Another year of the Poland-Romania and Romania-Poland Cultural Season 2024-2025 – the first ever cultural cooperation between these countries with such an outreach – begins. From classical music, through contemporary interpretations of traditions, performative arts, theatre, visual arts, photography, and design, to literature – intense months laden with events are awaiting the Polish and Romanian audiences. Owing to the relationships established last year, the programme will be enriched with joint projects brought to life by Polish and Romanian artists.
The season, organised by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute with the support from the Polish Institute in Bucharest, as well as the Romanian Ministry of Culture, and the Romanian Cultural Institute, will run until November 2025.
In June last year, we opened the first ever Poland-Romania Season, certain that there is a need and willingness in our societies to become more familiar with each other. This intuition, reinforced through knowledge we had gained, turned out right – events organised as part of the Season have enjoyed very high popularity among the public both in Poland and in Romania. Now, we are at the crucial point of the Season – relationships established as part of it have already started to yield new projects, and there are still intense months full of events ahead of us: from co-productions inspired by traditions of both countries, to events bringing together different art forms. We share a common language – culture, says Olga Wysocka, Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Press conference announcing the program of the Poland-Romania Cultural Season for 2025, photo: Kuba Celej / IAM
What did the Poland-Romania Season 2024 look like? Summary of the year
Only last year, as part of the Season, did Adam Mickiewicz Institute organise 11 events, attended by nearly 60,000 persons. The schedule was inaugurated in June by the exhibition “The Tatra Mountains. Wróblewski, Karłowicz, Wyczółkowski” at the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu, which enjoyed massive popularity, drawing nearly 40,000 visitors. Polish theatre performances presented at the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu: “The Employees” by Łukasz Twarkowski and “Arcadia” open-air performance by Teatr KTO were also strong points of the programme. Jazz and folk prevailed in the field of music – Kinga Głyk Quartet and Wojciech Pilichowski performed at the Garana Jazz Festival, while Dikanada band presented their music at the Balkanik Festival. In Bucharest, the Romanian audience had a chance to visit the exhibition by Justyna Mielnikiewicz at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, featuring a photo essay on Polish diaspora in Romania. Until 9 March, it is still possible to watch “Tadeusz Kantor – Always and Everywhere an Artist” in the capital city of Romania. The total of several dozen works and photographs from the collection of the MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art are presented at the prestigious National Museum of Art of Romania.
Poland-Romania Season 2025. Programme of events in Romania
From classical music to contemporary performative arts. The programme of events in Romania stretches across Bucharest, Iași, Sibiu and Suceava
The programme of the 2025 Season will begin with the Polish presence at the Classix Festival 2025 in Iasi. Viewers can already marvel at the sound installation “Apparatum” by PanGenerator collective, and VR “Dead City” by Krzysztof Grudziński. On 1 March, Arte dei Suonatori orchestra, specialising in performing Baroque and classical music, will perform a concert titled “The Harmony of the Kings: In the Polish Royal Court”.
A couple of days later, on 4 March, as part of this year’s celebration of the Polish-Romanian Solidarity Day 2025 and the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Polish band VOŁOSI – perceived as a true phenomenon on the global music stage – will perform in Bucharest. The band that was formed at the heart of the Polish mountains, drawing inspiration from the combination of tradition and modernity, will present improvisations based on the material from their latest album “200 Years Ago” at the Ateneum Roman.
This year’s Polish-Romanian cultural exchange will also cover the field of design. Owing to the cooperation between BAZA. Deschidemorașul and SARP Łódź, two joint projects inspired by the Season’s slogan “We Share a Common Language” will be presented at the Romanian Design Week in Bucharest and at the Łódź Design Festiwal. In Bucharest and Łódź, between 16 and 25 May, installations in the form of usable elements will be created to enrich urban meeting and resting spaces. Each installation will be accompanied by a presentation of a twin project in the partner cities.
Polish performative arts cannot be missing in the programme either: they will be presented between 5 and 13 May 2025 at the News From Polska Festival in Bucharest. Viewers in the capital city of Romania will have a chance to watch such performances as “Bitch Or Not to Bitch” by Hertz Haus, “As Long As We Dance...” by Renata Piotrowska-Auffret, “WoW” by Marta Wołowiec, “Valeska Valeska Valeska Valeska” by Dominika Knapik, and “Cezary Goes to War” by Komuna Warszawa. As part of the accompanying programme, discussions between the viewers and artists, workshops for professional dancers and senior citizens, as well as a community dinner will also take place.
