The CEO of the Athens Municipality's Development and Tourist Promotion Company (EATA), Ioannis Georgizas, said the programme was the result of close collaboration with a number of cultural and creative groups, as well as official bodies, with a series of events taking place in parks, squares, streets, museums and cultural spaces, with a focus on sustainability. The events kick off with the Athens Urban Picnic at Akadimia Platonos on May 1, featuring live music, dj sets and a kite show, among others. They include a festival dedicated to Mother's Day on May 12, a Street Outdoors Party at Koumoundourou Square on the same day, a story telling event on May 16, a skateboarding contest on May 18, a fashion show featuring traditional costumes at the Dora Stratou Theatre on May 19, a latin music festival (La Saramuya Fiesta) on May 26 and many other activities. The events end with the Athens All Star Party in the Lycabettus parking lot on June 2.

The pre-Lent festivities will begin at 11:30 am on Tsiknopempti (March 7) with music and events around Varvakios Market, Monastiraki Square, and the surrounding streets. At 12:00 the Vakhai musical society will start performing at Syntagma Square and move through Kotzia Square to end up at Monastiraki Square. The large annual parade will take place on Sunday (March 17) in the center of the city with entertainers and musicians. Events will conclude on Clean Monday (March 18) at Filoppapou Hill, with flying of kites and 'koulouma', the celebration of the first day of Lent in the outdoors with a picnic of non-meat dishes. The Philharmonic Orchestra of Athens and the Charisma band will play music. Athens Mayor Charis Doukas said that "for 23 days every neighborhood in our city will be inundated with music, dance, song, and traditional events," inviting all "to come and participate in the joy together." The schedule is available in Greek through the following page: https://www.cityofathens.gr/apokries-stin-athina-mia-megali-karnav

The pre-Lent festival will conclude on March 17th, a Sunday. This year's theme is "Be Unplugged!" and the events will begin on Wednesday (January 16), with town crier (Maria Agouridi) riding on a musical float, announcing the famed carnival's start, and calling the public to gather at the square. On Saturday morning, a procession will take place with musical bands, carnival bicycles, the organizers, the carnival queen (Georgia Sakka), and other celebrants. Then Patras Mayor Kostas Peletidis will receive the carnival's banner. At 18:00 on Saturday a party will start at the Aghios Georgios Square, while at 20:00, the theater troupe Helix and a Baroque procession will leave from the City Hall to parade through the city with participants including actors, musicians, acrobats, fire jugglers, and Harlequins. This is the traditional Saturday night parade, not the spectacular Grand Parade at the close of the carnival. At 21:00, the mayor will declare the official opening of the Patras Carnival, to be followed by the traditional 'chocolate war', during which the city's confectioners throwing chocolates from the City Hall's balcony. A concert will also take place and the start of the annual Treasure Hunt will be also declared. The official schedule of the carnival has not been announced yet, while festivities every year include surprises. The Patras Carnival is the largest in Greece and involves preparations that begin a year earlier, with a large number of volunteers as well.

The event takes place over 3 days - December 8-10th - at the Athina Live venue (3 Poseidonos Ave., Moschato). The Irish acts will be joined by local Greek groups such as Iernis, Noriana, Sòlastas, Tir Fada, Plump, and the Curfá Gaelic-Nordic Choir. Tickets range from €12 to €15 and are available at ticketservices.gr. More information is available from fb.com/athenscelticmusicfestival.

This year’s program includes 91 films from 32 countries, all about self-expression, growing up differently, and the joy of being yourself. Screenings will take place all over Athens and tickets cost 6 euros. Check out the program at athicff.com.

Saturday 30th of September and Sunday 1rst of October 2023 from 11:00 to 23:00 at the Technopolis of the Municipality of Athens, the Vegan Life Festival Athens awaits you with free entry. What will you find at the Vegan Life Festival Athens 2023? Speeches by experts in every scientific field, sportsmen and women as well as people active in the Vegan community Cooking workshops by Vegan chefs and food bloggers Activities for children of all ages Art exhibition and visual events Live music events Speed dating with motto "let's be friends" to help network and strengthen relationships within the community Exhibition of Vegan products and services, food, cosmetics, clothing, ecological items, etc. Organization of the sports competition Greece's strongest human - strongman event by the team of @circus.strongman.experience Swap clothing bazaar and clothing collection in collaboration with @fabricrepublic_gr Food collection for vulnerable social groups in collaboration with @humanitygreece Free, anonymous and quick hiv tests and Hepatitis tests from ref. checkpoint @my.checkpoint Migrant kitchens in collaboration with @greekforumofmigrants Activist groups for animal rights And many more! How can you miss this? Sat. &Sun. , 11:00 - 23:00. Free entrance.   Technopolis City of Athens (Athens, Greece)

