Meakusma is thrilled to announce the full lineup for the 2026 Meakusma Festival that will once again descend upon the city of Eupen in East Belgium from September 3rd to 6th. Four days of live performances, DJ sets, installations, workshops, and more. 

PROGRAM

With 140 acts on the bill, it is impossible to focus on all of them. In true Meakusma spirit, the lineup is diverse, touching on both experimental and club music. 

Garth Erasmus’s work draws on his Khoisan heritage and showcases a history of producing art as resistance, protesting against apartheid, and dwelling in unexpectedly spaced-out, heavily atmospheric forms. He will perform with the Broken String Ensemble, comprising Stefan Schneider of the TAL record label and more. Anderson do Paraíso is one of the most influential and seminal DJs and producers behind the downtempo, dark baile funk sound of Belo Horizonte, showcasing intricate soundcraft and a futurist vision of the genre. The diverse sonic worlds that Carmen Villain has built over her career are shaped by her natural curiosity for sound. Her music hits a sweet spot between dub’s blunt rhythmic lilt and cosmic fourth world. 

Senegalese percussionist and Art Ensemble of Chicago member Dudù Kouate is renowned for his virtuosic command of over 200 instruments—many crafted from recycled materials—and his deep exploration of traditional sounds and elemental rhythms. He will perform on his own as well as together with Berlin-based cellist and composer Julia Biłat. Drummer-composer and multi-instrumentalist Valentina Magaletti has become something of a Meakusma Festival mainstay. She always surprises and will this time perform with Danish trombonist, improviser, and composer Maria Bertel of Selvhenter, as well as with musician, composer, and producer YPY from Japan. I’A’V is the triangulation of Inês Malheiro, Arianna Casellas, and Violeta Azevedo, tracing a course of dreamlike songs that blend into a long and volatile poem, where a rarefied electronic landscape of arpeggios, glassy textures, and ruptures dwells in fluid lyricism. 

British-Nigerian Ibraham Alfa Jnr draws inspiration from the minimalism of Steve Reich and John Cage, as well as from acid house and Detroit techno, conjuring up an outsider perspective on club and experimental music alike. His new Infinite Black Inside album on FO received extensive praise upon release. DJ Plead, Sydney-born and now Melbourne- based, brings maximum soundsystem impact with vibrant energy and flair. His recent Ride TV release diversifies his contrasting focus on dub and widescreen ambient. He will play live. Sa Pa, also from Australia, crafts immersive compositions that dissolve the distinctions between rhythm, texture, and space. It’s techno, unbound by its conventions. Composer, trumpeter, improviser, and bandleader Peter Evans from New York is part of a broad, hybridized scene of musical experimentation, and his work cuts across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions. He appears alongside Georgian electronic music composer Anushka Chkheidze, as well as with the explosive EXTRA trio with Petter Eldh on bass, and Jim Black on drums, blending jazz, noise, electronics, and raw improvisation. Violeta García is a cellist, composer, improviser, and curator whose work sits at the intersection of free improvisation, contemporary classical music, and experimental electronic noise, drawing on the violoncello, analog synthesizers, and her own voice. 

Ostbelgienfestival, the largest classical music organizer in the German-speaking Community in Belgium, partners for three performances and an installation. 2026 marks the centenary of American avant-garde composer Morton Feldman. The Ensemble Musikfabrik from Cologne, Germany, will perform two pieces in his honor. The Belgian Nadar Ensemble is fascinated not only by contemporary music but also by film, visual arts, performance, theatre, and installation art. They intend to develop forms of musical presentation that reflect this world. They will perform Raven Chacon’s Voiceless Mass, a mesmerizing work for organ and ensemble for which Chacon won a Pulitzer Prize in 2022. The piece addresses critical issues concerning the legacy of the Catholic Church and the atrocities committed against Indigenous peoples in the U.S. It will be performed three times on the festival’s Friday. An overpowering installation by Fabio Machiavelli will be on show for the full weekend of the festival, with the Ictus Ensemble performing on it on Friday. The core of Machiavelli’s artistic activity concerns new lutherie, DIY practices as compositional processes, the development of new instruments as alternative sound surfaces, and their implications. 

