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Description
Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival 2026
The 23rd annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival brings more than 100 arts and culture events to over 30 local venues in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside from October 30 to November 7. For twenty-three years the festival has been grounded in the community, listening and learning from its cultural practices, and carrying forward its stories, ancestral memory, traditions, lived experiences, and artistic processes. This year’s theme, Belonging, celebrates being seen, heard, respected, and valued for who you are. Join the festival for music, poetry, theatre, ceremony, films, dance, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, art talks, history walks, and more.
- When: Friday, October 30 – Saturday, November 7, 2026 (one play runs through November 15)
- Where: More than 30 venues across Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, including Carnegie Community Centre, SFU Woodward’s, MacLean Park, Russian Hall, Gallery Gachet, and KW Atrium Studio
- Cost: Most events are free, with donations gratefully accepted; ticketed events range from $0 to $35 (up to $75 for Epigone)
- Hosted by: Vancouver Moving Theatre, in association with Carnegie Community Centre
- Website: Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival
Festival Highlights
Summer City Street Mural Celebration
Friday, October 30, 6:00 PM | Carnegie Community Centre Theatre, 401 Main Street | Free
Celebrate Richard Tetrault’s dynamic collage mural Summer City Street, which joins the City of Vancouver’s Public Art collection and the walls of Carnegie Community Centre. Tetrault presents an overview of his collaborative and solo murals on Vancouver’s Eastside, from the 1998 Walls of Change project to works on displacement, striving, and empowerment.
Time Freed (Beyond Capture) Opening Reception
Saturday, October 31, 12:00 PM | Gallery Gachet, 9 West Hastings Street | Free
The first of The Circle Project’s video installation openings (see Reimagining Justice below).
What Fools These Mortals Be and Harlequino’s Folly Opening Reception
Saturday, October 31, 2:00 PM | KW Atrium Studio, 110–351 Abbott Street | Free
The opening of The Circle Project’s second pair of video installations.
Drag Storytime Sing-Along
Saturday, October 31, 4:00 PM | MacLean Park, 710 Keefer Street | Free
Celebrating its sixth year with the festival, this all-inclusive afternoon features the jazz stylings of Magic Triangle and the folk-punk hijinks of Legion of Flying Monkeys. Host bearded lady Drag Satan presents awards including Best Strathcona Community Engagement Arts, Longest Serving MacLean Park Music Event, the highly anticipated Best Cable and Extension Cord Management Award, and, new this year, the Award for Best Dancing. Come in costume.
Death and Taxes
Sunday, November 1, 7:00 PM | SFU Djavad Mowafaghian World Arts Centre, 149 West Hastings Street | $0–$35
Brass Tax brings its signature “circus jazz” sound to a lively, otherworldly celebration of Día de los Muertos, with theatrical performer Gerardo Avila. Inspired by traditions of remembrance from Mexico and around the world, it imagines the graveyard as a gathering place where music, memory, loss, mourning, and celebration meet, as butterflies, hummingbirds, crows, and ghosts move among the graves.
Creating Gastown: A History Tour
Tuesday, November 3, 10:00 AM, and Saturday, November 7, 10:30 AM | Meeting place provided on registration | $0–$35
Civic historian John Atkin leads a tour of Gastown, one of Vancouver’s original heritage districts and an early point of colonial settlement on Burrard Inlet. Learn how the area was created through abandoned development proposals, freeway threats, and real estate shenanigans.
Epigone
Wednesday, November 4 – Sunday, November 15 | Russian Hall, 600 Campbell Avenue | $0–$75
Electric Company Theatre presents a new play by Kevin Kerr, directed by Jonathon Young. It’s a modern myth about complicated grief, the stigma of addiction, and our responsibilities to the dead and to one another, following an unlikely hero exiled to a remote northern double-wide trailer. The cast is Lili Beaudoin, Kevin Macdonald, Tom McBeath, and Colleen Wheeler.
From the Archives of Sid Chow Tan
Thursday, November 5, 5:00 PM | Carnegie Community Centre Theatre, 401 Main Street | Free
Legendary Downtown Eastside documentarian and organizer Sid Chow Tan (1949–2022) spent four decades documenting the struggles, victories, celebrations, and everyday lives of DTES and Chinatown communities. This screening features selections from his archive of volunteer-produced video journalism, with newly digitized tapes and old favourites, compiled by his collaborator Byron Peters.
Solo Solo Together
Friday, November 6, 1:00 PM | SFU Djavad Mowafaghian World Arts Centre, 149 West Hastings Street | Free
All Bodies Dance Project presents a collection of new solo dances by Susie Gray, Nico Gruzling, Lance Lim, Peggy Leung, and Old Baby. Each solo offers an intimate glimpse into the artist’s perspective, and together they form a portrait of a diverse community.
1984:AGAIN
Friday, November 6, 5:00 PM | SFU Djavad Mowafaghian World Arts Centre, 149 West Hastings Street | $0–$35
Theatre Terrific’s gripping adaptation of Orwell’s masterpiece follows Winston Smith, whose forbidden love becomes a radical act of defiance against the Ministry of Truth. It draws parallels to modern surveillance, disinformation, and politics, and asks whether human connection can give us the courage to stand together and rebel.
Life at OPS
Friday, November 6, 7:30 PM | SFU Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, 149 West Hastings Street | $0–$35
A collection of short films and videos by Nathaniel Canuel raises awareness of the Overdose Prevention Society, depicting everyday life at the busiest peer-led supervised consumption site in Canada.
House
Friday, November 6, 8:30 PM | SFU Djavad Mowafaghian World Arts Centre, 149 West Hastings Street | $0–$35
Jonathon Paterson performs Daniel MacIvor’s acclaimed solo play, directed by Willow Lewmos. A cornerstone of contemporary Canadian theatre, it’s a gripping exploration of memory, identity, and the fragile architecture of the self, with dark humour and psychological depth.
Reimagining Justice: The Circle Project Screenings and Sharing Circle
Saturday, November 7, 12:00 PM | Carnegie Community Centre Theatre, 401 Main Street | Free
The festival presents three video installations by The Circle Project, an association of artists and people with lived experience of incarceration, produced with artists Adad Hannah and Jin-me Yoon. The videos are riffs on classic theatre that invite us to reimagine justice. The project concludes with a screening of all three videos and a community sharing circle.
Dispatches
Saturday, November 7, 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM | SFU Djavad Mowafaghian World Arts Centre, 149 West Hastings Street | $0–$35
Jenny Simpson’s new play follows a woman caught between caring for her dying mother and supporting her niece in crisis. It’s an unflinching look at the human cost of the poisoned drug epidemic and an intimate portrait of reconnection and recovery in a system ill-equipped to support families.
Black Strathcona Neighbourhood Tour
Saturday, November 7, 2:00 PM | Meeting place provided on registration | $0–$35
Yasin M. Kiraga of the African Descent Society leads a three-hour heritage tour through the Strathcona neighbourhoods where Black people historically settled and built vibrant communities. Learn about the displacement of the community, the construction of the Georgia Viaduct, and the revival and celebration of Black culture.
Tickets and Registration
Most festival events are free, and donations are gratefully accepted. Tickets must be bought for some events, and some require registration, so check each event’s description on the festival website. For questions, contact the box office at boxoffice.heartfestival@gmail.com.