Salam Music & Arts Festival Vienna 2026: Ten Days of Sound, Art, and Culture from the SWANA World

There are music festivals that fill a venue, and then there are music festivals that fill a city. The Salam Music & Arts Festival is firmly in the second category. From Friday April 17 to Sunday April 26, 2026, Vienna becomes the stage for ten days of music, visual art, performance, poetry, and community programming rooted in the cultures of Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) — one of the most important and distinctive cultural festivals in the Austrian capital's packed spring calendar.

Now in its 24th edition, the Salam Music & Arts Festival has been bringing extraordinary international and local artists to Vienna for over two decades. This year's programme features artists including the iconic Yasmine Hamdan, Saharan desert blues legends Tinariwen, Arab electronica pioneers SHKOON, and the haunting voice of Sheherazaad — produced by Grammy Award winner Arooj Aftab. The events unfold at venues across Vienna including the Flex Club, the Arena Wien, the ORF RadioKulturhaus, Sargfabrik, Porgy & Bess, Reaktor, Flucc, and Spektakel.

Tickets range from free to €54.40, depending on the event. Most concerts are ticketed individually.

What Is the Salam Music & Arts Festival?

The Salam Music & Arts Festival is an interdisciplinary music, art, and culture festival focused on the SWANA region — Southwest Asia and North Africa — which has taken place at various venues across Vienna for more than 20 years.

The festival's mission is specific and consistent: to present international and local artists who engage and connect with people through their work, highlight global contexts through creative expression, and bring musical traditions from the SWANA world into dialogue with contemporary artistic practice. The programme spans music performance, visual art, performance art, poetry, and participatory dialogue formats.

The festival is led by Katrin Pröll, and for the 24th edition in 2026, the guest curator is Mohamed Ben Saïd — a Tunisian event organiser and curator with an extensive international network and decades of experience in presenting music from the Arab world. This continues a practice the festival established in recent years of inviting a guest curator to co-shape the music programme from an insider perspective within the SWANA region.

The result is a programme that feels neither like a world music showcase nor like a tourism initiative, but like something more honest and more interesting: a curated selection of artists who are genuinely engaging with where they come from and where they are going, presented at serious cultural venues by an organisation that has been doing this work in Vienna since the year 2000.

The 2026 Programme: Artists and Events Night by Night

Friday, April 17: Labess at Porgy & Bess

The festival opens with Labess at the Porgy & Bess, one of Vienna's most respected jazz and world music venues on Riemergasse in the 1st district.

Labess is the project of Algerian-born musician Nedjim Bouizzoul — a self-taught street musician whose journey from Algiers to Québec to Colombia and Europe, over twenty years and five albums, has produced a sound that blends Algerian Chaâbi with Gypsy Rumba, Flamenco, African rhythms, and the restless energy of a life lived in motion. His 2024 album "Dima Libre" (Forever Free) is a passionate declaration of freedom, resistance, and the joy of living.

Date: Friday, April 17, 2026 at 20:30 | Venue: Porgy & Bess, Riemergasse 11, 1010 Vienna | Tickets: €25 / reduced for under 30 

Saturday, April 18: Salam Sessions at Spektakel (Free)

The Salam Sessions open at Spektakel in the 5th district with Cosmopolitan — an intercultural ensemble bringing together musicians Basma Jabr, Mahan Mirarab, and Danial Moazeni presenting sounds from Iran, Turkey, Syria, and the Balkans blended with jazz improvisation. The session is followed by an open jam session hosted by Orwa Saleh, with special guest band Badil from Morocco, who are the 2026 Artist in Residence.

Also on Saturday: the opening of the visual art exhibition "Studio Cairo" by Austrian artist Peter Garmusch at Spektakel.

Date: Saturday, April 18, 2026 at 19:30 | Venue: Spektakel, Hamburgerstraße 14, 1050 Vienna | Admission: FREE 

Sunday, April 19: Khalil Epi – Aïchoucha at Reaktor

Khalil Epi presents "Aïchoucha" — a solo audiovisual performance in which the Tunisian producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist performs live electronic music in complete synchrony with his film projected across three panoramic screens, taking the audience on an immersive journey through Tunisia's diverse regions and traditional music forms. The work is named after his grandmother Aïcha and represents a deeply personal exploration of tradition, memory, and modernity.

