(Courtesy of Bayreuth Festival)

The Bayreuth Festival has announced plans for the 2026 season.

The company noted that it would celebrate its 150th anniversary with a special Ring Cycle. The festival noted that while Valentin Schwarz’s 2022 staging of the four-night “Der Ring des Nibelungen” will be revived for the final time in 2025, 2026 will be “not purely a concert version” of the tetralogy. Spokesman Hubertus Herrmann said “festival head Katharina Wagner will reveal more details next year and there will be a new staging of the Ring in 2028.”

The 2026 season will also showcase “Rienzi” for the very first time at the festival. There will also be presentations of 10 of his mature works that have traditionally been performed at the opera house.

The 2024 Bayreuth festival concluded with record-breaking ticket sales and had 30 sellouts.  Additionally the company said that 58,000 people attended this season.