Dubrovnik Summer Festival

The festival opens in front of St. Blaise's Church, with the Old Town as its stage. In 2026, the 77th edition began there on 10 July, and it ended on 25 August with a last concert in front of the Cathedral. In between ran about seven weeks of drama, music, ballet, folklore and children's shows.

Dubrovnik Summer Festival was founded at the beginning of the 1950s, when theatre and music festivals were springing up across Europe. Its idea has hardly changed: the city is the set. Hamlet was staged in the Lovrijenac Fort as early as 1952, and the fortress has been an ideal setting for the play ever since. Plays move between the old squares and palaces, and the works of Marin Držić have long been a mainstay of the drama programme. The 2026 programme still shows the pattern: Držić's Skup, Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea and Shakespeare's Richard III, next to symphony concerts at Poljana Ruđera Boškovića and in the atriums of the Rector's Palace and Sponza Palace.

How to go. The programme is published on the festival's own site, with a calendar you can filter by music, drama, ballet and dance, folklore, and programmes for children. Performances are mostly in the evening, so the day stays free. The festival ran through July and August in 2026, which is high season in Dubrovnik, so book your room early and buy tickets for the productions you care about before you travel.

The five-day Dubrovnik guide below covers the Old Town and what to do with the days around the evening performances.