The world’s most comprehensive platform for celebrating and experiencing the newest work in theater, dance, opera, music, and performance.
Image: Live Artery I New York Live Arts: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company "Collage Revisited" (1988, 2025). Photo by Theo Cote (Courtesy Kaatsbaan).
ABOUT US
Every January in New York City, more than 45,000 performing arts leaders, artists, and enthusiasts from across the globe converge for JanArtsNYC. A partnership among independent multidisciplinary festivals, indispensable industry convenings and international marketplaces, JanArtsNYC is one of the largest and most influential gatherings of its kind.
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Featuring a diverse array of world-class public performances and innovative industry gatherings, JanArtsNYC is the world’s most comprehensive platform for celebrating and experiencing the newest work by artists in theater, dance, opera, music, and performance.​
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Celebrating 13 years of partnership, the festivals organizers and industry conveners of JanArtsNYC have emerged both independently and also symbiotically around the annual gathering of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, known as the APAP|NYC conference.
Promotional support provided by the New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment and the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP).
JanArtsNYC PARTNER Events
Audience at the Yasser Tejeda performance at globalFEST 2024.
Photo by Adam Kissick/APAP.
Out-front! festival
january 3-11, 2026
The Out-FRONT! Fest. is curated and produced by Pioneers Go East Collective and presented in partnership with Judson Church.
The Out-FRONT! Fest. is a high-visibility platform for radical choreographers and performing artists whose rigorous, playful, and fabulously outrageous creative practices speak to our community in new, unexpected, and beautiful ways. Centering LGBTQ+ and feminist emerging voices, the festival features 9 premieres and 6 films of high artistic merit, exploring bold new performance modes for a lively exchange of art and culture. The Festival is curated by Gian Marco Riccardo Lo Forte, Philip Treviño, Remi Harris, and cultural organizer Joyce Isabelle. Now in its fourth year, with this latest edition, we look forward to continuing to be a place of community-building for artists and audiences alike.
Image: Alexa Grae. Photo by Alexa Grae.
Image from the 2024 Unity Jazz Festival.
Jazz at Lincoln Center'S Jazz Congress & unitY JAZZ FESTIVAL
January 7-9, 2026
Organized by Jazz at Lincoln Center, Jazz Congress features a series of workshops, panels and networking opportunities, all geared to expanding the audience for jazz. Attendees include presenters, artists, managers, agents, journalists, radio programmers and other jazz professionals.​
After its successful debut in 2024, the Unity Jazz Festival returns to Jazz at Lincoln Center with a brand-new lineup, bringing together acclaimed artists, first-time listeners, and longtime fans. A roster of diverse, intergenerational acts convene in the Ertegun Atrium, Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio, Dizzy’s Club, and the Appel Room to perform and uplift the Jazz community.
Live Artery | New York Live Arts
January 7-17, 2026
New York Live Arts's dynamic Live Artery Festival features new and recent works by resident Live Arts commissioned artists and curated guests. Live Artery provides a space for artists to network and share their work with presenters from around the world, which has led to commissions, tours and the building of long-term relationships. The festival includes co-presentations with partner Under the Radar Festival, and off-site performances at L'Alliance New York, Danspace, Triskelion Arts...and more!
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The 2026 Live Artery programming will be announced November 2025, please visit and learn more at NewYorkLiveArts.org.
Image: Live Artery I New York Live Arts: Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company "Collage Revisited" (1988, 2025). Photo by Theo Cote (Courtesy Kaatsbaan).
Images from top to bottom, left to right: Art Bath, Precipice, The All Sing, Tiergarten, Hildegard, BMP: SONGBOOK, What to Wear.
PROTOTYPE FestivaL
January 7-18, 2026
PROTOTYPE is produced by Beth Morrison Projects, a trailblazer in the creation and presentation of contemporary, multi-disciplinary opera-theatre and music-theatre works. The visionary festival is the only one of its kind in New York City and is a model now emulated around the country – producing and presenting a wide spectrum of works, from intimate black-box experiences to larger chamber opera productions, valuing artistic, curatorial, and producorial risk-taking. PROTOTYPE is committed to surprising our audiences and confounding their expectations through content, form, and relevance. The festival gives voice to a diverse group of composers, librettists, performers and musicians across all genres, backgrounds, and cultures. PROTOTYPE was co-founded in 2013 by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE under the leadership of Beth Morrison, Kim Whitener, and Kristin Marting.
