Utrecht's Le Guess Who? Festival Announces 20th Anniv. Lineup Nov 5-8

Le Guess Who?, the internationally acclaimed festival known for championing boundary-pushing music across genres and geographies, has unveiled its guest curators and first wave of programming for its 20th anniversary edition, running from November 5th to November 8th in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Over the past two decades, the festival has built one of Europe’s most vital platforms for global experimental music, bringing together more than 100 artists across 20 venues in Utrecht’s city centre each year. Its curatorial ethos continues to centre bold sonic experimentation, cross-cultural dialogue, and underrepresented musical traditions.

For its milestone edition, Aja Monet returns as both performer and curator, presenting a programme shaped by themes of resistance, love, and the pursuit of joy. Sound artist Joseph Kamaru also joins the curatorial lineup, bringing his practice rooted in field recording, noise, and sound art. He will present WAI8, an eight-hour durational performance exploring how sound can stretch, fracture, loop, and dissolve linear time, inviting audiences into an extended state of listening and temporal immersion.

Also curating this year are Los Thuthanaka, the project led by siblings Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, presenting a programme that spotlights artists reinterpreting indigenous Andean culture through experimental, electronic, and psychedelic forms. Returning festival favourites Tropical Fuck Storm - described as post-apocalyptic acid punk disco - will also curate a lineup blending collaborators, touring companions, and artists they’ve long admired.

Meanwhile, the first wave of the main programme includes regional acts such as Maryam Saleh, a leading voice in Egypt’s alternative music scene, known for fusing shaabi and folk traditions with experimental electronic textures. Also returning is the Egyptian zār ensemble Mazaher, following their debut at the festival in 2021.

From Morocco, Khadija El Warzazi and Bnat El Houriyat are set to bring decades of work preserving and reimagining traditional huara and shaabi forms through percussion-driven, women-led performance. Their sets, rooted in communal women’s gatherings, combine vocal percussion, humour, and rhythmic traditions such as tabsil, a practice using finger cymbals tapped against tea plates to echo the iron castanets of karkabas.

Free jazz quartet أحمد [Ahmed] also joins the lineup, alongside Syrian singer and bouzouki player Mohammad Syfkhan, who built his career performing at weddings and festivals across Syria from the 1980s through the 2000s. Moroccan Gnawa master Maalem Houssam Guinia, continuing the legacy of his father, the late Maalem Mahmoud Guinia, is also featured on the bill.

Mo’min Swaitat, founder of the Palestinian Sound Archive, which explores archival practice as a decolonial act through audiovisual installation and live storytelling, will present a special showcase with researcher Karma Abu Dagga. The pair will bring a DJ set drawn from archival recordings that document the Palestinian heritage, reframing preserved sounds as living, evolving material.  

Additionally, as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, the festival will also host 24 HOUR DUB, a continuous 24-hour dub programme at Utrecht’s KABUL a GoGo. The event will bring together sound system pioneers, poets, engineers, and a new generation of bass experimentalists, featuring names including Greentea Selecta, Introspekt, Tash LC, and Aba Shanti-I, among others.

For more info about the full program and passes for Le Guess Who? 2026, head to Le Guess Who?'s official website.