling. In another historic first, the Festival will introduce its very first ‘in competition’ programme with a Scottish Showcase of animation from the last three years – Animated Scottish Shorts. The selection will seek to find the very best in Scottish animation, chosen by a jury of industry experts.
Further collections of shorts across the festival will include Animated Horror Shorts, showing the unique power of animation to bring to life the darker side of the human experience; and Animated Documentary Shorts will entertain, challenge, and educate with a deeply human selection of stories about the Ukraine War, Portuguese barnacles and an irreverent love letter.
A double bill feature film screening of It’s Such a Beautiful Day / ME offers two strikingly different yet deeply connected explorations of what it means to be a human in an increasingly fragmented world. Finally, the much-loved One Bum Cinema Club will return to Manipulate Festival, suitable for all ages, the One Bum Cinema will be situated at the Filmhouse for the duration of the Festival, as well as visiting community libraries around Edinburgh from January – March.
Festival Events
The Manipulate Festival Party taking over Summerhall’s Dissection Room on February 6 will feature pop up puppetry performances alongside headliners Fekete Seretlek. Innovative sculptor Tim Davies Design’s iconic illuminated octopus puppet Ocho will make its way around Edinburgh in a series of pop-up performances, including the Manipulate Festival Parade. Ocho will be joined on parade by Scottish puppeteers Ronan McMahon and Gretchen Maynard-Hahn, working with young people from Wester Hailes in collaboration with WHALE Arts to design and create their own puppets.
Works in progress and Professional Development
Returning for 2026, the Festival’s long-established showcase of work-in-progress Snapshots will take place at the Studio Theatre. The line-up including Alys Williams & Duncan Geoffrey MacLeod; Jenna Watt; Ruxy Cantir & Sarah Rose Graber; and Andrea Cabrera Luna.
Professional workshops throughout the festival will explore the Theatre of Materials with KMZ Collective; Directing Visual Theatre with Opposable Thumb Theatre; Stop Motion Animation with Eleanor Stewart of Clubhouse Animation; a Breakin’ Workshop with trailblazing Italian dance collective Dewey Dell; and finally Airborne Artistry with Gretchen Maynard-Hahn, following on from her community work to explore the dynamic art of creating inflatable puppets for performance for professional artists.
Tickets for the 2026 festival are on sale now. Find about the full programme here.
