Outburst Queer Arts Festival

Outburst Queer Arts Festival returns to Belfast from 12 to 21 November 2026, running across nine days at various venues and spaces around the city. This year is the 20th edition, marking two decades of queer art and artists in Belfast. The festival describes itself around three ideas: 'Queer is a verb', 'Art is a ride' and 'Revolution is inevitable'. It's a curated programme of new queer art and creative happenings by queer artists, writers and makers, shaped through special commissions, collaborations and an Open Call, with a stated policy of not using AI in the work.

The programme is spread across several sites. The Black Box hosts the exhibition 20 Years of Outburst, which runs from 5 to 21 November. The festival commissions this year are DARKROOMS by Lyónn Wolf and Tenderly Queer: Connections of queer artists in Northern Ireland and Myanmar by Reuben Brown. On 13 November at 19:00, Ulster University Lecture Theatre 1 hosts Salon des Refusées: The First Century of Feminist Cinema, as Seen by Céline Sciamma. The following day, 14 November, Queen's Film Theatre screens Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Tomboy, both with introductions by Sciamma herself. Towards the end of the run, on 20 November at 14:00, the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast hosts The Problem With Counting: LGBTQ Lives, Data and the Film & TV Industry.

Beyond the programme, the organisers provide financial support to the artists involved, covering artist and performance fees, travel, accommodation, venue hire and install and tech costs. With the exhibition starting early and the main festival running through the middle of November, there's plenty to pick and choose from across the city.