LEME PRO 2026
LEME PRO
3 – 5 DEC 2026
LEME PRO is a space for critical thinking, debate, and professional exchange. Designed for professionals working across creation, programming, mediation, and research, the programme places particular emphasis on contemporary circus and artistic creation for public space - dimensions which, by their transdisciplinary nature, intersect with various fields of the performing, visual, and participatory arts. Over the course of two days, it offers a shared reflection on the role of these practices in social transformation, the construction of new narratives, and the sensitive activation of territories.
LEME PRO 2026 unfolds over three days as a space for reflection, exchange and professional encounters around contemporary circus and artistic creation in public space. Bringing together artists, programmers, curators, researchers and cultural organisations, the programme explores how contemporary artistic practices are responding to accelerating social, technological and institutional transformations.
Through conferences, debates, artistic presentations and informal gatherings, LEME PRO 2026 reflects on time as artistic material, creative condition and political challenge. The programme also addresses the growing impact of digital transition on artistic creation, questioning how emerging technologies are reshaping dramaturgies, production models, audience relationships and collective experience.
Under the motto Performing instability, Expanding presence, the programme approaches instability as a space for experimentation, transformation and reinvention, exploring the tensions between ephemerality and permanence, physical presence and digital mediation, slowness and acceleration.
Between artistic time and institutional time
CIRCUS FORUM — Roundtable
Contemporary arts increasingly operates between conflicting temporalities: the time required for artistic research and experimentation, and the accelerating institutional and production frameworks shaping today’s cultural sector. This roundtable reflects on current transformations affecting creation, circulation and sustainability within contemporary arts, while discussing how artists and organisations negotiate mobility, collaboration and artistic risk in rapidly changing contexts.
Speakers
- Andree Wenzel, Zirkus ON [DE]
- Karine Décorne [UK/FR]
- Raquel André [PT]
Digital ecologies and the future of creation for public space
CIRCUS FORUM — Keynote
As digital technologies increasingly shape the ways we communicate, experience and inhabit public space, contemporary artistic creation is entering a period of profound transformation. This keynote reflects on the relationship between technological environments and artistic practices, exploring how digital media, artificial intelligence and hybrid forms of participation are reshaping dramaturgies, audience engagement and collective experience. The session will further address how artists and cultural organisations are navigating the tensions between technological innovation, human experience and the evolving nature of presence within increasingly mediated realities.
Speaker
- Maja Kuzmanovic, FoAM [HR]
Artistic creation for public space in times of digital transition
Outdoor Arts Portugal Talks — Roundtable
Public space is increasingly shaped by technological acceleration, digital mediation and new forms of social interaction, creating new challenges and opportunities for contemporary artistic creation. This roundtable reflects on how festivals and cultural networks are responding to these transformations while continuing to develop meaningful, accessible and socially engaged artistic experiences.
Speakers
- Alexis Nys, Lieux publics [FR]
- Judita Strumilaitė, SPOT festival [LT]
Sho Shibata, Outdoor Arts UK [UK]
LEME
3 – 6 DEC 2026
Ílhavo, Portugal
Some encounters do not announce themselves with urgency, they quietly emerge. LEME returns to Ílhavo from 3 to 6 December 2026, assuming with even greater clarity the place it has been shaping within the landscape of contemporary creation: a space where circus intersects with other artistic languages, and where the festival operates less as a succession of performances and more as a territory for experience, reflection and encounter.
In a time marked by constant acceleration and the rapid consumption of culture, LEME proposes a different rhythm. A festival that claims time as artistic material. Time to inhabit space and the body, to listen before explaining, to remain within the moment before it becomes memory. The 2026 edition unfolds precisely from this tension between duration and ephemerality. Contemporary circus appears here as a language capable of making visible what exists only for brief moments: risk, balance, the physical presence of the body in space, and the intensity of an unrepeatable encounter between artists and audiences. More than presenting works, LEME seeks to create the conditions for these moments to occur and endure.
The festival continues to affirm itself as a place of discovery and sustained support for emerging artists, accompanying processes and resisting the accelerated circulation of artistic production. Each proposal is conceived as a shared experience, where audiences are invited not only to watch but to inhabit the time of the work. Between theatres and unexpected spaces across the territory, LEME traces a sensitive geography of Ílhavo, where architecture, bodies and imagination converge. A festival that does not merely occupy spaces but activates them, transforming them into places of presence and memory.