The decisions are significant for the grant applicants. Multi-year support means more room to work on their artistic development and on growing their audiences, over the next four years. Important criteria in making these decisions are artistic quality, the relevance for the performing arts sector, attention for the audience, and geographical spread. Our financial framework also plays an important role. In the interest of a healthy sector and taking account of the substantial cost increases facing organisations, we chose to raise the grant sum per organisation.

Viktorien van Hulst, general director of the Performing Arts Fund NL:
“All the submitted proposals, put together, demonstrate the incredible versatility of the performing arts sector throughout the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The artistic plans testified to a love of tradition and professionalism, plus a passion for innovation and experimentation. We see a strong societal concern and inspiring strategies to involve current and future visitors.”

In the coming period, the Fund will support 52 festivals spread across the country and representing many different genres: from puppet theatre to heavy music, from dance to circus, and from conceptual dance to classical music. Combined, these festivals aim to reach some 2 million visitors per year.

Among the producing organisations, the Fund is supporting 127 applicants in the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom: ensembles, companies and individual and collective makers, with a wide variety of artistic work practices and generations. The genres range from circus to contemporary composed music, (music) theatre, dance and hip hop, with a growing number of plans by interdisciplinary makers. The producers expect to achieve nearly 900 performances and to thereby reach some 1.5 million visitors per year.

It is important for the development of the performing arts that, besides providing for continuity, we also give new initiatives and makers the chance to grow. It befits the role of the Performing Arts Fund to stimulate development and dynamism, as a complement to the state subsidies awarded through the cultural basic infrastructure. The grants awarded reflect this dynamic: of the 179 successful applicants, there are 59 makers, companies, ensembles and festivals that worked without any multi-year state support in the period 2021-2024. It also means that 73 organisations that do have multi-year support at present, will not be receiving state support in the coming period. Such rejections are painful for the applicants and their audiences, certainly where it concerns organisations that staged remarkable productions or inspiring festivals in the recent past.

The Fund seeks to achieve a balanced spread of festivals and productions and to reach the widest possible audience, throughout the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom.

Through the multi-year festival grants, the Fund supports festivals with ties to their geographical environment and that contribute to developing the performing arts climate in their locality. These locally embedded festivals often aim to reach further, beyond the boundaries of their community and their region and even across the national border.

Producing performing artists tend to travel throughout the country, but are often based in large cities where they find a high concentration of fellow professionals. That is why many applications as well as grant awards concern such places. The Fund has special appreciation for applicants based outside the large cities and those who present their work spread evenly across the country.

The applications were assessed by eight committees – five for the festival grants and three for production grants – consisting of 43 advisers, all professionals from the field, led by independent chairs. The committees were composed with a view to diversity in terms of knowledge and experience from a wide range of disciplines and genres, and with a view to a broad representation in terms of gender, age, cultural background and place of residence.

All the decisions and advice regarding the multi-year festival grants 2025-2028 and the multi-year production grants 2025-2028 can be viewed on the Toekenningen page (Dutch only) of the Fund’s website. You can also read the ‘Toelichting op de besluiten’ (explanation of the decisions, Dutch only), a review of the application process, and a description of the advisory committees’ working procedure on the website.

In case of any questions, please check the FAQ (Dutch only) or email your question to either meerjarigefestivals@fondspodiumkunsten.nl or meerjarigeproducties@fondspodiumkunsten.nl. You can also call us on +31 (0)70-7072700 (Monday to Friday, 09.00-17.00 CEST).