Autumns, with roots in Bristol, has evolved from producing intensely dark punk noise, like a techno take on Big Black, to a more stripped-down sound, leaving a set of mechanical rhythms, with ritualistic, industrial-edged percussion. Big Hands is the main moniker of elusive artist Andrea Ottomani, who uses an archive of percussive loops, bells, soundscapes, and voices to create a map of recurring sounds connected to his Mediterranean heritage. He will perform solo and with the Italian trio MYS. opo, member of the Jokkoo collective from Barcelona, plays with music, sounds, images, and DIY technology, focusing on improvisation, experimentation, and collaboration, opening room for hybrid Afroelectronic experimentation and diasporic narratives. We will release his debut album right before the festival. Spanish vocalist, producer, and DJ Telva is on a journey that embraces the limitless possibilities of music. Her creation reflects her reverie, an invitation to explore the unexpected, to wander through narratives that transcend genre, and to feel, beyond sound.

Gombeen & Doygen is the leftfield dub duo of Morgan Buckley and James Grünfeld from the Wah Wah Wino collective, celebrated for their smudgy, acid-tinged soundscapes and playful experimentation. They blend stoned German lyrics, guitar effects, and deviant dub textures into mesmerizing, genre-bending tracks. Raisa K, Raisa Khan, a core member of Micachu and the Shapes, is a sometime producer and bass player for DELS and a collaborator with Kwes, and The Invisible. She has released music with Good Sad Happy Bad and released her first solo work in 2025. Taiwanese musician and one-half of the duo Aemong, Yu Ching, sings love songs at the end of this world and the beginning of the next, speaking of earthly matters that seem poised to dissipate into nothing. Quietly responsible for some of this century’s most arresting and influential dance music, Dutchman Dave Huismans, as 2562 and A Made Up Sound, has paradoxically managed to break new ground with pretty much all of his releases. He will present his latest ex_libris project. 

We are incredibly happy to finally bring Gerald Cleaver to the festival. The legendary Detroit-born drummer and composer will join bassist and composer Brandon Lopez and pianist Pat Thomas for a special concert. We discovered Cleaver through his electronic work and released an album of his in 2021. Ambassade is the acclaimed Amsterdam-based project led by Dutch producer Pascal Pinkert. Fusing haunting Dutch vocals with vintage synths and stark 80s-inspired atmospherics. Spanish sound artist, producer, and DJ JASSS foregrounds bass and percussion, approaching techno but ultimately denying it by embracing atmospheres of industrial pop, nu-metal distortion, and fuzzed-out R&B. Temir Alcy, from Lyon, and Basma, a French-Moroccan Singer, DJ & programmer, will release their first collaborative album on Stroom in September 2026, fusing their perspectives into a further exploration of the mysteries of the future and the unknown through a journey of sensory trance. 

Natasha Pirard, from Ghent in Belgium, is an experimental electronic musician whose sound moves through emotive translation and intuitive play. Her work explores the lineage of female musicians who have forged paths outside traditional frameworks. Adjunct Ensemble is a fluid collective of musicians and artists led by Irish composer and producer Jamie Thompson. Their narrative of refusal, to spurn Capitalism’s insistence to participate in its genocidal pursuit of endless growth, endless war, ecological destruction, and subjugation of the world’s poorest, is what spurs them to make their music. Also from Ireland is Cork-based singer and producer Elaine Howley, whose work joins the dots between pop and experimentation, blending analog and experimental processes with a love of classic songwriting and melody. SSTROM’s output is explicitly immersive, relying on tense immediacy and spontaneity, and is framed by vivid narratives, rich layers of texture, and lush harmonies that surface from a warm, alien flow.

The legendary Demdike Stare is the boundary-pushing duo of Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker, fusing influences from industrial, jazz, techno, and beyond. In the Junglingshaus movie theatre, they will present their Who Owns The Dark project, an immersive audiovisual collaboration with Cherrystones and visual artist Meghan Desmond, and DJ in the main festival hall. Akuma No Numa is a Japanese musical unit known for its immersive, slow-tempo, deeply underground electronic DJ sets. They promote a unique, “rural” sound and are deeply rooted in the Japanese electronic music scene. Grace & Raffaella are ML and Vittoria Totale. Their music strikes a deceptively minimalist tone, drawing on a wide range of musical and literary references. An elegy on a journey back to the present, with all the hushed intensity of an informed fever dream.

