Every year, a spectacle unlike any other lights up the city of Prague. This year, those nights are set to glow brighter than ever.
From October 16 to 19, the 13th edition of Signal Festival will take place, transforming the Czech capital into one of Europe’s greatest stages for digital and creative culture. What began as an experiment in illuminating heritage architecture has grown into the country’s most visited cultural event, drawing nearly half a million people each year. For four days, gothic spires, baroque facades, and city squares become canvases for contemporary artists working at the intersection of technology, light, and emotion.
This year’s theme, Solutions, closes the festival’s three-year Ecosystems cycle, which has invited artists to investigate how natural and digital systems function, collapse, and regenerate. The paradox at the heart of 2025’s edition (and, frankly, at the heart of 2025 as a whole) is clear: technology’s undeniable coalescence with humanity. Algorithms flicker with uncertainty, data comes alive, and the precision of code collides with the mess of lived experience.
The program stretches across two routes, the city’s historic center and the Art Deco streets of Vinohrady, but its footprint is global. Highlights include Bill Viola’s towering video installation “Tristan’s Ascension”, Peppercorns’ water-screen projections inspired by the Mayan calendar, and mammasONica’s “OVERLOЯD”, a raw data fever dream mapped onto the Old Town Hall Tower. Czech voices remain central, with the Rafani collective, Pavla Sceranková, and Co-Vision: a Czech, Slovak, and Ukrainian team probing the fragile ecosystem of Europe’s “Moravian Amazon”.
For the first time in the festival’s storied history, visitors will also witness a waterscreen projection shimmering above the Vltava, holographic in its illusion, framed by Prague Castle and Charles Bridge. It’s a gesture both spectacular and symbolic, with art serving as a bridge between the past and the future.
Signal Festival 2025 runs October 16–19, and is set to be a can’t-miss sensation. More details can be found at signalfestival.com.
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