Why is Unsound splitting into two cities?

Twenty-three years after starting as a handful of shows in Kraków's cellar bars, Unsound is doing something it has never done with its flagship Polish edition: splitting it in two. Unsound 2026 opens in Warsaw from October 2 to 6, then moves the whole operation east to Kraków from October 8 to 11, connected by a dedicated Unsound Train running on October 7 with performances staged on board. A weekly pass covers both cities, and organizers say no lineup repeats between them.

That is a structural bet, not a marketing line. Unsound has run satellite editions abroad for years, in New York, London, Toronto, Adelaide, Minsk and Tbilisi, but its home Polish edition has always been Kraków alone. Splitting the flagship itself, with a train built specifically to move the audience between cities, treats Warsaw not as a spinoff but as a second capital for the festival.

Why does Arca's first Warsaw show matter?

The clearest signal of what the Warsaw leg is for is Arca. The Venezuelan producer, vocalist and performance artist has played Unsound's Kraków edition before, but October 3 will be her first-ever Warsaw appearance, and she is not just filling a slot. Arca performs her album Airdoll and co-curates the entire evening around it, a program that includes a back-to-back set with Bobby Beethoven, a DJ set from Mica Levi and an audiovisual show from KAVARI.

Handing a co-curated night to an artist who has spent a decade taking club music apart from the inside, reggaeton, opera, ambient and noise folded into one continuous body of work, is exactly the kind of booking Unsound has built its reputation on: not the biggest name available, but the one whose presence explains the theme.

Who else is playing, and what is SOFT POWER about?

The rest of the second wave leans into the festival's usual mix of drone, dub and dancefloor extremity: Donato Dozzy plays a pre-festival Warsaw show, Sarah Davachi and Wendy Eisenberg bring long-form composition, and Diamanda Galás performs at the Warsaw Philharmonic, a rare classical-hall booking for a voice that has unsettled rooms for four decades. Club-facing pairings include Kode9 b2b Nikki Nair and Batu b2b Virgo Deep. They join the previously announced Tim Hecker, Actress and PPP.

All of it sits under this year's curatorial theme, SOFT POWER: language, surveillance and what organizers call algorithmic control, framed around what they describe as a moment of "might makes right." Unsound has always used its theme as a lens rather than a slogan, and the 2026 version reads like a direct response to a year of AI-generated music, platform control and surveillance creeping into every conversation about sound itself.

A weekly pass covers Warsaw, the train and Kraków, with no lineup repeating between the two cities.