BRUINE is a project between concert and sound installation, created in 2023 in France by French accordionist Emilie Skrijelj, German jazz clarinetist and alto saxophonist Michael Thieke, and Belgian musician, drummer, and improviser Tom Malmendier. It will be on show in an empty shop in the center of Eupen during the festival weekend, with the instrumentalists at times performing on the installation. A sticky distillate of dissociated exotica, orchestral ambiance, psychedelic dub, and smoke-choked soul, Rest Symbol‘s music oozes from the crumpled wreckage of British downtempo. Swedish DJ k means moves through a dense web of textures and atmospheres – a cartographer of sound, tracing paths through the wild and the unknown, drifting between club euphoria and hypnotic experimentation.

The almost dystopian Eupen Plaza will host a performance by Bertel Schollaert of the Nadar Ensemble and Hein Devos, playing pieces by Alberto Posadas and Genoël von Lilienstern, and a two-day installation by ROTOЯ, Vienna-based composer and producer Peter Kutin, collaborating with Patrick Lechner. It reaches stages where the rotating sound-sculpture transcends into a hologram-like sonic body, a kinetic performer that passes and morphs through unpredictable heterochronic states by establishing a beguiling, complex, multimodal polyrhythm. PROTOCOL is an immersive dance and music performance by A Two Dogs Company and ICTUS Ensemble, designed as a contemporary ritual staged in public or communal spaces. Exploring the forces and “new gods” shaping our era, PROTOCOL blends contemporary dance and music into an immersive, collective experience. 

The Ravekoor from Brussels will perform The Great Leaning by Cornelius Cardew and a piece by themselves. The IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art will host more events this year. Maika Garnica will perform at IKOB as well, showcasing her use of prototypes to comprehend the complex relation between form and matter while instigating the body’s position as a vehicle for social connections. 

So without further ado, here is the full 2026 Meakusma Festival lineup.

Some concerts at the festival are part of showcases. The Brussels- and Paris-based record label moli del tro will present concerts by Bitsy Knox & Roger 3000, Front Page Leslie, and The Mad Laboratory of Anti-Matter, as well as a DJ set by the moli del tro crew. Sagome, the London-based independent label and event organizer dedicated to fostering sonic collaborations across borders, brings Detraex Corp andThe Dengie Hundred, and a Sagome DJ set.ReiheM from Cologne has been a trusted partner of the festival for years. This time, they present performances by crys cole & Marja Ahti, Dennis Aycicek, and Klangwart. A new and very exciting collaboration with the Norwegian Insomnia Festival brings Elina Waage Mikalsen and Grisha223 to Eupen. The nomadic, interdisciplinary Gern Gesehen from Cologne, run by Georg Dietzler, presents performances by Julia Bünnagel and Saba Arat. The out there TAX FREE RECORDS label from Berlin presents performances by Dip Friso, Falyakon, Irisplus, Yeahlena and Running out of Time. 

The Meakusma office is buzzing, prepping this year’s festival. We’ll see you all soon! Can’t wait!

PRACTICAL

Many festival venues are back, but we have added a few more to the mix. There will be more performances at the IKOB Museum of Contemporary Art, and some empty shops in the center of Eupen will be used for installations and interventions. The empty Eupen Plaza shopping mall will also be part of the festival again. Churches like the Friendenskirche, the Nikolauskirche, and the Werthkapelle will host performances tailored to their specific contexts, with several performances taking place per day. The workshop of the ATELIER Kunst und Bühne, neighbors of the Meakusma office for a few years now, will also be used. The 54 Sound soundsystem will take over the garden of the Alter Schlachthof, which is still the festival’s main venue, on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. 

This announcement provides no concrete information about workshops. More on this soon through our socials! All multiple-day festival passes are sold out. Some single-event tickets are now also available, so those who do not manage to secure a weekend or day ticket for the festival can still see some performances. The festival camping site will be open to everyone, and some events will also take place there. A camping ticket bought online gives access to the camping. More practical information regarding camping, accommodation, and travel specifications is coming up. 

For any practical questions, it is advised to keep an eye on our socials!