September 21-24 and October 28-1 at the Depot in Gazi! Burger Fest, the first and largest food festival in Greece dedicated to burgers, returns for the ninth time for two juicy and tasty four days. More than 15 burger houses, sweet treats and cocktails await us at Amaxostasios from 21-24/9 & 28-01/10 for an experience full of fun activities such as challenges, cook-off battles, games, photo opportunities and as always explosive live musical acts. When: September 21, 2023 - October 1, 2023 THURSDAY 17:00 - 23:59 FRIDAY 17:00 - 23:59 SATURDAY 13:00 - 23:59 SUNDAY 13:00 - 23:59 Tickets: From €6.50   Where? Pireos & Ermou , 10553, Palio Amaksostasio (Old Depot OSY) Phone: +302104270810

A total of 59 events will fill 30 neighborhoods of Athens with rhythm, sounds and images in all seven municipalities. For more than a month, the city's theatres, squares, parks and courtyards will become the summer residence of both new and established artists who participate in the events. "All Athens is a stage" is the continuation of last year's programme by the Municipality of Athens, which this year also sent an open invitation to artists to submit their proposals for the event. The program is organised by the Organisation for Culture, Sports and Youth of the Municipality of Athens (OPANDA), within the framework of Culture is Athens, bringing together the public and artists. In his statement, the mayor of Athens, Kostas Bakoyannis, underlined: "This year's big outdoor celebration 'spreads' across the entire city to offer Athenians summer evenings full of quality entertainment. We are happy, because once again great artists responded to our invitation to participate in this special cultural event planned with great interest and care by OPANDA. We invite young and old to every park, every square, every open space of Athens - where this year the heart of 'All Athens is one stage' will beat - to come and spend unforgettable summer moments in the city". Summer is when we shine the brightest. The City of Athens makes sure of that by turning the whole of Athens into a performance stage for more than a month with its aptly titled annual initiative “All Athens is a Stage”. Starting July 2nd and going till August 4th, a great number of live concerts, theatrical performances, movie screenings, activities for children and much much more will take place all across the city, all with free entrance. Here’s a selection of some great opportunities to take in the local spirit and join the summer festivities: 22/07: Athens Municipality Symphony Orchestra and quinteto TANGartO join forces for a Concerto Grosso (orchestral baroque music). Open Air Theatre of Colonus, 9 pm 24/07: Music concert dedicated to Greek artists, composers, and poets. Lambraki Hill, 9 pm 29/07: “On The Road Again” a musical journey through the local and international rock scene. Lambraki Hill, 9 pm 31/07 & 04/08: “Tango Greco”, a music and dance performance. Victoria Square, 9 pm 03/08: “Michael Cacoyannis Repérage” a screening of the film The Wastrel (1961) by Michael Cacoyannis, photo exhibition and soundtracks from Cacoyannis’ films. Filopappou Square, 9 pm Info     Tickets: Free admission     Date: 02 July 2023 - 04 August 2023     Time: Various times/places.  

Commemorating the centenary of Maria Callas’ birth, in conjunction with Frank Castorf’s production, the Epidaurus (aefestival.gr) exhibition hall is set to reopen after a 22-year hiatus, thanks to the support of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports. The grand reopening will feature a periodic exhibition dedicated to Medea, focusing on the tragic heroine’s enduring presence at the Ancient Theater of Epidaurus since 1956. This exhibition, open to the public during the theater performances, will showcase esteemed artifacts from the festival’s archive as well as contributions from renowned cultural organizations and institutions, highlighting the rich legacy of “Medea” productions staged at the iconic national landmark of ancient drama since the 1950s.

