What does it mean to seek truth through performance? It’s a question Festival Director Nicola Benedetti puts at the heart of the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival, which returns from 1–24 August with 133 performances spread across opera, theatre, music and dance. The theme, “The Truth We Seek”, aims to frame a wide-ranging programme that mixes grand spectacle with intimacy, playfulness with existential weight.
“Finding the right theme is always a journey,” Benedetti told us here at The Quinntessential Review. “But this year, ‘The Truth We Seek’ felt particularly timely and urgent. We’re living in an era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deep societal questioning, so exploring truth—how we define it, how we challenge it, and how art helps us navigate it—felt like the right conversation to invite audiences into.”
Diverse Works and Immersive Experiences
It’s a theme with breadth, accommodating a performance of John Tavener’s The Veil of the Temple—an eight-hour choral piece involving over 250 singers—as well as Dance People, a promenade dance work in Edinburgh’s Old College Quad, and Breaking Bach, which places hip hop alongside 18th-century period instruments. It’s certainly a Festival built on juxtapositions.
“This year’s programme delves deep into offering opportunities to experience world-class artists in thought-provoking and unconventional ways,” Benedetti says. “However you navigate the Festival programme across dance, opera, music or theatre, there are ways to be involved in performances or experience artforms in different ways, deepening the experience for those who are new or familiar with our Festival.”
“We’re living in an era of competing narratives, misinformation, and deep societal questioning…”
– Nicola Benedetti
The programme’s participatory edge is not a new gesture, but it’s given fresh emphasis this year. Audiences can shape the repertoire in Classical Jam, contribute dreams to Hanni Liang’s recital Dreams, or recline on beanbags for The Veil of the Temple. “It involves 250 singers, it’s eight hours long, sung in five different languages and representing four major religions of the world. It can all be enjoyed from the comfort of a beanbag too,” Benedetti notes. Personally, I’d say she’s underselling the power of the beanbag, which I believe to be one of the most wonderful innovations in recent EIF history.
New Productions and Creative Constraints
At the heart of the programme are two major new productions. James Graham’s Make It Happen, set in the 2008 financial crash and starring Brian Cox, offers a sharp, locally rooted narrative in contrast to the abstract vastness of the opening choral work. Sophie Laplane’s Mary, Queen of Scots, meanwhile, restages Scottish iconography through choreography and fashion, somewhere between ballet and punk.
For all its ambition, this year’s Festival is smaller than previous editions due to long-running uncertainty around funding. That constraint, Benedetti argues, has had its benefits. “While financial constraints are always a challenge, they’ve encouraged us to be even more intentional about what we programme,” she says. “There’s been a real emphasis on depth of experience rather than sheer scale, and that’s led to some truly powerful, intimate work. Sometimes, limitations push creativity in unexpected and exciting directions.”
International Scope and Operatic Innovation
Other highlights include a substantial focus on Polish artists, part of the UK/Poland Season 2025, and orchestral residencies from the London Symphony Orchestra, NFM Leopoldinum, and Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra 2. This year also sees the return of the London Philharmonic Orchestra after a ten-year absence.
The Festival’s opera offering spans both the grand and the unconventional. A fully staged Australian production of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice incorporates circus performance, while Huang Ruo’s Book of Mountains and Seas, with puppeteer Basil Twist and Ars Nova Copenhagen, brings Chinese myth to life in its UK premiere. Two operas are presented in concert: Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Puccini’s Suor Angelica, the latter performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with international soloists.
Community and Chorus
Choral music is especially prominent in 2025, as the Festival marks the 60th anniversary of the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. Beyond The Veil of the Temple, the Chorus also features in performances of Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony, Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah at the Closing Concert.
There’s also a notable emphasis on community engagement. The Big Singalong in Princes Street Gardens invites the public to sing en masse in a free event led by Stephen Deazley, while the following day sees a traditional-style ceilidh led by Barokksolistene. The Hub, the Festival’s base on the Royal Mile, offers more intimate, genre-blending performances from artists spanning 16 countries, from East and West Africa to Australia and China.
“There’s been a real emphasis on depth of experience rather than sheer scale, and that’s led to some truly powerful, intimate work.“
– Nicola Benedetti
Art, Access and Ambition
Since taking up the Festival Director role in 2022, Benedetti has tried to straddle creative vision and operational complexity. “It’s been everything I hoped for and more,” she reflects. “The privilege of shaping a Festival with such history and international reach is immense. One of the biggest surprises has been witnessing just how deeply people care—not just about the work, but about what the Festival represents.”
When asked about financial accessibility, Benedetti points to practical initiatives already in place: “We’ve already taken steps to ensure affordability like offering £10 tickets across every show in the programme, and our Young Musician’s Pass that gives free tickets for young people to experience live performance. These initiatives are there to ensure that cost is not a barrier to cultural discovery, and open up the Festival to a range of audiences; but there’s always room for innovation when it comes to welcoming new audiences.”
It’s good to see an openness to experimentation, even if no specific answer was forthcoming when asked about Rush ticketing in particular. Readers of the site will be aware that I consider the absence of cheap first-come, first-served ticket giveaways and lotteries – wildly successful in the West End but absent in Scotland – a huge missed opportunity.
But, moving on, what will success look like, especially in a year that asks big thematic questions? “Success, for me, is seeing audiences moved, challenged, and inspired,” she says. “It’s about the conversations sparked in foyers, the moments of stillness or exhilaration during a performance, and the connections forged between artists and audiences.”
Ultimately, The Truth We Seek is both a theme and a question, one the Festival poses to its audience while acknowledging it has no easy answers. “If people leave with something that stays with them—whether that’s a new perspective, an unforgettable experience, or simply the joy of discovery—then we’ve done our job.”
Well, that’s hard to argue with – but ultimately the proof of Nicola Benedetti’s festival pudding will be in the eating. Time will tell if the 2025 Edinburgh International Festival represents something new, or just a slightly smaller version of what’s come before. The Quinntessential Review will be on hand to give you our verdict this August.
Featured Image: Nicola Benedetti photo by Laurence Winram
Details
Venue: Various venues across Edinburgh, Scotland
Dates: 1–24 August 2025
Admission: From £10, with £10 tickets available for all performances
Showtimes:
- Performance times vary by venue and programme
Age Recommendation: Varies by event
Running Time: Varies by event
Accessibility
- Wheelchair accessible venues
- Assistance dogs welcome
- Audio description, BSL interpretation, captioning at selected performances
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