Sonica Festival 2026 Announces Programme: Suzanne Ciani, Dinos Chapman, Lyra Pramuk & More Descend on Glasgow

Suzanne Ciani makes her Scottish debut to close the festival. The five-time Grammy nominee and modular synthesis pioneer performs Improvisation on Four Sequences with the Buchla synthesiser she’s been coaxing extraordinary sounds from since the 1970s. It’s the kind of announcement that makes the journey to Glasgow worth planning around.

Opening duties fall to Dinos Chapman, one half of the infamous Chapman Brothers, whose new audiovisual presentation warps pastoral visions of the British countryside into psychedelic folk horror – folkloric rituals and demonic figures bubbling up from beneath the national imagination. Classic Chapman, in the best way.

Between those bookends, the programme sprawls impressively. Lyra Pramuk brings Hymnal, weaving together the devotional music of her religious upbringing with the ecstatic energy of Berlin nightlife into something that sounds genuinely singular. Thomas Ankersmit presents the UK premiere of The Tcherepnin Series, a live homage to synthesiser designer Serge Tcherepnin using rare archival Serge Modular systems that, half a century on, still sound like they’re from another dimension. NYX perform their drone choir experiments in the cavernous surroundings of St Ninian’s Church. Dundee-based SHHE (who is also guest programming this year’s edition) presents Thalassa, an audiovisual meditation on the militarised Mediterranean coastline and submerged histories, built from analogue synths, field recordings and unstable voltages. DJ and sound artist Brian d’Souza, meanwhile, turns plants and fungi into collaborators through biosonification technology, because of course he does.

This year also marks a milestone: Sonica’s first-ever commissioned works, Rachel Maclean’s AI-driven They’ve Got Your Eyes (co-commissioned with FACT Liverpool) and Martin Green’s Folding Songs, a meeting between the acclaimed accordionist and Serbian singer Svetlana Spajić. Maclean’s piece, which probes humanity’s obsession with AI and self-mythology using models trained on her own image and archive, will take up residence in Buchanan Galleries alongside robotic sculptures that follow shoppers and a meditative sensory installation. Shopping centres will never feel quite the same.

The festival’s centrepiece is The Listening House at Pollok House, a grand 18th-century mansion hosting a mini-festival of its own across three floors and into the gardens, filled with singing sculptures, mechanical birds and immersive environments. Also on the bigger bill: Paraorchestra and Charles Hazlewood performing Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians for the first time in Glasgow in over a decade, with audiences free to wander among the performers; and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra marking ten years since David Bowie’s death with Philip Glass’s Heroes Symphony, complete with generative visuals.

Sonica 2026 runs 24 September – 4 October across Pollok House, Buchanan Galleries, Tramway, St Ninian’s Church and more. Full programme at sonicafestival.com.