Prismatic Arts Festival

The Prismatic Arts Festival returns to Halifax from September 26 to October 4, 2026, with performances spread across multiple venues throughout the city. It's a national, multidisciplinary arts festival based here in Kjipuktuk, and it focuses on showcasing and celebrating innovative work by Indigenous artists and artists of colour from across Canada.

Since it started in 2008, Prismatic has brought boundary-pushing new work to the city across a wide range of disciplines: theatre, dance, music, film, visual arts, media arts and spoken word. Because it's multidisciplinary, you'll find different kinds of work happening at the same time, so you can pick and choose what fits your taste. The festival runs for nine days, from September 26 through to October 4, with events taking place throughout the Halifax Regional Municipality.

The festival is supported by a few of the usual suspects in the arts community: the Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, the JW Murphy Foundation, NSCADD, the Downtown Halifax Business Commission and the Four Points by Sheraton. It's an annual event, and this edition continues its focus on bringing work from Indigenous artists and artists of colour from across the country to venues across the city.

If you're planning to go, keep in mind that it's spread over multiple locations, so you'll be moving around the city rather than staying in one spot. The full run is September 26 to October 4, 2026.