Barbican Unveils Autumn/Winter Program Including European Premiere of Murakami Adaptation

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The London venue will also host UK premiere of Pam Tanowitz Dance's PASTORAL and a rare Murakami appearance.

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The Barbican has announced its autumn/winter Theatre & Dance programme, with productions planned in both our Theatre and The Pit after a period of essential behind-the-scenes maintenance earlier this year. Following a highly successful summer at the Barbican Theatre , which saw record-breaking ticket sales for summer musicals High Society and Death Note, the Barbican presents a programme of exceptional international work for all ages across our stages. The line-up features premieres from two of the most highly regarded auteurs in literature and dance, the European premiere of Haruki Murakami 's End of the World / Hard-Boiled Wonderland and UK premiere of Pam Tanowitz's Pastoral; London premieres of both the standout production at the 2025 Edinburgh Fringe, Tom at the Farm, as well as Omar Rajeh's Dance is Not for Us as part of Dance Umbrella 2026; and the much-anticipated return of Engruna Teatre's Univers in The Pit.

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Opening the Theatre & Dance season is Pam Tanowitz Dance's critically acclaimed Pastoral (1–3 Oct). A Barbican co-commission and major new collaboration with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Caroline Shaw and visual artist Sarah Crowner, Pastoral premiered at the Fisher Center at Bard College in New York in summer 2025. The production is complemented by a music programme at the Barbican centred on Shaw who is our 2026 Composer In Focus . Tanowitz's Pastoral is a celebration of her unique choreographic language, both balletic and refreshingly rooted in the present day, set to a specially commissioned score by Shaw, which responds to and transforms Beethoven's beloved Symphony No. 6 in F Major and incorporates moments of silence to reflect the aural experience of life.

The programme continues with the European premiere of End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland (8–11 Oct), a new work directed by Philippe Decouflé and the first adaptation of Haruki Murakami 's cult novel. Performed in Japanese with English surtitles and set in a dystopian vision of contemporary Japan, we follow the protagonist's descent into a Kafkaesque Tokyo underworld. The production stars Tatsuya Fujiwara (Battle Royale, Death Note), who made his international stage debut at the Barbican aged 15 in Yukio Ninagawa 's Shintokumaru in 1997. To celebrate End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland coming to the Barbican, Fujiwara will introduce a special screening of Battle Royale, his breakout role, in Cinema 1 (10 Oct), and Murakami will make a rare in-person appearance, reading aloud from his book The City and Its Uncertain Walls and appearing in conversation with actor and theatre-maker Simon McBurney in Cinema 1 (11 Oct). This will be followed by a screening of the 2005 adaptation of Murakami's short story Tony Takitani.

Another acclaimed international production making its London premiere at the Barbican Theatre is the psychological thriller Tom at the Farm (13–17 Oct), following a highly successful run at the Pleasance at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last summer. Actor and producer Armando Babaioff translated Michel Marc Bouchard's original 2011 Québécois play into Portuguese, reimagining it through a Brazilian lens before touring the production extensively around the world. Notably adapted into a celebrated film by Xavier Dolan , the play, here directed by Rodrigo Portella, follows a young man who attends his boyfriend's funeral, only to discover that the family knew nothing about either their relationship or his sexuality. Performed in Portuguese with English surtitles and staged on an evocative mud-covered set, the production heightens its emotional intensity and mounting suspense through striking physicality and a remarkable ensemble cast led by Babaioff.

London's leading festival of international dance, Dance Umbrella Festival 2026 brings to The Pit Dance is Not for Us (16–17 Oct), an intimate solo by choreographer and festival director Omar Rajeh. Both a personal memoir and a political act, Rajeh dances and speaks in Arabic of a past that no longer exists – of Lebanon, of loss, and of a world that froze before it could become a future. Raw and deeply human, the work asks what it means to keep dancing when everything around you says stop. Drawing on maqam, his practice of instant composition, Rajeh refuses the structures that would reduce dance to something safe or palatable. Performance becomes a gathering, inviting artist and audience into a shared experience that pushes back against fear and normalisation. Rajeh is the founder of Maqamat and the Beirut International Platform of Dance (BIPOD), and a recipient of France's Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Returning to The Pit is Univers (2–12 Dec), created especially to give 0-2 year-olds space to explore in magical and unexpected ways. The award-winning Engruna Teatre's endearing, internationally touring sensory experience combines playful movement from two performers and live music by an onstage musician. Inspired by the fragile balance of the universe, this evocative and immersive journey invites babies and toddlers to explore, reflect, and interact with beautiful objects of different textures and shapes that are scattered and rearranged. Catalonia-based, women-led company Engruna Teatre have over fifteen years of experience charming and thrilling audiences of all ages. Univers arrives back in London following highly praised performances at Sydney Opera House, 2026.

Rounding out the season will be the Royal Shakespeare Company with their annual winter run at the Barbican Theatre . Further details will be announced soon.

Finally, Barbican has announced this year's cohort of Open Lab artists, selected by its theatre producers and a panel of industry experts. Open Lab is a year-long programme supporting early- to mid-career theatre and dance artists and companies to develop a new project, idea or performance, including a week's residency in The Pit in August. Alumni include Elisabeth Gunawan / KISS WITNESS, who returned to the Barbican last autumn with Prayers for a Hungry Ghost; dance provocateurs BULLYACHE and Marikiscrycrycry; and HighRise Entertainment's The UK Drill Project.

The 2026 cohort includes A.C. Smith , whose deeply personal solo show explores the joy and grief of becoming a mother while undergoing cancer treatment; Persis Jadé Maravala, a Yemeni performance maker blending immersive performance and gaming as three strangers navigate a collapsing world in total darkness; and Mal Parry, whose new work examines the surveillance, control and punishment of queer bodies, sparked by the uncanny fact that UK laws have been inscribed on vellum (calf skin) since medieval times.

Also in the cohort are Ragevan Vasan, who explores the intersection of pre-colonial Tamil dance and queer love through archival material and Bharatanatyam; Razik Darji, who draws on his experience as a CODA (child of a Deaf adult) to combine theatre, movement, live biometrics, reactive projection, haptic sound and experimental audience technology; and Sixth House, the Greater Manchester-based multi-disciplinary collective whose epic tragicomedy revisits Mad Cow Disease through movement, music, puppetry, physical theatre, projected imagery and verbatim text.

Toni Racklin, Barbican Head of Theatre & Dance, said, “We are delighted to unveil our autumn/winter 2026 programme, a season defined by bold storytelling, theatrical invention, and the thrill of live performance. As always, we welcome world-class companies working across different art forms. And at the heart of everything we do – now more than ever – is the belief in the power of theatre and dance to illuminate, connect and transform, offering audiences of every age and background radically different ways of seeing the world. There is no better example of this than our newly announced 2026 Open Lab cohort, whose interpretations of contemporary life are uniquely compelling, and who challenge perceptions of what theatre can be."

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/European-Premiere-of-Haruki-Murakami-Adaptation-and-More-Set-For-the-Barbican-20260609)._