MEDIA ZONE

Festival Network is a new curatorial project that, in 2026, will unite ten Polish jazz festivals into a single eight-month-long tour. From May to December, from the Baltic to the Carpathians, from amphitheaters to open-air museums, from churches to historic mills — the Network draws a single sonic arc across an entire season.

The cycle is curated by Grzech Piotrowski, a long-time shaper of Poland's jazz scene, artistic director of World Orchestra and one of the country's most important jazz drummers. His vision moves beyond the single-festival model toward a network: instead of a one-off gathering, a continuous tour; instead of a single weekend, a full artistic season.

The key premise of the Network is the circulation of the same artists across ten stages. A musician playing Jazz w Młynie Gostomia in May returns in July for a festival in Rawa Mazowiecka and appears in Warsaw in November. Each venue becomes part of a larger, nation-wide story — one season, one tour, ten cities.

Locations were chosen to span Poland end to end: from Kąty Rybackie on the Vistula Spit, through Gostomia, Rawa Mazowiecka and Warsaw, down to Busko-Zdrój in the south. Each venue offers a different setting — church acoustics, open-air amphitheaters, the intimacy of mills and open-air museums, the atmosphere of spa towns. Jazz meets local tradition, and every festival keeps its distinct character.

The Network gathers 27 artists — Polish jazz leaders alongside guests from abroad. Among them are both established veterans and promising younger musicians representing the next generation of Polish jazz. The season is rounded out by the Art Camp education programme and a concert series at Warsaw's MOXO club.