Shakespeare’s Globe announces vibrant summer 2026 season of classics and new work

Shakespeare’s Globe has announced its summer season for 2026, promising a programme packed with “world-class artists, lesser-known classics, and much-loved plays” across its two venues on London’s Bankside.

The season will also continue the theatre’s push for accessibility, with more than 180,000 tickets available for £10 or less, and hundreds of £5 tickets for every performance.

Quick Takeaway: The Globe’s 2026 summer season promises its usual mix of Shakespeare favourites, with a landmark new staging of Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children. Inviting audiences to explore urgent questions about power and love through a modern lens, the season ranges from flamenco-inspired comedy to atmospheric midnight matinees.

Artistic Director Michelle Terry said the season’s productions are united by their origins in turbulent times, from Shakespeare’s late-Elizabethan London to Brecht’s Europe on the brink of war.

“All the plays this season were born out of a world in chaos,” Terry said, adding that the works ask urgent questions about love, evil, power and tyranny. She described the Globe’s 1,600-seat auditorium as a place where audiences can confront those questions together, calling that shared experience “profoundly necessary” in a divided world.

A summer of Shakespeare — and Brecht — on the Globe stage

The season opens with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Emily Lim, running from 23 April to 29 August. The production will transform the Globe Theatre into a night-time gathering place of “hearts unravel[ling], chaos reign[ing] and spells go awry,” under “starry, summer skies.” Lim, best known for her work with the National Theatre’s Public Acts programme, is joined by designer Aldo Vazquez (set) and Fly Davis (costumes).

In a major addition to the repertoire, the Globe will stage Mother Courage and Her Children for the first time, with Brecht’s anti-war classic translated by Anna Jordan and directed by Globe Associate Artist Elle While. Running from 7 May to 27 June, the production will star Michelle Terry in the title role, with music by James Maloney. The Globe described the play as a “revolutionary anti-war masterpiece” set in a world “stripped bare by greed and conflict.”

Shakespeare returns in force with Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Chelsea Walker, running from 11 June to 24 October. Set in a “sun-soaked world of style, status and sharp tongues,” the production will explore reputations, rivalry and romance beneath Messina’s “polished exterior.” Walker previously directed All’s Well That Ends Well at the Globe in 2024.

Love’s Labour’s Lost will run from 17 July to 13 September, marking Globe Associate Artist Indiana Lown-Collins’ directorial debut at the venue. The Globe says the show will be reimagined as a “blazing, flamenco-inspired production,” with a diplomatic mission sparking “passion, power and poetry.”

Later in the summer, As You Like It will be co-directed by Associate Artistic Director Sean Holmes and Globe Associate Artist Charlie Josephine, running from 14 August to 25 October. Josephine will also star as Orlando, opposite Lola Shalam as Rosalind, in a production that turns the Globe into the “wild and magical Forest of Arden.”

The season will also feature three exciting “midnight matinee” performances: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (20 June), Much Ado About Nothing (31 July) and As You Like It (11 September).

Family show heads to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

In the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Globe Director of Education Lucy Cuthbertson will direct A World Elsewhere, co-produced with Splendid Productions, running from 25 July to 30 August.

Written by Kerry Frampton and Ben Hales, the family show follows a boy named Cass whose imagination and imaginary friends are fuelled by his grandmother’s love of Shakespeare — until his stories begin to lose their spark.

Current season

This week marks the final performance of Naeem Hayat and Holly Race Roughan’s revival of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. Also currently running in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is The Tempest starring Slow Horses star Naomi Wirthner as Ariel, followed by Deep Azure — Chadwick Boseman’s play about finding peace in the wake of immense tragedy.