The 2026 Adelaide Festival will feature the critically acclaimed French actor Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher, Elle) as Mary, Queen of Scots in a one-woman show designed, lit and directed by the late Robert Wilson, and a triple bill by accomplished early music specialists Ensemble Pygmalion, a French choir and orchestra.
The 2026 Adelaide Festival: quick links
2026 Adelaide Festival: AD Matthew Lutton’s first program
The early look at Adelaide Festival’s 2026 program – the first festival programmed by new Artistic Director Matthew Lutton OAM – was revealed today (Thursday 28 August).
Lutton, the Artistic Director of Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre from 2015 to 2025, was announced as Adelaide Festival’s new Artistic Director in March this year. He took over the reins from locum Artistic Director Brett Sheehy, who adroitly steered the 2025 Festival back into the black after a tumultuous period last year, which included the 2024 Festival under Ruth Mackenzie posting a loss despite receiving an extra $2.3 million from the South Australian Government six months earlier. Mackenzie herself left the Festival in 2024 to take up a position with the South Australian Government.
Lutton said of his 2026 program’s first acts: ‘Raphael Pichon and Ensemble Pygmalion are leaders in their interpretation of early music. They celebrate you hearing Bach and Monteverdi with entirely new ears – it’s electric. Director Robert Wilson inspired generations with his genius, and I was deeply saddened to learn of his recent death. We have lost a visionary, and Mary Said What She Said was to be his Adelaide theatre debut. This production, created with the force of nature that is actor Isabelle Huppert, not only reveals new layers of Mary Queen of Scots, but the power of Wilson’s unique theatrical vision.’
South Australia’s Minister for Arts, the Hon. Andrea Michaels MP, added: ‘We are proud to have contributed an additional $650,000 from the Malinauskas Government’s Arts Investment Fund, as previously announced, to support Adelaide Festival in 2026. This ensures that stories can continue to be told artistically and that audiences can experience the world’s best artists on South Australian stages, beginning with these two festival exclusives.’
The two Australian exclusives go on sale today (Thursday 28 August) at 10am ACST (10:30am AEST) via the Festival website.
2026 Adelaide Festival’s early announcements: Isabelle Huppert
Théâtre de la Ville-Paris’ Mary Said What She Said features a script by US novelist, essayist and non-fiction author Darryl Pinckney, which draws from the doomed Queen Mary Stuart’s own letters, and a score by Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi.
The production – performed in French with English surtitles and to be performed at Adelaide Festival Centre’s Festival Theatre from 6-8 March 2026 – was praised by The Guardian as ‘a one-woman tour de force’. The New York Times praised Huppert’s performance as, ‘a marvel to behold’, saying ‘She gives a performance of rarefied virtuosity and rigor’.
Rich in the symbolism and imagery that earned director and designer Robert Wilson the title of ‘world’s foremost vanguard theatre artist’ before his recent death in July, Mary Said What She Said has been seen to date in New York, Korea, London, Paris and Tokyo. It stars Huppert – last seen at Adelaide Festival in 2012 – as Mary Stuart, the Scottish queen who was famously executed by order of her sister, England’s Queen Elizabeth I, in 1587. The dense script explores Stuart’s involvement in some of the most notorious plots of her day.
2026 Adelaide Festival’s early announcements: Ensemble Pygmalion
Ensemble Pygmalion, an orchestra performing on period instruments and accompanied by a choir, was founded by Raphaël Pichon in 2006 in order to highlight the links between many great baroque music composers and to perform and reinterpret their music. The Ensemble has collaborated with many significant directors to date including Romeo Castellucci, Katie Mitchell, Aurélien Bory and Michel Fau, performs regularly at prestigious French venues such as the Philharmonie de Paris, the Opéra de Versailles and at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, and its recordings have been called ‘gripping and impactful’ and ‘life-affirming’.
Ensemble Pygmalion will perform three concerts across Adelaide Festival, marking its Australian debut:
- Bach: Good Night World (27-28 February at Adelaide Town Hall): a program exploring both Bach’s music and that of his forebears. Responding to the tumult of the time, including the Thirty Years War, these composers sought to inspire their listeners with a sense of consolation, hope and beauty: themes which resonate with us today and ensure Bach’s enduring legacy.
- Monteverdi’s Vespers (2-3 March at St Peter’s Cathedral): Monteverdi’s first published work of sacred music (1610), which evokes golden-age Venice in Saint Mark’s Basilica just as the Italian Baroque began. In his setting of the Vespers, Monteverdi drew on centuries of sacred music tradition, but he broke the mould by bringing the theatricality and drama of opera into the church.
- Orfeo by Luigi Rossi (4-6 March at Adelaide Town Hall): the first-ever French opera, written by Italian composer Rossi while in exile in Paris and debuting in 1647, and then lost for over 300 years. Based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Pygmalion’s production brings to life their tragic tale of love and heartbreak.
Adelaide Festival launches its full program on Monday 27 October and runs from 27 February to 15 March 2026. Visit the Festival’s Website for details.