Highlights include uilleann piper Padraic Keane, flutist Fearghas Mac Gormain, fiddlers Cliodhna Begley and Aidan Connolly, concertina player Paddy Egan, and virtuoso multi-instrumentalist Caoimhin O Fearghail, as well as a host of local of local Irish-themed acts. Athens Irish Festival | Athens | June 22-24th. Admission free. Visit inisarts.gr/athens-irish-festival for more information.   (Photo: Originally named “Keltoi”, Iernis is the oldest Celtic music band in Greece, with the Australian-born George and Manolis Galiatsos brothers as its core, and it concerns itself with the spread of traditional Celtic music in our counry since 1997, but also with the conservation and performance of Celtic songs which have not appeared often in discography. Many of them are in the form of a cappella recordings by traditional singers, and they are re-arranged according to the band's aesthetics, after many years of studying and persistently researching their historical, anthropological and musical background. The band has created a soundscape of tunes and songs from Ireland, Scotland, Bretagne, Galicia, as well as some American tunes, using traditional Irish instruments such as the wooden flute, fiddles, Irish whistles, bodhrán, banjo, mandolin, Irish bouzouki (built by Manolis), and Uilleann pipes with Scott Mavroudis. On December 2012 they released their first album called “Beyond a far-off shore”, and since 2014 they are among the founding and directing members of the Athens Celtic Music Festival. At times they have collaborated with great musicians such as Andy Irvine, Dónal Lunny, Jack Rogers and Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh. On June 2012 Manolis and George Galiatsos performed as guests of Andy Irvine at the concerts dedicated to his 70th birthday at Vicar Street, Dublin, and on 2019 they invited him to perform at the 5th Athens Celtic Music Festival. What is behind the name Iernis? "Iérnē" was the name given by the ancient Greek explorer Pytheas of Massilia to the place now known as Ireland, during his journeys in north-western Europe circa 320 BC, based on the preexisting local Proto-Goidelic name Īweriū, from which Éire is also derived. During Roman times the Alexandrian philosopher Claudius Ptolemy called it "Iouernia", hence the Latin version Hibernia, and a town called Ivernis was mentioned in south-western Ireland, its people called Iverni. This name was derived from Proto-Indo-European *PiHwerjoHn, "fertile land", and was perhaps once the common name for all the inhabitants of Ireland.)

For theatergoers in Athens, watching the tragic story of the young geisha Cio-Cio-San unfold in Puccini’s emotionally charged classic has become a familiar favorite at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the stone theater the Romans built at the foot of the Acropolis more than 1,800 years ago. Late Thursday, it hosted an open-air performance of “Madame Butterfly” to launch Greece’s main summer theater and arts festival, dedicated this year to Callas and the century since her birth in Manhattan on Dec. 2, 1923. She died of a heart attack at her home in Paris at age 53. Officially known as the Athens-Epidaurus Festival, the summer concerts and plays are also held at the ancient theater of Epidaurus, the UNESCO world heritage site in southern Greece. Much of the program was chosen to complement the centenary celebrations. Ticket sales from June performances by an opera world power couple, French tenor Roberto Alagna and Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak, will help fund the planned summer opening of a Callas Museum in central Athens, according to festival artistic director Katerina Evangelatos. “It’s all part of the year’s celebrations marking the 100 years ... since the birth of the great diva of opera,” Evangelatos said. Finally free of constraints imposed by the pandemic, the festival has been expanded this year to include new venues and additional collaboration with overseas artists, festivals and theater companies. Organizers also created a new online platform to help Greek performers seek opportunities abroad. “One of the main objectives of the festival has always been to be outward-looking,” Evangelatos told reporters during a recent presentation of this year’s festival. “We don’t want to just bring artists from abroad, we want to build collaboration and relationships.” The lineup this year includes the superstar Chinese pianist Lang Lang, the German violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, classical pianist and conductor Christoph Eschenbach and the pioneering German electronic band Kraftwerk, as well as a performance by Icelandic band Sigur Ros with the London Contemporary Orchestra. The Greek National Opera produced “Madame Butterfly,” choosing French director Olivier Py and the Italian choreographer Daniel Izzo. The title role was given to soprano Anna Sohn, who on Thursday gave the first of four scheduled performances. Sohn partnered with Italian tenor Andrea Carè for a sparse interpretation of the Italian classic, featuring giant helium-filled balloons, dancers in head-to-toe white makeup and time-bending backdrops that included scenes of Japan’s World War II nuclear devastation and modern banner ads for major U.S. commercial brands. Publicist Constance Shuman, who promotes the work of the Greek National Opera in the United States, said a performance by the company was a fitting start for the festival in the year marking what would have been Callas’ 100th birthday. Born Maria Kalogeropoulos, the singer made her professional debut with the GNO in Athens as an 18-year-old student. “When she became internationally known, she always came back here, and she really is emblematic of what this opera company is about,” Shuman said. “This is the opening of the Maria Callas year, but her early years are not known about by a lot of people,” she said. “So this is a chance to tell people about how Greece and the Greek National Opera contributed to her becoming Maria Callas.”    

A total of 150 riders with 210 horses from 10 European countries will take part in this year’s edition, which includes four international competitions – the Longines EEF World Cup EEF Series Athens, a children’s race, a young horse race and a race for lower categories. The Nations Cup on Sunday is a qualifier for the southern region of the Longines EEF Series.           Other events for young and old friends of the sport will take place alongside the competitions, within the framework of the festival.