Prague, May 22, 2025 – The 16th edition of the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ) will be officially announced on 17 June 2025, with the event beginning at 11:00 a.m. CEST. A livestream of the event will be available at www.pq.cz/PQ2027.
During the announcement, organizers will reveal the dates of the 16th PQ, along with its artistic concept and theme, program structure, venue, and curatorial team. Details on the application process for the Exhibition of Countries and Regions and the Student Exhibition will be shared, alongside a timetable for the open calls for program sections curated by the PQ team.
The selection committee members for the Czech presentations in both the Exhibition of Countries and Regions and the Student Exhibition will also be introduced, along with the terms and conditions for these open calls.
Details of the 16th PQ will be presented by its Artistic Director Barbora Příhodová, General Manager of PQ Adam Svoboda and Pavla Petrová, General Director of PQ and Director of the Arts and Theatre Institute – the organizing body of PQ. The event will also be addressed by the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic, Martin Baxa, and the Deputy Minister to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Jan Marian.
PQ 60 program will celebrate six decades of Quadrennial
The year 2027 marks the 60th anniversary of the Prague Quadrennial. Since its founding in 1967, PQ has become a key platform for scenographic experimentation and innovation and a meeting ground for performance designers, artists, scholars, and students.
The first activity of the PQ 60 program, which focuses on PQ in its transformations over the past six decades, its present form and possible future paths, is the international online symposium 60 Years of PQ as a Meeting Place of Scenographic Worlds on September 11–12, 2025.
“PQ was born out of a growing awareness that scenography is a distinct stage discipline with its unique features, requirements, and criteria. This specificity, along with efforts to define scenography in its modern form, was one of the leitmotifs of the early editions of PQ that sought to create a unified world of scenography. Today we understand scenography in an expanded sense; as an artistic discipline that creates performative environments both on and off stage. We are aware that there is no single scenography. Rather, there are many scenographies—multiple scenographic cultures, traditions, and norms that coexist,” explains Barbora Příhodová, artistic director of PQ, and adds: “PQ seeks, now with increasing emphasis, to be a place and platform that welcomes and acknowledges this multiplicity of scenographies and scenographic worlds.”
A livestream of the event in English, Czech and Spanish will be available at www.pq.cz/PQ2027.
Previous edition in a nutshell
The 15th edition of PQ took place between 8 and 18 June 2023. Exhibitions, lectures, performances, workshops and other parts of the program were held at the Holešovice Market, the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and the Trade Fair Palace of the National Gallery Prague, as well as dozens of public places in Prague. During the eleven days, 2,000 artists presented their work, 11,000 accredited visitors actively participated in the event, and the performance and accompanying program available for free in the public space reached over fifty thousand spectators.
Prague Quadrennial (PQ) is the largest international event in the field of scenography, performance design and space. PQ aims to create opportunities for the presentation of contemporary scenography and performance space, to map and support innovative work in this field and to provide an inclusive space for dialogue between professionals, students and the wider public. The Prague Quadrennial was founded in 1967 in Prague and has been held every four years without interruption. At each of its editions, participants from an expanding number of countries and regions, often exceeding 80, gather in Prague. Today, PQ combines elements of both an exhibition and a live arts festival, and its program typically includes hundreds of exhibitions, installations, performances, workshops, and professional discussions.
11,000 accredited visitors actively participated in the 15th PQ in 2023, and the performance and accompanying program in the public space reached over fifty thousand spectators. In between its editions, PQ functions as a continuous platform that creates opportunities for international exchange in the field of scenography through special projects, artist residencies, symposia, and publications. The 16th edition of the Prague Quadrennial will take place in June 2027.
PQ is initiated by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and organized by the Arts and Theatre Institute.
Arts and Theatre Institute (ATI) is a state-funded contributory organisation established by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic. Since 1959 the mission of ATI is to provide the Czech and international public with comprehensive services in the field of theatre and partially also in other areas of the arts. ATI operates as an open centre of information, scholarship, consultation, education, and publishing. Moreover, it organises and participates in international projects, engages in research, documentation work, collecting activities, and organising exhibitions. ATI encourages a strategic approach to culture, and it supports and connects culture professionals and artists across different disciplines on the national and international scene.
