NEUJAZZ Festival, Nuremberg, Germany, line-up announced.
Thursday, October 15, 2026
The final line-up has been announced for the NUEJAZZ Festival which take place in Nuremberg from October 23rd to November 11th 2026. Press release attached.
We have received the following press release;
NUEJAZZ 2026
This year, Nuremberg’s NUEJAZZ Festival from October 23rd to November 11th is bigger, more diverse and more muscular than ever.
Then again, it has had 13 years of training. Jazz can be an astonishing number of things at once. Quiet and loud, a hundred years old and five minutes young, focused and unleashed, acoustic, electronic, complex or catchy. And sometimes all of these adjectives meet in a single piece of music. Without having to agree on much beforehand – there is plenty of room for everyone. And plenty of momentum, too. At the NUEJAZZ Festival in Nuremberg, this kind of flexibility has been part of the programme since 2013. That was when Frank Wuppinger and Marco Kühnl organised the first edition, united by one idea: jazz should not be treated as a closed musical genre, but as something open. Thirteen years later, that basic idea has grown into an established fixture on the German jazz scene. In 2024, NUEJAZZ even received the German Jazz Award for “Festival of the Year”.
It all began rather more pragmatically. After the end of Jazz Ost-West, Nuremberg was left without an international jazz festival. “As musicians, we simply had to step in and do something about it,” festival director Wuppinger recalls. Fair enough – others might have formed a working group first. Wuppinger and Kühnl simply got started. From the very beginning, however, it was never just about bringing international jazz greats to Nuremberg. That was part of it, of course, but there was more. NUEJAZZ was meant to look different, sound different and, above all, reach different people. “We wanted to create a modern festival for as diverse an audience as possible,” says Wuppinger. “Urban, modern, a little more muscular – also as a way of freeing jazz from its niche.” That also meant leaving familiar venues behind. NUEJAZZ moved into indie hotspots such as DESI and Z-Bau, and brought its programme to Kulturwerkstatt Auf AEG, Heizhaus and E-Werk in Erlangen. Suddenly, jazz was happening in the very places where culture, nightlife and urban life were already taking place. Rather than waiting for people to come to jazz, NUEJAZZ sent jazz out to meet them.
By now, it has become a festival where boundaries come with doors built in as standard. In 2026, a violin meets electronics, a piano trio meets rock. Bill Frisell demonstrates just how much can be contained in a single guitar note when you don’t immediately crowd it with five more. Nine female trumpet players share a stage. Funk, hip-hop, soul and gospel join the mix, while music encounters design and visual art. Children experience sound accompanied by live painting. Anyone who thinks jazz is something clearly defined will have plenty to reconsider. “For us, it simply isn’t a fixed stylistic category,” says Wuppinger. “Jazz is music that transcends cultural and social boundaries.”
And then, of course, there are two gentlemen this year who played a considerable part in making those boundaries so wonderfully fragile. Miles Davis and John Coltrane would both have turned one hundred in 2026. NUEJAZZ is therefore giving them a place of honour – although certainly not behind glass. Their music moves onto the stage, through a competition, into a reading and from there straight back into the present. At the NUECOMER Award “Miles & Trane”, students from Bavarian music academies explore their musical legacy. At MILES100, author Stefan Hentz approaches the life and work of the legendary Davis through his book, before Marco Kühnl and Estelle Dupont continue the story through music. All of which seems rather fitting for two musicians who rarely showed much interest in staying where things had become comfortable.
That idea runs through the entire festival. Young talents from Germany, France and Denmark come together to form the European Jazz Companions Orchestra. At the university session, the stage belongs to students; at the open Groove Gathering, the regional scene comes together. There is improvisation, discussion and reading. Musicians meet artists, emerging talent meets established names, Nuremberg meets open-minded guests from beyond the city. “We wanted to be more than just a regular festival,” Wuppinger explains. Perhaps that is why the most important word at NUEJAZZ is not actually “jazz”, but “and”. Jazz and electronics. Music and image. Emerging talent and international stars. Nuremberg and Europe. Concerts and education. Tradition and the pressing question of what to do with it here and now. NUEJAZZ does not try to artificially make jazz young again. No one is going to set up a TikTok account for Miles Davis after the fact, don’t worry. Instead, the festival gives the art form the environment it naturally belongs in: as music that lives through being passed on – and through constantly changing in the process.
You can find all the details about tickets, the program, and venues at http://www.nuejazz.de.