On 20-21 June 2025, at the International Theatre Festival in Sibiu, a collaborative project of Romanian choreographers and the Polish Dance Theatre from Poznań entitled “Toaca” will be shown. This is the first project on such scale at the intersection of Polish and Romanian dance scene and it interprets Romanian theatrical and cultural heritage in a diverse manner, through combining music, dance, and live instruments.
A lot will happen in the field of visual arts, too. In the second half of the year, a photo essay by Justyna Mielnikiewicz on Polish diaspora in Romania will be exhibited at the National Museum of Bukovina in Suceava. The exhibition of Mielnikiewicz’s photographs, already presented at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant in Bucharest and at the National Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw, returns to the place of its origin – Bukovina, famous for its multiculturality and a home to the largest Polish diaspora in Romania. The project analyses the cultural identity of the Poles evolving over the generations.
Adam Mickiewicz Institute also engaged in co-producing a documentary directed by Emilia Śniegoska, titled “Chums”. The main characters are two female Polish friends experiencing the toils of the elderly age, surrounded by the fabulous landscapes of Bukovina – the region in which Justyna Mielnikiewicz portrayed the Polish diaspora in her photo essay. The film, produced by Vision House Productions, has already qualified for Visions du Reel and Doc Fest Munich film festivals, although it is just the beginning of its journey.
The programme will also feature Polish literature, to bring it closer to Romanian readers at the Iași International Festival of Literature and Translation – FILIT. The programme will focus on children’s literature – the genre Polish publishing houses are famous for. Challenges faced by publishers, authors, and graphic designers will be discussed. Presence of one of the most important Polish publishers of children’s books as well as graphic workshops on creating children’s books are also planned to take place.
During the forthcoming half-year, Polish music will also be presented in Romania. It will be heard at jazz festivals (e.g. Jazz in the Park) or during a concert presenting an outcome of the artistic residency of Dagadana and Subcarpati bands in Bucharest. Classical music will be represented by Sinfonia Varsovia during the Geore Enescu Festival (30-31 August 2025). The Polish-Romanian Season will be crowned by a concert of Szymon Nehring, who will perform at the Radio Concert Hall in Bucharest together with the National Radio Orchestra of Romania.
Adam Mickiewicz Institute, with the support from the Polish Institute in Bucharest as well as the Romanian Cultural Institute, is responsible for the organisation of events in Romania.
Press conference announcing the program of the Poland-Romania Cultural Season for 2025, photo: Kuba Celej / IAM
Romania-Poland Season 2025. Programme of events in Poland
From Cracow, through Wrocław, Poznań, Warsaw, Łódź, to Gdańsk and Sopot. In 2025 Romanian culture will be present almost all over Poland
At the same time, a rich programme will be offered to bring Polish audiences closer to the culture and history of Romania, underlining common themes, moments of solidarity, and emotions linking both nations.
Our goal is to reach the broadest audiences in Poland to enable them to update their knowledge of Romania and its culture, as well as the common Polish-Romanian history. There were plenty of moments of solidarity between our countries in the 20th century and they had built a very important emotional capital that was lost during the communist regime and hard times of transformation. In the current context, we should all the more remember about the power of cooperation based on common values, which is going to be ever closer the better and the more thoroughly we mutually understand our cultures– says Ovidiu Miron, Director of the Romanian Cultural Institute.
Exhibition projects presenting the panorama of the last 150 years of Romanian visual arts will stand in the foreground. After the retrospective exhibition of the creator of modern Romanian painting, Nicolae Grigorescu (National Museum in Gdansk, 27 July-27 October 2024) and the exhibition of photographs by Iosif Király at the Museum of the City of Łódź as part of the Fotofestival (15 June-25 August 2024), another event as part of the Season in 2025 will be the opening of the exhibition “One Eye Laughing, the Other Crying. Art from Romania in the Ovidiu Șandor Collection” (7 March-20 July 2025, International Cultural Centre, Cracow). It will present the works from over 60 artists who have left their mark on Romanian art of the past century. A specific tone resonates in these works: Romanian laughter through tears, which allows making peace with fate and putting things in perspective even in the face of misery, as well as brooding over tragedies without lapsing into pathos and projecting anguish.
Another unique exhibition project, also hosted by the International Cultural Centre in Cracow (16 September-14 December), will focus on Constantin Brâncuși’s passion for photography. Brâncuși, a sculpturer, started practicing photography following the advice of Man Ray. In it, he found a perfect way of expressing himself, a certain mirror of his sculpting, and an educational method of explaining his work.