Under the Radar Festival
January 7-25, 2026
For over two decades, the Under the Radar Theater Festival has brought bold, risk-taking work to New York City, celebrating groundbreaking theater and performance from around the world and just down the street. Produced in collaboration with dozens of venues at a selection of historic and emerging theaters across New York City, the festival showcases innovative multidisciplinary artists whose work speaks powerfully to the present moment. Under the Radar’s influence sets a cultural standard that resonates through the artistic landscape far further and beyond our January schedule. In coordination with Festival founder and Director Mark Russell, Producers Thomas O. Kriegsmann and Sami Pyne of ArKtype, and with the addition of this year’s highly-esteemed Co-Creative Directors Meropi Peponides and Kaneza Schaal, UTR is positioned to continue to capitalize on the Festival’s rich history and expand on a tradition of trailblazing new direction.
Image of Wet Mess in "TESTO" Photo by Lesley Martin.
NYC Winter Jazzfest 2026 poster.
nyc winter jazzfest
january 8-13, 2026
Celebrating 21 years, NYC Winter Jazzfest is proud to continue highlighting artists deserving greater attention while nurturing an audience for Black American Music, and amplifying artists' messages of justice, wellness and progressive change on and off stage. Our artist-in-residence this year, drummer, beatmaker and exploratory mixtape artist Makaya McCraven, will perform in at least four different configurations over the course of the festival. A prolific drummer, composer and producer, McCraven has been aptly called a “cultural synthesizer,” with a unique gift for collapsing space, destroying borders and blending past, present and future into poly-textural arrangements of post-genre, jazz-rooted 21st-century folk music. His festival collaborators will include Joel Ross, Theon Cross, Ben Lamar Gay, Marquis Hill, Junius Paul, Matt Gold, Josh Johnson and Gilles Peterson in a celebration of 10 years since his boundary-shattering In the Moment was released. Other Festival highlights include the signature two-day marathon in each Manhattan (Jan 10) and Brooklyn (Jan 11), the music of Strata-East Records at Town Hall, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme's 60th Anniversary at Roulette, Les Filles de Illighadad at Public Records, nightly shows at Nublu, and much more.
PhysFestNYC
january 8-18, 2026
PhysFestNYC is a community-focused festival that celebrates, enriches, and envisions the field of physical theater. As an annual gathering, it provides space for practitioners, audiences, and the physical-theater-curious to share in presented works, diverse workshop offerings, and community-building events. This is the first physical theater festival in NYC, and there is only one other festival of its kind in the USA.
Physical Theater is any performing art form that centers the body in space. This includes Dance Theater, Commedia dell’arte, Clown, Mime, Butoh, Mukabhinaya, and limitless genre-mixing or -defying styles.
Physical theater tends to be experimental, innovative, and genre-breaking, and its methods are increasingly used in larger commercial productions. Despite this, physical theater practitioners are under-resourced and often siloed in their practice. We created this festival to open pathways of communication and opportunities for shared resources, thereby supporting artists in their work and deepening their impact.
Image of Broken Box Mime Theater. Photo by Bjorn Bolinder.
Image: Nona Hendryx speaking with Shanta Thake at APAP|NYC 2025.
Photo by Adam Kissick/APAP.
APAP|NYC Conference
January 9-13, 2026
APAP|NYC is the world's premier gathering of the performing arts presenting, booking, and touring industry and the annual members conference of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. Called by the Wall Street Journal "the spawning ground for the world-wide music and performing arts industries," the APAP conference has been the gravitational hub for the JanArtsNYC festivals and convenings for decades. In 2026, more than 3000 conference attendees—artists, agents, presenters, producers, venue operators, funders, and arts administrators—will convene for community, commerce, learning, and discovery, as well as the networking, inspiration, and opportunities that drive the live performing arts forward.