Date: Sunday, April 19, 2026 at 19:30 | Venue: Reaktor, Geblergasse 40, 1170 Vienna | Tickets: Advance €18 / reduced €12 / at door €22 / reduced €15 

Tuesday, April 21: Avin Ahmadi / Sanam Maroufkhani at Sargfabrik

A double concert at Sargfabrik in the 14th district pairs two extraordinary Iranian women artists. Avin Ahmadi — a 21-year-old Iranian oud player, singer and composer based in Vienna, currently studying jazz improvisation at the Anton Bruckner Private University in Linz — presents her debut EP "Liminal" live for the first time. Her guest for the second set is Sanam Maroufkhani, a Tehran-born, Amsterdam-based artist whose minimalist piano-driven compositions move between strength and vulnerability, Iranian tradition and western alternative pop.

Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 19:30 | Venue: Sargfabrik, Goldschlagstraße 169, 1140 Vienna | Tickets: €25 / reduced €17.50 

Wednesday, April 22: SHKOON at Flucc Wanne

SHKOON — the Arab Electronica duo formed in Hamburg in 2015 by Ameen (Syria) and Thorben (Germany) — bring their new album "Traces" to Flucc Wanne near Praterstern. Their music weaves Arabic folklore, traditional melodies, and personal narratives with electronic beats, building bridges between cultures and communities from the foundation of their own contrasting backgrounds.

Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2026 at 20:00 | Venue: Flucc Wanne, Praterstern 5, 1020 Vienna | Tickets: €29.80 

Thursday, April 23: Yasmine Hamdan at Flex Club

Yasmine Hamdan — the Lebanese singer and songwriter who co-founded one of the first Arab indie formations Soapkills in the late 1990s, and became internationally known through her Jim Jarmusch "Only Lovers Left Alive" appearance — returns after eight years of silence with her new album "I Remember I Forget." Performing at the Flex Club on the Donaukanal (Danube Canal), her set draws together electronic music, traditional Arabic sounds, Chanson elements, and experimental pop.

Date: Thursday, April 23, 2026 at 20:30 | Venue: Flex Club, Am Donaukanal / Abgang Augartenbrücke 1, 1010 Vienna | Tickets: Advance €38 / reduced €30 / at door €45 / reduced €38 

Friday, April 24: AMMAR 808 at Flex Café + A Small Wish at Brunnenpassage

AMMAR 808 — the project of Danish-Tunisian producer Sofyann Ben Youssef — brings his new album "Club Tounsi" to the Flex Café: a wild fusion of TR-808 drum machine rhythms with Mezoued, a Tunisian working-class folk music tradition rooted in Sufi singing and centuries-old bagpipe sounds, creating a dancefloor experience between club culture and deep folklore.

Earlier in the evening, "A Small Wish" — a performance by Afghan poet Ramin Mazhar and Vienna-based oud player Avin Ahmadi — takes place for free at the Brunnenpassage on Yppenplatz in the 16th district.

Saturday, April 25: Tinariwen and Sheherazaad

Saturday, April 25 is the biggest day of the festival — two major headline concerts on the same evening at different venues.

Tinariwen — the legendary Tuareg band founded in 1979 at the Mali-Algeria border, whose members exchanged weapons for guitars after the 1990 Tuareg uprising, and whose "Desert Blues" or "assouf" sound (a Tamashek word meaning longing and homesickness) has earned them global recognition and a Grammy Award — perform "The Hoggar Tour" at the Arena Wien, the beloved outdoor rock venue in the 3rd district.

At the same time, Sheherazaad — a South Asian-American composer and singer raised in a "fanatically arts-centred household," whose EP "Qasr" (Erased Tapes, 2024) was produced by Grammy Award winner Arooj Aftab and fuses South Asian vocal improvisation with microtonal melancholy and experimental reduction — performs at the ORF RadioKulturhaus in the 4th district.

Sunday, April 26: Home Fado — Festival Closing

The festival closes on Sunday, April 26 with Home Fado — a long-standing Salam Music tradition in which art, poetry, food, and music come together in an intimate setting. The evening brings poet Ramin Mazhar and oud player Avin Ahmadi together again, with music performed between the courses of a lovingly prepared dinner.

Date: Sunday, April 26, 2026 at 18:30 | Venue: Quellenstraße 149, 1100 Vienna | Tickets: €30 including food and drinks | Limited places — reservation required at art.projectmosaic@gmail.com or 0699 18201305 

The Visual Art Programme

The Salam Music & Arts Festival is not only a music event — visual art and performance are woven through the full ten days.

Peter Garmusch — Studio Cairo presents photographs of Cairo street scenes as sculptural observations — cars covered in textiles becoming accidental urban sculptures, documenting their absent owners. The exhibition runs at Spektakel (Hamburgerstraße 14, 1050 Vienna) from April 19–25, opening Saturday April 18 at 18:00. Free admission.

Myriam El Haïk — OHrGrüN/VerT d'OreiLLe is a performance and exhibition at philomena+ (Heinstraße 40, 1020 Vienna) exploring language, sound, mistranslation, and the poetic potential of linguistic error — running April 19–26 with a performance opening on Sunday April 19 at 15:00. Free admission.