In the 1960s and 1970s the Romanian coast of the Black Sea was not only popular among the Poles, but also became a true hub of architectural experiments and avant-garde. It was there the most daring ideas were put into effect, later to be implemented across Romania. From July to September 2025 the Museum of Architecture in Wrocław will present an exhibition “Black Sea Utopia 1888-1989. An Architectural Drama in Five Acts.”
An exceptional exhibition project, curated by dr Ioan Paul Colta, will be organised at the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Cracow (September-November 2025): graphic art by a Japanese master Mizuno Toshikata will be presented as part of a large exhibition together with artefacts from private collections from Romania and the US.
A series of joint Romanian and Polish projects, which began with a modern dance performance “Toaca” choreographed by three Romanian artists at the Polish Dance Theatre in Poznań, will continue into 2025 in such fields as design and music. Visions of public space developed by Romanian and Polish architects and designers will meet in the form of two corresponding urban installations in Łódź and Bucharest. They will be unveiled during Romanian Design Week (16-25 May 2025) and Łódź Design Festival (20-25 May 2025) and will symbolically join the urban spaces of Bucharest and Łódź.
Romanian and Polish jazz musicians will meet during creative sessions, just like Dagadana and Subcarpați bands, who will meet in Bucharest between 24 and 28 February to compose new songs in which traditional themes will be spiced up with hip-hop, rock, or jazz.
The 14th edition of Sopot By the Book Festival will host Romanian literature and culture. Meetings will be held with Romanian writers translated into Polish, valued by critics and readers, as well as with authors whose translated books will have their Polish premiere at the festival. The first names confirmed by the festival include Tatiana Țîbuleac, Raluca Nagy, Cristian Teodorescu, Cătălin Mihuleac, Lavinia Braniște and Ana Dragu. The programme will be enriched with screenings of movies and debates offering the Romanian view on topics that are interesting also from the Polish perspective.
The Romanian edition of “Playing with Kantor” Festival (10-31 October) will be curated by a distinguished Romanian theatrologist and theatre critic Cristina Modreanu. A series of events titled “Spectres of the Past” presents mutual fascination between Romanian theatre and Tadeusz Kantor’s art. As part of the performative programme, a performance “Songs to Chase Away Fear” (text and voice: Ada Milea) inspired by texts of the laureate of the Nobel Prize, Romanian-born Herta Müller; “DUAL. A Performance About Friendship” (directed by Leta Popescu) – a deeply personal and universal story exorcising fears, grief and nostalgia for the times where victims and torturers often shared the same space through music; “Dialogue with Măniuțiu” – a new project prepared by a distinguished Romanian director and choreographer Andrea Gavriliu, to name a few, will be shown. An extensive programme of artistic events will be complemented by a two-day scientific seminar.
Throughout the year, concerts of jazz and classical music as well as multidisciplinary festivals in Cracow and Gdańsk, addressing a broad audience interested in literature, film, music, and cultural tourism, will be taking place.
The Romanian Ministry of Culture and the Romanian Cultural Institute in Warsaw are the organisers of events taking place in Poland.
Poland-Romania Cultural Season 2024-2025
The first ever Polish-Romania Cultural Season was inaugurated in June 2024 and will last until November 2025. It is taking place under the slogan “We Share a Common Language”, referring to the language of culture that allows gaining extensive knowledge and understanding through the diversity of forms, means of expression, and traditions. The Polish-Romania Cultural Season is a joint undertaking of the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, supported by the Polish Institute in Bucharest as well as the Romanian Ministry of Culture, and the Romanian Cultural Institute in Warsaw.
The Adam Mickiewicz Institute (IAM) brings Polish culture to people around the world. Being a state institution, it creates lasting interest in Polish culture and art through strengthening the presence of Polish artists on the global stage. It initiates innovative projects, supports international cooperation and cultural exchanges. It promotes the work of both established and promising artists, showing the diversity and richness of our culture. Adam Mickiewicz Institute is also responsible for the Culture.pl website, which is a comprehensive source of knowledge about Polish culture. More information: www.iam.pl
The Romanian Cultural Institute was established in 2006. It is one of the 18 institutes for Romanian culture active outside Romania. It works to spread knowledge of Romania, zooming in on the Romanian language and culture and facilitating partner and cultural exchanges between Poland and Romania. The Institute in Warsaw implements cultural events in various fields such as music, film, dance, theatre, visual arts and other, either at its own initiative or in cooperation with Polish public and private institutions. It also performs actions in the sphere of cultural diplomacy.
Media contact:
Klaudia Gniady
Ovidiu Miron
