You belong in the heart of the city

The annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival is almost here!

For 23 years, the Heart of the City Festival (HOTCF) has been grounded in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and focused on listening and learning from the community's cultural practices. The festival works with, for and about the Downtown Eastside community to carry forward the community’s stories, ancestral memory, cultural traditions, lived experiences and artistic processes — illuminating pathways of resilience.  

This year’s theme, “Belonging,” celebrates the experience of being seen, heard, respected and valued for who you are. At the festival, belonging is something created together; it’s the sharing of stories, laughter, grief and joy. The theme highlights that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity, compassion and respect.

The HOTCF, presented by Vancouver Moving Theatre in association with Carnegie Community Centre, features over 100 arts and cultural events, including music, poetry, theatre, ceremony, films, dance, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, art talks, history walks and more.

Here are a few highlights in the upcoming 2026 festival, which runs Oct. 30 through Nov. 7. 

 • Electric Company Theatre’s new play, Epigone, is a  modern myth about complicated grief, stigmas of addiction and society’s responsibilities to the dead. In a rundown mobile home on the outskirts of a small northern town, an epic tale about a pair of siblings trying to escape a labyrinth built of shame and secrets unfolds.  The brother’s mission is to save his sister; the sister’s mission is to save the world at a time of plague and widespread fear. The festival is hosts a two-week run at the Russian Hall.

• Three spectacular video installations have been created by The Circle Project, a Vancouver-based association of artists and people with lived experience of incarceration committed to creating provocative art. Produced in collaboration with artists Adad Hannah and Jin-me Yoon, the installations are stimulating riffs on classic theatre that invite us to reimagine justice.

• Indigenous Exhibition, hosted by Two-Spirit Grass Dancer Larissa Healey and Pow Wow Dancer Pavel Desjarlais.

• Life at OPS, a collection of videos by Nathaniel Canuel aimed at raising awareness about the importance of the Overdose Prevention Society.

• Marita Michaelis’ Live in Hell, a comi-tragic solo show featuring a self-obsessed she-devil who confronts her own iconoclastic celebrity status as the ultimate scapegoat.

• From the Archives of Sid Chow Tan, new selections from legendary Downtown Eastside documentarian and organizer Sid Chow Tan (1949 – 2022), with videos compiled by Sid's collaborator, Byron Peters.

• Theatre Terrific’s gripping adaptation of Orwell’s masterpiece, 1984 Again.

Festival events take place throughout the DTES. Many performances and screenings are free.

For the full schedule and more information, visit heartofthecityfestival.com

Copyright 2026, Megaphone Magazine. All rights reserved.

Jodi Smith, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Megaphone Magazine.