The second Digital Rain Media Art Festival will be held in St. Petersburg.

The second Digital Rain Media Art Festival will be held in St. Petersburg from September 25 to 27. In 2026, the theme of the festival is "Connections".

The main program will unfold at the sites of the Central District of St. Petersburg. It will include audiovisual installations, lighting projects, mapping shows, performances, performances, concerts, a business program and, for the first time, a gastronomic project that will be an exclusive addition to the festival events.

The festival explores the connections between technology and art, cultures and eras, nature and the man-made environment. Media art is becoming a space of interaction between humans, digital tools, and the city, through which the connections that permeate modern life manifest themselves.

The opening will take place on September 25 on the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Vs. Meyerhold Theater. The opening program includes a concert by pianist Mikhail Kandinsky, a descendant of the great Russian artist Vasily Kandinsky with the support of the Wassily Kandinsky Foundation for the Preservation, Study and Popularization of 20th—21st Century Art. Music and digital art will merge in a unique audiovisual project at the junction of classics and new technologies.

One of the central events will be a large-scale three-day mapping show on the facade of the Bolshoi Gostiny Dvor. From September 25 to 27, projections and lighting solutions will be synchronized with live music performances. The program includes academic underground and electronic music, jazz, classical music and its new experimental sound.

The premiere of the play "The Play is canceled" using VR technologies will take place in the Myasnikov Mansion. It will be presented by choreographers Vladimir Varnava, Alexander Chelidze and musicians of the mader nort creative association. The musical and robotic performance "Mechanical Rustle. Phantoms" by robohoreographer Dmitry Masaidov and composer Nikolai Popov.

This year's business program of the Festival focuses on the topics of interaction between art and business, current trends in the development of the multimedia industry today.

In 2026, Digital Rain will present the main program at venues in the very center of St. Petersburg: at the Petrikirche, the Central Museum of Communications named after Popov, on the New stage of the Alexandrinsky Vs. Meyerhold Theater, in the cultural space "Third Place" and many others.

The final show will take place on September 27 on the facade of the Ciniselli Circus, where media art, stage technology and performative practices will combine in a large-scale project.

A parallel program will be held at the Yandex Museum, the ITMO AIR Gallery, and other venues.

In 2025, the festival was held on the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater, the Multimedia Center of the Russian Museum, in Sevkabel Port, and the Brusnitsyn cultural quarter. The festival brought together more than 80,000 visitors at 15 venues in the city.