EFG London Jazz Festival 2025 – Polish artists and innovative music projects in London

The 33rd edition of the EFG London Jazz Festival will take place from 14 to 23 November 2025. The programme will feature sounds straight from Poland. Thanks to the cooperation between the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Serious concert agency, six Polish artists and bands will perform on London stages, from jazz clubs to prestigious concert halls, presenting both innovative projects and exceptional musical talent. Their presence forms part of UK/Poland Season 2025, which highlights the strong artistic and cultural ties between Poland and the United Kingdom.

The 33rd edition of the EFG London Jazz Festival – a celebration of jazz and international artistic collaboration

The 33rd edition of the EFG London Jazz Festival returns from 14 to 23 November 2025. Ten days of live concerts, unique collaborations, fresh discoveries, and festival premieres. Every November, the festival takes over London, presenting a diverse programme featuring both global stars and emerging talents. In 2025, thanks to the cooperation between the Adam Mickiewicz Institute and the Serious concert agency, six Polish artists and bands will perform at the EFG London Jazz Festival.

The EFG London Jazz Festival is one of the largest music festivals in Europe. Established in 1992, it attracts tens of thousands of participants every year to more than 300 concerts held at various locations across London – from intimate jazz clubs to world-class concert halls. The festival is the most important jazz event in the UK calendar, with a long tradition of presenting artists from around the world. Its goals remain unchanged: to celebrate jazz and its place in London, to give artists space to showcase their work, and to enliven musical venues throughout the capital.

Polish artists at the EFG London Jazz Festival 2025

14 November 2025, 7:30 p.m. – re:sonate presents Omasta – STEREO Covent Garden

To open the festival, re:sonate – a partnership between DJs, presenters, and curators Tina Edwards and Tim Garcia – will present the Kraków-based band Omasta. Polish musicians are forging new paths without abandoning longstanding musical traditions. Their work, rooted in jazz and infused with hip-hop rhythms and street culture, offers a bold fusion of heritage and innovation.

15 November 2025, 2:00 p.m. – Take Five Presents: Marysia Osu ft. Wojtek Mazolewski + Rory Green – Purcell Room, Southbank Centre

The Take Five programme is a renowned talent development initiative, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2025. The stage will feature Polish-British harpist, producer and composer Marysia Osu, whose original music brings together classical, ambient, and electronic elements. She will be accompanied by the outstanding Polish bassist Wojtek Mazolewski, with whom she recently recorded several unreleased tracks. The evening will be complemented by Rory A. Green, a guitarist and composer born in Ghana and raised in Manchester, who creates a hypnotic mosaic of jazz and folk inspired by his dual English–West African heritage.

16 November 2025, 3:30 p.m. – Polish Jazz Freestage – Barbican

An afternoon of innovative Polish jazz on the Freestage at the Barbican, presenting the most interesting phenomena in contemporary improvised music:

• Immortal Onion – a Gdańsk-based trio known for their intricate combinations of jazz, electronica, and post-rock energy; they create precise yet unpredictable concerts that defy simple categorisation.

• Nene Heroine ft. Kasia Lins – full of momentum and driven by rhythm, they blur the boundaries between jazz, ambient and post-rock. Vocalist Kasia Lins will join the band in a dark, spacious, and rhythmic set.

• Tryp Tych Trio – featuring renowned Polish bassist Wojtek Mazolewski. The band explores improvisation through dense rhythmic interactions and sparse sound forms; the line-up also includes British saxophonist Tamar Osborn and special guest South African drummer Asher Gamedze.

16 November 2025, 8:30 p.m. – Sunny Kim / Joanna Duda / Helen Svoboda: The Great Reset – Vortex Jazz Club

The world premiere of an international collaboration between three artists pushing the boundaries of sound and genre. Sunny Kim (Korea/Australia), Joanna Duda (Poland) and Helen Svoboda (Australia) combine avant-garde sounds and deep reflection on personal, political, and planetary transformation in their project “The Great Reset”. The audience will witness the electrifying alchemy of three artists at their peak.

More information about events and tickets is available on the festival website: efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk.

Polish music in the UK as part of UK/Poland Season 2025

UK/Poland Season 2025 highlights the strong artistic and cultural ties between Poland and the UK, celebrating both heritage and modernity. Through collaboration between cultural institutions and joint music events, festivals, and artistic projects, the programme creates a space for exchange, intercultural dialogue, and the shared celebration of live music. Artistic expression, drawing on different traditions and perspectives, becomes a bridge connecting audiences across borders, demonstrating that culture can unite and inspire on an international scale. All events in Poland are organised by the British Council, and in the United Kingdom by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Polish Cultural Institute and the British Council. The organisation of the Season in the UK and Northern Ireland is supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland. 

As part of the UK/Poland Season, since March 2025, the United Kingdom has presented many facets of the contemporary Polish music scene. During the 78th Edinburgh International Festival, one of the most renowned and longstanding festivals in the United Kingdom, a series of events devoted to Polish music were showcased. In September, the concert “My Life – Preisner’s Music” revisited Zbigniew Preisner’s multi-layered film scores. The LOT Polish Jazz Festival in London 2025 showcased innovative sounds, bringing together outstanding artists from Poland and the United Kingdom on one stage, while Andrzej Panufnik’s “Sinfonia Sacra” was performed twice by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow and Edinburgh. In October, Marcin Masecki in Oxford performed an improvisation inspired by Hevelius’s “Selenography”. That’s not the end of the programme – current information about upcoming events as part of the UK/Poland Season is updated on the website https://iam.pl/en.