GlobalFEST Annual Wavelengths Conference
January 9, 2026
The Wavelengths Conference is an annual gathering of a wide array of arts professionals including arts organizations, artists, venues, agents, managers, media, funders, activists, and others that are part of the global music community. The conference creates a space for dialogue around critical issues facing the field and as a social hub for networking. It is also a resource for those looking at career development, exploring new touring projects, and booking opportunities. Wavelengths has become the de facto gathering place to bring a unique community of arts professionals together that are engaged in global music. The 2026 conference will lean into issues that are important to our expansive constituency while strengthening networks and deepening our understanding of the role of the arts, artists and arts professionals in a world in conflict. This event is free, but you must register to attend. You do not need to be an APAP member to attend this event.
Image of panel at Wavelengths 2020.
Photo by Adam Kissick/APAP.
Image of Invetebrate in The Missing Element at Works & Process Underground Uptown Dance Festival at Guggenheim New York on January 11, 2025. Photo by Adam Kissick/APAP.
Works & Process underground uptown dance festival
January 9-13, 2026
Gather round the Guggenheim with Works & Process and celebrate New York City’s extraordinary club, street, and social dance traditions sharing the stage with concert dance. Intergenerational and rooted in the circle and cipher, one-night-only events span the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed subterranean theater, and culminate in social dances and battles in the rotunda. Resourcing artists long-term from studio-to-stage, all featured projects are provided with iterative presentations and/or fully-funded creative residencies across the Works & Process LaunchPAD network of 14 residency centers in MA, NJ, NJ, and VT.
Globalfest
January 11, 2026
The cultural catalysts at globalFEST have been promoting the world's greatest musical traditions for over 20 years. This annual festival features an eclectic array of musical discoveries from today's hottest international sounds to styles born and bred in the U.S. The New York Times calls the festival, "a joyful and often raucous celebration of diversity and culture." The blockbuster, ten-sets-in-one-night evening returns to David Geffen Hall for their annual full-theater takeover at Lincoln Center, populating all the floors of the building with soul-stirring performers from across the planet and around the corner. This year's featured artists include: Al-Qasar (Morocco, France), Dale Watson & His Lone Stars with Special Guest Celine Lee (Texas, U.S.), David Rivera & La Bámbula (Puerto Rico), Insun Park & Generals (South Korea), Maria Mazzotta (Italy), The Naghash Ensemble (Armenia), Nidia Góngora (Colombia), Raiatea Helm (Hawai'i, U.S.), Saami Brothers featuring Ustad Naseeruddin Saami (Pakistan), and Vopli Vidopliassova (Ukraine).
Images from top to bottom, left to right: Saami Brothers featuring Ustad Naseeruddin Saami (Photo by Simrah Farrukah), Insun Park & Generals (Photo by Cell Kim), David Rivera & La Bámbula, Dale Watson & his Lone Stars, The Naghash Ensemble, Raiatea Helm, Maria Mazzotta, Vopli Vidopliassova, Nidia Góngora, and Al-Qasar.
Panelists talking onstage at the ISPA 2025 Congress.
ISPA 2026 New York Congress
January 13-15, 2026
At ISPA 2026 New York Congress, 500 arts leaders from 50 regions will connect, reflect, and share perspectives in the spirit of Resilience: A Global Dialogue.
This year, resilience is at the heart of our global conversation. In an era marked by economic volatility, geopolitical conflict, and ever-increasing isolationism, the ability to work internationally has become increasingly complex for organizations, independent producers, and artists. Together, we will explore how we can sustain and develop international partnerships, foster creative exchange, and cultivate the resilience needed to thrive in an unpredictable world.
JanArtsNYC RETURNS in 2026!
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Watch this video from 2019 by All Arts to learn more about how the JanArtsNYC partnership celebrates the performing arts and brings people together.
media inquiries
For media inquiries, please contact Johanna McCabe, Press Secretary, NYC Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment, at johmccabe@media.nyc.gov.​