2027 marks the 17th edition of the Festival. What began as PushOFF in 2011 has grown beyond our wildest imaginings into a vital platform for daring, experimental performance by some of Vancouver and Canada’s most boundary-pushing artists.

This year’s HOLD ON LET GO celebrates those artists while continuing to champion bold creation-based, devised, multidisciplinary and collaborative independent work.

Taking over the iconic Russian Hall in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood, the Festival will once again feature Mainstage presentations, works In Development, Festival Gatherings — designed to deepen audience engagement, and an Emerging Artist Series aimed at provoking and inspiring the next generation of creators. 2027 will also welcome back our International Delegation, with visiting presenters and professionals from around the world joining us throughout the Festival.

This is also a pivotal year for HOLD ON LET GO. Like many artist-run experimental festivals, we are navigating an increasingly difficult landscape as funding shrinks, stagnates, or disappears altogether. We’ve poured enormous care into building this Festival over the past 17 years, and sustaining that level of care has become more challenging than ever. Put very practically, we are at a critical point.

We do this work because we believe that many artists need alternative ways of building audiences for their art, as well as opportunities that allow them to develop their work and artistic practice that lives in conversation with each other, as well as with the public.

Thank you for being with us. See you in February!