AL.FESTIVAL 2025

With a week-long programme of exhibitions, workshops, talks, and radio broadcasts, Refuge Worldwide is partnering with beloved cultural collective AL.Berlin for the next edition of AL.FESTIVAL.

Since 2019, AL.Berlin has built a platform for music, art, and critical exchange, amplifying the voices and cultures of South West Asia and North Africa (SWANA) and their diasporas. Over the years, AL.FESTIVAL has grown into Berlin’s leading festival for SWANA music, a place where community, resistance, and celebration come together.

The festival launches on Friday, 3rd October, with an exhibition at Niemetzstraße 1 from 16:00–20:00, which will remain open daily (except Sunday) during the same hours. It will feature The Land, not a film by Youssef Chahine (2025), a sound-based interactive installation that turns to song and public speaking as sonic tools for shaping an Arab nationalist narrative around the Dam and the forced displacement of Nubians.

Across the week, participants can join a hands-on music production workshop on Monday 6th and Tuesday 7th (18:00–20:00), and attend two evening panel discussions: the first on Wednesday 8th (20:00–21:30), Liberating Music Technology: Re-engineering for Arabic Music and Beyond, and the second on Friday 10th (20:00–21:30), A Panel Toward an Arab Reckoning with Nubian Dispossession, featuring Dr. Alia Mossallam, Dr. Diana Abbany, and Leil Zahra Mortada.

The programme will also include daily radio shows running from Tuesday 7th to Friday 10th (14:00–16:00), highlighting contemporary SWANA sounds.

The week culminates on Saturday 11th (16:00–22:00) with a live stream from Festsaal, closing the festival with live performances by SWANA artists, DJ sets, karaoke, and a vibrant community bazaar. Streaming live on the Refuge Worldwide stage we have invited Stratos, AAMIROO & Shiru, Katscha, and NaN.

You can find more information on tickets and events at the spaces participating in the festival here.