Drifts Festival returns this August as the Unknown Territories series continues. We're bringing the festival to Silo 468, a former industrial oil tank in Laajasalo, accompanied by programs at
Kulttuurisauna in Helsinki's Merihaka district, from 20–24 August 2026.
Drifts Festival returns this August as the Unknown Territories series continues. The festival is brought to Silo 468, a former industrial oil tank in Laajasalo, accompanied by programs at Kulttuurisauna in Helsinki’s Merihaka district, from 20–24 August 2026.
Unknown Territories is a three-year artistic initiative that traces spiritual and geographical journeys across forests in 2025, oceans in 2026, and archipelagos in 2027. It centres on geographic exploration as a pathway to uncover hidden cultural terrains, from forgotten histories and local knowledge to practices, rituals, and memories entangled with nature.
Unknown Territories approaches the ocean as a fluid space of connection and circulation, where bodies, materials, and temporalities are continuously transforming through their relations with one another. The festival explores how oceans shape cultural imaginaries while engaging with histories of trade, extraction, and industrialisation that have left lasting impacts of ecological degradation and systemic disruption. The ocean emerges as a shifting space where human and more-than-human entanglements extend across coastlines and the deep sea. It is where sedimented memories of migration, survival, struggle, myth, ritual, sonic practices, and oral traditions resonate.
The festival brings together artistic practices that unfold with and around water, exploring the ocean as a space of movement, entanglement, and sensory encounter.
The program features 36 local and international practitioners presenting audiovisual performances, live music, film screenings, talks, and an exhibition.
The festival is free and open to the public.
Explore the full programme on the festival’s website.
From 2025 to 2027, Drifts Festival is presented in collaboration with the Saastamoinen Foundation.
2026 Partners: Kulttuurisauna, Nordic Culture Point, Finnish Institute UK & Ireland, Goethe-Institut Finnland, Finnish Institute Germany, AV-Arkki, Upnode, NERDS, ShopperScreen.
Supported by: Finnish Cultural Foundation, City of Helsinki, Oskar Öflund Foundation, Nordic Culture Fund, and 1664.