Impro-Session — Myriam El Haïk & Golnar Shahyar at philomena+ on Monday, April 20 at 19:00 pairs El Haïk with Iranian-Canadian singer and composer Golnar Shahyar in an improvised live dialogue between language, theatre, and music. Free admission.

The Salam Salon Dialogue Programme

The festival's dialogue dimension — the Salam Salon — runs alongside the concerts and exhibitions with talks, listening sessions, and artist conversations.

On Wednesday, April 22 at Spektakel, artist and sculptor Hawy Rahman gives an artist talk titled "Oliven- und Orangenblütenduft" (Olive and Orange Blossom Scent) on memory, place, displacement, and the effects of war on personal identity. This is followed by a Listening Session in which guest curator Mohamed Ben Saïd presents a personal deep-dive into the work of Lebanese composer and dramatist Ziad Rahbani. Both events are free.

Vienna's Role in the SWANA Cultural Conversation

Vienna's identity as a host city for the Salam Music & Arts Festival is not incidental. The city is home to a substantial diaspora population from the SWANA region — and has been so for decades, with communities from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Afghanistan, and across North Africa represented in all parts of the city.

The festival's choice of venues reinforces this connection: the Brunnenpassage on Yppenplatz in the 16th district is embedded in one of Vienna's most genuinely multicultural urban spaces; the Flucc at Praterstern sits at the gateway to the Prater in one of the most diverse transit nodes in the city; Sargfabrik in the 14th district is a legendary cooperative cultural centre that has championed intercultural programming since the 1990s.

The ORF RadioKulturhaus on Argentinierstraße in the 4th district and the Flex Club on the Donaukanal bring major institutional and established club culture venues into the mix — confirming that the Salam Music & Arts Festival in 2026 operates across the full spectrum of Vienna's cultural infrastructure, from free community spaces to prestigious broadcast venues to the Arena Wien, the city's iconic outdoor rock arena.

Tickets, Pricing, and How to Attend

Tickets for individual Salam Music events are sold through each venue's own ticketing system. The official festival tickets page at salam-music.at/en/tickets lists all events with direct booking links.

Price range across the 2026 programme:

• Free events: Salam Sessions (Apr 18), visual art exhibitions (Apr 18–26), Impro-Session (Apr 20), A Small Wish at Brunnenpassage (Apr 24 — pay as you can)
• Lower price tier: AMMAR 808 (€18–22), Khalil Epi (€18–22)
• Mid price tier: Labess (€25), Avin Ahmadi / Sanam Maroufkhani (€25), Sheherazaad (€30), SHKOON (€29.80)
• Higher price tier: Yasmine Hamdan (€38–45), Tinariwen (€54.40)
• Home Fado closing dinner (€30 including food and drinks, limited seats)

Discounts available:

• Reduced tickets for visitors under 30 years of age
• Ö1 Club card discount
• Various venue-specific discount cards
• Limited free tickets (Kulturpass holders — registration required at info@salam-music.at)

Getting Around the Festival Venues

The Salam Music & Arts Festival's distributed model across multiple Vienna districts is one of its strengths — and Vienna's excellent public transport network makes moving between venues straightforward:

• Flex Club / Porgy & Bess / ORF RadioKulturhaus (1st/4th districts): U1/U4 to Schwedenplatz or U1 to Taubstummengasse; Ringstraße trams
• Reaktor (17th district): U6 to Alser Straße or tram 43
• Sargfabrik (14th district): U4 to Braunschweiggasse
• Flucc (2nd district / Praterstern): U1/U2 to Praterstern
• Arena Wien (3rd district): U3 to Erdberg, then short walk
• Spektakel / Brunnenpassage (5th/16th district): U6 to Gumpendorfer Straße or Thaliastraße; tram 46

More Than a Festival — A Cultural Platform for the City

For 24 editions and over two decades, the Salam Music & Arts Festival has held a specific position in Vienna's cultural life that no other event quite occupies: a platform that takes SWANA artistic practice seriously on its own terms, not as exotic flavour but as genuine artistic engagement, presented at real cultural venues with real international artists to a genuinely mixed audience of Vienna's diaspora communities, music explorers, and curious newcomers.

The 2026 programme — from Tinariwen's desert blues at the Arena Wien to the intimate Home Fado dinner in the 10th district, from Yasmine Hamdan's long-awaited return to Avin Ahmadi presenting her debut EP for the first time — is one of the most ambitious in the festival's history.

Ten days. Multiple venues. April 17–26, 2026. Most events individually ticketed. Several events free. All information and tickets at salam-music.at.

Verified Information at a Glance