Royal Court has announced its 70th anniversary programme: honouring the past, celebrating the present, and shaping the future of theatre.
The announcement details an entire year of programming for 2026, with 12 productions across the venue’s two historic stages, alongside new national projects and partnerships to drive investment and ambition for the next decade of new writing in the UK.
Artistic Director David Byrne said: “Everybody back to ours. The Royal Court is turning 70 with the most thrilling season we could imagine. On our stages and far beyond, we’re throwing a legendary, year-long party and you’re all invited.”
JERWOOD THEATRE DOWNSTAIRS: TWO WORLD PREMIERES, TWO EUROPEAN PREMIERES & TWO BLOCKBUSTER ROYAL COURT REVIVALS
● World premieres: Luke Norris’ romantic drama Guess How Much I Love You? opens the year, starring Robert Aramayo and Rosie Sheehy and directed by Jeremy Herrin; with Ryan Calais Cameron’s Zambian space race epic The Afronauts bookending the programme in the final slot of 2026.
● European premieres: having introduced The Crucible to London audiences in the Court’s 1956 debut season, this anniversary welcomes Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain directed by Tony Award-winner Danya Taymor, direct from its smash-hit Broadway run; while Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph’s Archduke brings an alternative take on the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in a new production directed by Lyndsey Turner, with design by Es Devlin.
● Royal Court revivals: Tilda Swinton returns to the stage after more than three decades, reprising her extraordinary 1988 performance in Manfred Karge’s Man to Man, reuniting her with director Stephen Unwin and designer Bunny Christie from the original production, and transferring to the Berliner Ensemble then New York in Spring 2027; while Gary Oldman stars in Krapp’s Last Tape - offering London audiences four weeks to catch the celebrated York Theatre Royal production of this Samuel Beckett classic, first performed at the Royal Court in 1958.
● Plus: paired with Krapp’s Last Tape, a nightly curtain-raiser performance of 18 year-old Leo Simpe-Asante’s comedy Godot’s To-Do List, first discovered by the Royal Court’s 2025 Young Playwrights Award and directed by Resident Director Aneesha Srinivasan - pairing the two plays as a gesture to the original premiere of Krapp’s Last Tape, itself a curtain-raiser in 1958. Leo Simpe-Asante is also announced as the 2026 Jerwood New Playwright, supported by Jerwood Foundation.
JERWOOD THEATRE UPSTAIRS: FOUR WORLD PREMIERES FROM OPEN SCRIPT SUBMISSIONS & ONE INTERNATIONAL TRANSFER
● Since its founding in 1956, the year-round promise of the Royal Court is that anyone writing in English can send a play for equal consideration. Honouring the Royal Court’s long-standing commitment to new writers, the Upstairs season features four new plays discovered entirely through the theatre’s open script submissions, whereby the Royal Court reads over 3,000 new plays each year.
● The Upstairs programme presents debut plays, original voices and bold new stories received through open script submissions - from prehistoric cannibalism in Jack Nicholls’ The Shitheads directed by Aneesha Srinivasan & Artistic Director David Byrne; to digital voyeurism in Georgie Dettmer’s Are You Watching?; ancestral conjure in Joy Nesbitt’s Blood of my Blood directed by Tatenda Shamiso; and Welsh community politics in Rhys Warrington’s Monument, directed by Francesca Goodridge and co-produced with Sherman Theatre, Cardiff.
● Palestinian-Isaeli writer-performer Yousef Sweid and Isabella Sedlak’s Between The River and The Sea, a personal story of family, fear, and imagining a future beyond borders, comes to the Royal Court following international acclaim, originally produced by Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin.
A NATIONAL CELEBRATION - FOR AUDIENCES & ARTISTS
● Launching for the 70th anniversary, the Jerwood Royal Court Commissioning Scheme will provide major new investment in UK-wide playwriting, creating six brand new play commissions every year for writers and producers beyond the Court’s own stages, with annual open applications for six grants of up to £6,000 each.
● Reaching beyond London to nation-wide audiences, a collaboration with BBC Radio 4 will include a new radio production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, first premiered at the Royal Court in 2016 before transferring to Broadway. Further sharing the Court’s cultural legacy, playwright Mark Ravenhill will curate radio adaptations of Royal Court plays spanning seven decades of BBC archives, available on Radio 4Extra and BBC Sounds.
● Following the successful London pilot of the Young Playwrights Award in 2024-25, the 70th anniversary will feature the Court’s first National Young Playwrights Award Festival in July 2026, celebrating the best work by teenagers from across the country - with submissions open from January, lead supported by the Dominic Webber Trust and with prizes and winners’ publication supported by Nick Hern Books.
● Further details of all the above, including dates, application processes and broadcasts will be announced in due course.
MAJOR NEW PARTNERSHIPS TO INVEST IN FUTURE TALENT
● New and returning partners mark the anniversary with support towards the Court’s investment in the future of theatre, collectively offering an antidote to the climate of austerity and risk-aversion facing the current generation of new theatre-makers.
● Genesis Foundation return to the Royal Court with a major new multi-year partnership investing in play commissioning and development, underwriting a suite of annual Genesis Commissions and Genesis Labs for the future pipeline of new work - including Ryan Calais Cameron’s The Afronauts in 2026 now publicly announced as the first Genesis Commission.
● Character 7 – the award-winning drama production company enter a multi-year partnership to expand the Royal Court’s Open Submissions Festival, doubling the initiative to run two week-long festivals each year from 2026: a gateway for the best work by new and unknown writers, and offering audiences a glimpse at the future of contemporary theatre.
● The Concord Theatricals Unpublished Playwrights Award will launch for 2026 with an expanded package of two plays from debut writers, Georgie Dettmer’s Are You Watching? and Joy Nesbitt’s Blood of my Blood, before continuing with one award per year from 2027.
● Further support for the season and expanding the Court’s artistic programmes is provided by extraordinary commitments from new and returning partners including Backstage Trust, Common Humanity Arts Trust, Jerwood Foundation, Sigrid Rausing Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Executive Director Will Young said: “Our 70th anniversary isn't just about the past - it's a moment to direct every bit of new thinking and resource into the pipeline for the next 70 years. Collectively, these new projects and partners not only expand our ambitions on stage, but also represent an additional quarter of a million pounds which the Royal Court will invest every year in the future of playwriting, all dedicated to supporting new writers and developing new plays.”
Tickets for all newly announced productions will go on sale to supporters from 12pm on Tuesday 28th October, to Friends and Good Friends at 12pm on Thursday 30th October, and to the general public at 12pm on Tuesday 4th November.