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Art Marathon Transforms Neukölln: 300 Venues Host 51-Hour Festival
The independent arts festival returns for 51 hours of performances, exhibitions and street-level encounters across over 300 venues.
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This weekend, Neukölln becomes the city's biggest open-air gallery as the 48 Stunden Neukölln independent arts festival returns. Running from Friday, July 3 to Sunday, July 5, 2026, the festival takes over more than 300 venues across the district, from former industrial halls to street corners and bar basements.
The theme for this year's edition is OUT/SIDE/IN, a prompt that invites artists to examine borders, membranes and the porous zones where one thing blurs into another. It's a fitting subject for a festival that has turned an entire Berlin neighbourhood into a live, shifting canvas since 1999.
More than 40 artists inside a former factory
A key hub for the weekend is the former AEG industrial complex, where 42 artists will perform across seven stages. The site, a sprawling brick-and-steel compound, will host continuous programming for the full 51 hours of the festival, meaning there is always something to see, hear or walk into, no matter what time you show up.
The marathon format is central to the festival's identity. It is not a schedule to be followed so much as a current to be carried by. Visitors can roam between venues, stumble into a live set, a dance piece, a spoken word intervention or a video installation without planning ahead.
Heimathafen Neukölln and WO IST UMM KULTHUM?
Heimathafen Neukölln, a well-known venue on the district's cultural map, opens its doors to a wide range of art forms over the weekend. The programme there includes theatre, performance and music, much of it site-specific and developed for the festival.
Meanwhile, the passage in front of the Neuköllner Oper hosts a satellite mini-festival called WO IST UMM KULTHUM?. That event gives the passage a temporary identity as a stage, blurring the line between street and performance space. It's a small-scale echo of the larger festival's OUT/SIDE/IN theme.
An open call and a living collage since 1999
The festival operates through open calls for artists, meaning the programme is built from the ground up each year rather than curated from above. That approach, sustained since 1999, turns Neukölln's streets into a live collage of genres, voices and spontaneous encounters. The result is less a polished art fair than a neighbourhood-wide improvisation.
For visitors who want to see the full sprawl, from the former AEG complex to Heimathafen to the WO IST UMM KULTHUM? passage, the advice is simple: pick a starting point, leave the schedule loose and let the festival's 51-hour flow carry you.