Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival Announces New Immersive Artwork In City Centre

AUCKLAND, NZ: With just three weeks to go until Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival opens on Thursday 5th March, Evanescent, a dreamlike, immersive artwork has been announced to transform the city centre into a glowing playground.
 
This free larger-than-life “art-chitecture” installation from Atelier Sisu invites you to wander through shifting light, colour, and atmosphere, experiencing Aotea Square in a whole new way. Come explore, take it in, and snap a seriously magical Festival moment from 5 – 22 March.
 
By emulating the ethereal quality and magic of bubbles, Atelier Sisu’s Evanescent appeals to audiences’ universal playfulness and childlike wonder, encouraging audiences to consider the world as a space of transience and fragility, like that of a bubble.
 
Bernie Haldane, Kaitohu Toi | Artistic Director of Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival, says: “Having seen Evanescent in cities around the world, I’ve always been struck by the sense of delight it creates. People linger, explore, laugh, and inevitably start taking photos.  It becomes part playground, part dreamscape. Bringing this work to Aotea Square is about creating a moment of shared wonder in the heart of the city.” 
 
Presented by Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival in association with Auckland Live, Evanescent is proudly supported by the city centre targeted rate and will be freely accessible as part of the Festival’s city-wide programme.
 
Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival returns from 5–22 March 2026, transforming Tāmaki Makaurau into a city-wide celebration of creativity and connection. Across 18 days of unforgettable experiences, audiences will encounter powerful storytelling, spectacular performance, and joyful moments that celebrate the best of Aotearoa and the world.
 
Opening with a free, all ages celebration in Aotea Square Sau Fiafia! Boogie Down!, brings together the infectious rhythms of nine-piece Pacific funk collective Island Vibes to launch the Festival in high-energy style.
 
At the heart of the city, the Festival Garden returns as the city’s backyard - a social hub filled with free live music, delicious food and drinks, and atmosphere, open around the clock for audiences to gather, dance, and celebrate.
 
The intoxicating, lavish and seductive La Ronde will take over The Spiegeltent for 21 performances, serving audiences a heady cocktail of circus, live music and comedy. From the creators of Blanc de Blanc and Limbo, La Ronde exclusively premieres in New Zealand after a sell-out season in Australia.
 
Week one of Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival features Samoan musician Fonoti Pati Umaga and his extraordinary story told with unapologetic presence, humour and raw honesty, Music Portrait of a Humble Disabled Samoan. Created with Oscar Kightley, Nathaniel Lees, Neil Ieremia and Sasha Gibb, this is a world premiere production (in partnership with Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts and Performing Arts Network of New Zealand (PANNZ)) that weaves live music, storytelling and visual design into a genre-defying celebration of resilience, hope and the fire music can carry.
 
Presented in partnership with Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts, Auckland Arts Festival, Auckland Theatre Company and Tawata Productions, Waiora Te Ūkaipō  The Homeland is a powerful story of family, culture and belonging. Written and directed by Hone Kouka, with waiata and haka composed by Hone Hurihanganui.
 
From acclaimed collective Binge Culture, Werewolf is a thrilling, darkly funny horror-comedy exploring how we respond to crises. For one night only, internationally acclaimed American soprano Julia Bullock performing with Auckland Philharmonia conducted by Christian Reif showcases a bold repertoire blending classical masterworks, jazz and The Great American Songbook. In celebration of International Women’s Day, Moana & The Tribe present ONO, a powerful live performance and video work honouring six Indigenous women worldwide - a stirring journey of hope and unity through te reo Māori, kapa haka and electronic-dub beats, while featuring the voices of Australian Shellie Morris and Hawaiian musician Kaumakaiwa Kanaka’ole. 
 
A flagship free event, Whānau Day brings together music, performance, kapa haka, kai and hands-on arts experiences in a vibrant celebration of community and rangatahi.
 
Week two opens with Circa’s exuberant Duck Pond, reimagining Swan Lake as a circus spectacular, full of signature physicality and cheeky humour. In A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen, theatre-maker and musician Joshua Hinton weaves song, memory and mouth-watering aromas as he recreates his grandmother’s curry live on stage. Fresh off mesmerising Australian audiences and completing a 23-show season in Edinburgh, is The Butterfly Who Flew into the Rave, this award-laden crowd favourite returns home for a triumphant encore.
 
Week three will welcome acclaimed Australian company Gravity & Other Myths, Ten Thousand Hours, with eight acrobats and one musician pay homage to the discipline of mastery and the joy of movement. 27 Club delivers a blistering rock concert celebrating the legends lost too soon - Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Robert Johnson.
 
The previously announced Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of its renowned Music Director, Long Yu, comes to New Zealand from China in an extraordinary cross-cultural celebration of Eastern and Western symphonic traditions.
 
Hot off a New York season in an exclusive to Aotearoa for the festival, Jane Harrison’s multi-award-winning play The Visitors reimagines the arrival of the First Fleet through the eyes of seven First Nations Elders. Directed by Wesley Enoch, this acclaimed Sydney Theatre Company and Moogahlin Performing Arts production is a sharply written, deeply resonant piece of speculative historical theatre that challenges, educates, and reverberates long after the curtain falls.
 
Built from the world’s apologies - famous, absurd and deeply personal - Sincere Apologies is a funny, awkward and unexpectedly moving participatory performance exploring how we say sorry and what we really mean.
 
Ihi. Wehi. Mana. reunites past and present members of Te Waka Huia with esteemed choral musician Karen Grylls and a bespoke invitational choir, for a stirring, celebratory event combining kapa haka, waiata and vocal talent. Keep an ear out for a newly commissioned choral piece.  
 
Closing the Festival with pure brass swagger, Big Horns is a high-octane, homegrown funk collective redefining the modern big band, led by guitarist Dixon Nacey. Featuring Jordyn with a Why, MOHI and Muroki, He Manu Tīoriori gathers the next generation of soulful voices for an uplifting evening of waiata in the Spiegeltent. Inspired by Dame Hinewehi Mohi’s Waiata Anthems project, this showcase of original te reo Māori compositions celebrates the beauty, depth and contemporary vitality of Aotearoa’s music.
 
Additionally featured in the festival is a double bill of bold new writing, He Kākano showcases Becoming Jeff Bezos by Kai Tahu playwright Alex Medland, a razor-sharp satire on capitalism and chaos, and Marmite & Honey by Rainton Oneroa (Te Aupōuri), a moving family drama unfolding over 24 hours at a tangi. Both works will be developed with Jason Te Kare.

2026’s programme also includes Bluebeard’s Castle which sees New Zealand Opera and Auckland Philharmonia reimagine Bartók’s haunting masterpiece as an intimate portrait of a couple confronting dementia. Royal New Zealand Ballet’s Macbeth, choreographed by Alice Topp, transforms Shakespeare’s tragedy into a gripping modern study of ambition and power. Young & Brilliant showcases Aotearoa’s next generation of classical stars with St Matthew’s Chamber Orchestra. Winner of the 2025 ADAM NZ Play Award, Wet offers a fierce, funny and unapologetic exploration of wahine sexuality, creative freedom and modern motherhood.
 
Set in the heart of the Festival Garden, Rova Sound Stage offers a relaxed, social space to discover fresh talent and genre-crossing performances from neo-soul and alt-pop to hip hop, jazz and electronic music. Audiences can grab a beanbag and a drink, soak up the summer sun, and dance into the night with the resident Festival DJ.
 
Tickets for all Te Ahurei Toi o Tāmaki Auckland Arts Festival shows are on sale now.

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