Reykjavik Arts Festival will take place 30 May-14 June 2026.

“This partnership with Landsbankinn is very important to us. We enjoy working with such a robust backer who has an exemplary history of support for arts and culture in Iceland. The support opens new opportunities to expand the Festival even further and invite all Icelanders, as well as international guests, to enjoy a first-rate and diverse programme. Our aim is for the Festival to reach as broad an audience as possible and we have created a programme that attempts to ensure that everyone can find something to enjoy,” says Lára Sóley.

“We are excited to participate in this fantastic project and look forward to attending the events. Landsbankinn has been a strong supporter of arts and culture throughout the years. Recently, we have worked with DesignMarch, hosted art tours on Reykjavík Culture Night and supported various smaller cultural events around the country, both financially and with direct participation. I would also like to mention the Bank’s gallery website which provides general access to our art collection. Landsbankinn’s headquarters at Reykjastræti 6 are located at the cultural heart of the city. It is very important for us to be an active participant in the arts scene - and to enjoy,” says Sara.

Reykjavík Arts Festival will be held 30 May to 14 June. Events are hosted in various locations around the city and in rural Iceland. The full programme of the Festival will be presented at a dedicated event in Iðnó, Thursday 26 March. Hildur Guðnadóttir is artist-in-residence at Reykjavík Arts Festival 2026 and features in four dedicated events. Among other events are the concert of soprano Angel Blue, exhibitions by Björk Guðmundsdóttir and James Merry at the National Gallery of Iceland, a James Grant concert, an exhibition by Zimoun in the Akureyri Art Museum and the performance of Mahler's 8th Symphony by the Iceland Symphony Orchestra.

Landsbankinn sponsors Reykjavík Arts Festival

Project managers Ragnheiður Maísól Sturludóttir and Jón Haukur Unnarsson joined the Reykjavík Arts Festival team this January.

Ragnheiður Maísól holds a BA degree in Fine Art and an MA in Applied Ethnology. Since 2013, she has worked in diverse cultural production alongside her own artistic practice and is one of the founders of MurMur Productions. She was Artistic Director of List án landamæra from 2017 to 2019, Managing Director of Dark Music Days in 2021 and Flipp Festival in 2022, and worked in marketing for DesignMarch in 2022 and 2023. She has mostly worked within the performing art field, having produced over 20 independent theatre works, including Club Romantica, the opera KOK, Sæskrímslin, the opening piece of the 2024 Reykjavík Arts Festival, and Innkaupapokinn.

Jón Haukur is an artist and cultural manager from Akureyri who has been active in the arts since 2010. He studied percussion and sound engineering in Iceland, at the University of the Arts in Havana, and at SAE Institute in Berlin, and is currently completing an MA in Cultural Management at Bifröst University. He is the founder of the festival Mannfólkið breytist í slím, one of the organizers of the Boreal Screendance Festival, and has worked as a project manager for summer festivals for the municipality of Akureyri. In his creative career, Jón Haukur has focused on drumming and percussion, as well as composition, recording and music production, sound design, and event organization. He has also performed contemporary dance and live art.

The festival warmly welcomes them to the team and looks forward to the collaboration.

The Reykjavík Arts Festival Team Expands

With great anticipation, the National Gallery of Iceland and the Reykjavík Arts Festival announce that on the festival's opening day, May 30, 2026, exhibitions by Björk and James Merry will open at the museum. 

The exhibitions Ummyndlingar (Metamorphlings) and echolalia will take over all four galleries of the National Gallery of Iceland and will run throughout the summer until September 20, 2026.

James Merry : Metamorphlings

Metamorphlings is the first museum retrospective of the artist’s work. Comprising over 80 artworks, the exhibition offers a window into the evolution of Merry’s artistic output over the past decade. During this time, he has developed a body of work centered on the mask – operating as a conduit for transformation, a catalyst for performance, and a portal through which identity can mutate. The exhibition focuses on the moment of metamorphosis when form and self are fluid. 

The masks on view showcase Merry’s craftsmanship, which uniquely blends traditional techniques with contemporary, avant-garde expressions. Visitors encounter works in a range of mediums: embroidery, metalwork, 3D printing, jewelry, and interactive digital displays. Collectively, these works – the Metamorphlings – form a family of shape-shifting creations that can offer a deeper insight into Merry’s unending fascination with the natural world, as well as his abiding interest in archaeology and ancient ritual.

Many of the masks included in the exhibition were created for Björk Guðmundsdóttir as part of their long-standing artistic collaboration. The exhibition will also include commissions made for other notable collaborators, among them Tilda Swinton and Iris van Herpen. While many of these works have appeared in live performances and high-fashion contexts, this exhibition offers a rare opportunity to engage with them as standalone artworks. 

The National Gallery presents echolalalia, an exhibition of works by Björk, the visionary singer, songwriter, performer, and poet, whose work over the past five decades has consistently pushed beyond conventional musical boundaries, interweaving art, nature, and technology with restless experimentation. Echolalia focuses on Björk as the creative force behind multimedia projects she has developed in collaboration with communities of musicians, artists, designers, dancers, filmmakers, and studio technicians. In three immersive installations, the public is given a rare opportunity to engage intimately with works of phenomenal visual, aural, and emotional depth.

The first gallery contains a new installation pulled from Björk’s forthcoming album. The work offers an introduction to the latest chapter of the artist’s ongoing explorations of transformation and collaboration. 

Two elegiac works each command their own galleries. Ancestress and Sorrowful Soil honor Björk’s mother, environmental activist Hildur Rúna Hauksdóttir, who passed away in 2018. Released alongside Björk’s 2022 album Fossora, composed and arranged by Björk, the works are presented at the museum on a theatrical scale. 

Ancestress reckons with the cyclical nature of life. Set in a remote valley in Iceland, the lamentation is staged as a ritualistic procession of musicians and dancers, including Björk herself, who is accompanied by her son, Sindri Eldon in the chorus. The film was made in close collaboration with many of Björk’s longstanding creative partners, including the filmmaker Andrew Thomas Huang, and James Merry, co-creative director with Björk, and designer of the masks and ritual objects that adorn the musicians.

The polyphonic 9-part choral work Sorrowful Soil is a requiem expressing the loss of the mother as a life force. The oval-shaped video, directed by Viðar Logi and Björk as creative director, speaks to both human and geological time, filmed at the site of the erupting Fagradalsfjall volcano. Thirty speakers arrayed through the gallery each transmit a single voice from the Hamrahlíð choir, conducted by Þorgerður Ingólfsdóttir. As one walks through the gallery, the experience moves between singular and synergistic voices, invoking a sense of humanity that is at once individual and collective.

Björk and James Merry open exhibitions at the National Gallery of Iceland 

Thank you for 2022!

More news

Landsbankinn sponsors Reykjavík Arts Festival

The Reykjavík Arts Festival Team Expands

Björk and James Merry open exhibitions at the National Gallery of Iceland