London’s spectacular free outdoor Greenwich + Docklands International Festival is back for 2025, taking place over three consecutive weekends starting with the August bank holiday.
Celebrating its 30th edition in 2025, the festival will kick off with Above And Beyond, a breathtaking acrobatic feat that will see eight parkour performers from French company Lézards Bleus traversing landmark buildings around Woolwich accompanied by music from the Greenwich-based Citizens of the World Choir.
The beloved Greenwich Fair (Aug 23 and 24) then returns after skipping last summer, bringing family friendly games and street performance to the heart of the borough, including all-female Belgian circus company Cie Des Chaussons Rouges’s high wire show Epiphytes in Greenwich Park.
Greenwich Peninsula will play host to another sub festival, Turning Worlds (Aug 30 and 31), which will feature four collaborations between the world of technology, engineering and performance, including the delightfully named Robopole, a human/robot acrobatic act from German company ULIK.
The final weekend of the festival sees Dutch company Panama Pictures perform The Weight of the Water (Sep 5 and 6), a physical theatre piece on the subject of climate change that will take place of a seesawing platform in the middle of Birchmere Lake in Thamesmead.
These are just a few highlights in a packed programme, with plenty more events to be announced in due course too. As always, everything at GDIF is free to attend, and you don’t even need to book in advance; simply listen out for further announcements and remember the key dates!