Abrons Arts Center is excited to announce its 2026 fall programming. Featuring community events, exhibitions, public festivals, and more, this season promises to be among the most expansive to date. Highlights include part one of a multimedia installation which reimagines the myth of Antigone through the lens of the Puerto Rican diaspora, the return of the 'Live! on Grand' LES Talent Show and the world premiere of Cherrie Yu's performance piece featuring Chinatown-based table tennis players.
"Abrons' mission is to explore the creative possibility that is rooted in the history of our immigrant and working-class community," said Harry Poster, Producing Director. "From the portraits of our most experienced residents to the community gathering witnessed at the ping pong tables in Seward Park, this season's works celebrate artistry spanning from our backdoor in the Lower East Side to Chinatown, to San Juan, Puerto Rico. Taken together, these demonstrate the intergenerational history of our community through visual portraits, dance, and ancient narratives retold."
Programming includes:
- everyday royalty: An Exhibition of Artists Across Henry Street Settlement
- From September 11-October 18, 2026
- Opening Reception: September 11, 4 PM
- About:
- Through photography, collage, painting, sewing, and embroidery, participants from the Henry Street Older Adult Center and Community Consultation Center create works that honor themselves as everyday royalty: visible, radiant, and powerful.
- Grounded in commemorative practices, the work reveals the extraordinary within the ordinary, transforming lived experience into our communities' most valuable legacy.
- Developed through a summer-long residency and presented for a second year at Abrons Arts Center, the exhibition celebrates community, ritual and the quiet magnificence of being seen. Abrons Arts Center's PATHS (Promoting the Arts Throughout Henry Street) program brings professional artists into Henry Street Settlement programs across the Lower East Side, fostering community, creativity, and connection through hands-on artistic practice.
- To RSVP, please click HERE.
- Fall Festival 2026
- When: October 17, 2026, 12- 4 PM
- About:
- Abrons Arts Center and Henry Street Settlement's annual Fall Festival celebrates the start of a new season. Enjoy food and refreshments, music, dancing, arts, and crafts. The day includes an interactive performance for children called The Garden, created by the company Flying Leap. The Garden is an outdoor performance created for children between the ages of 3 and 5 and their caregivers. Through movement and play shared in multiple languages, audiences are invited on a journey through nature's life cycle using all five senses. This event is free and open to the public. Accompanying this performance will be a lively lineup of hands-on art activities inspired by the creativity of Halloween on the Lower East Side. The Fall Festival is free and open to all ages. Come dressed to impress for the costume parade!
- To RSVP, please click HERE.
- Natalia Lassalle-Morillo: En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy
- From: November 5-December 20, 2026
- Opening Reception: November 5, 6 PM
- About:
- En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy is a work spanning performance, film installation, and an exhibition that reassembles the Greek myth of Antigone through collaboration with an ensemble of nontraditional actors residing in Puerto Rico and in New York City's Puerto Rican diasporic community. Developed through a multi-year process of collaborative rehearsal and experimental filmmaking, the ensemble creates a shared space to examine the collective consciousness shaped by decades of environmental, economic, political, and spiritual tragedies in the archipelago.
- Directed by Natalia Lassalle-Morillo as part of her two-year La Residencia residency with Abrons and Pública Espacio Cultural in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and organized by residency curator Natalia Viera-Salgado, En Parábola/Conversations on Tragedy will be presented at Abrons Arts Center as an exhibition and a film installation. The exhibition and live performance will premiere in San Juan, Puerto Rico in March 2027, in partnership with Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico. Natalia Lassalle-Morillo is a Puerto Rican artist and director whose interdisciplinary practice examines memory and history through participatory practices that invite collaboration. She has had exhibitions across the world, and most recently, her work was showcased in the 2026 Venice Biennale. The work was developed in collaboration with Erica Ballester, Yulliana Padilla, Rosa Plá, Yasmín Ramírez, Nina Lucía Rodríguez, Raquel Rodríguez, Fiamma Seda and Emma Suárez - Báez.
- To RSVP, please click HERE.
- Cherrie Yu: Daily Diversions (World Premiere)
- From: November 12-14, 2026, 7:30 PM
- About:
- Daily Diversions is a performance work about community building through the practice of table tennis, created in collaboration with Manhattan Chinatown-based table tennis players and multigenerational contemporary dancers. Daily Diversions explores the shared vocabulary between postmodern dance and everyday athleticism. Cherrie Yu, Abrons' 2025-26 Performance AIRspace Resident, has been living and working in the U.S. since 2013, has shown films and performances across the country, and was included in Cultured Magazine's 2025 Top 27 Young Artists List.
- To get tickets, please click HERE.
- Live! on Grand: Auditions 2026
- From: December 4-5, 2026
- About:
- Live! on Grand is the Lower East Side's new annual talent competition for ages 18+, hosted on Abrons Arts Center's Playhouse Stage before a live audience on December 11 & 12.
- To register, please click HERE.
- Live! on Grand: An LES Talent Show 2026
- From: December 11-12, 2026
- About:
- Abrons opens its historic main stage to its beloved community, offering 10 talented New Yorkers the chance to compete for a $1,000 prize. Dancing, singing, juggling: all kinds of performers are welcome to show the LES what they've got.
- To get tickets, please click HERE.
Image courtesy of Abrons Arts Center, New York
