ROTTERDAM, 7 July 2026 – NN North Sea Jazz Festival brought part of its 50th anniversary programme to the returning Dunya Festival in Rotterdam’s Zuiderpark on Sunday 5 July. British jazz musician Theon Cross, Dutch-Surinamese band La Rouge and the Rotterdam Brass Band School were among the acts connecting international names with talent from the city.
Image: Visitors enjoy an earlier edition of Dunya Festival. Photo: Bas Czerwinski.
The free programme gave Rotterdam a taste of North Sea Jazz before the anniversary edition begins at Ahoy on Friday 10 July. It also added another chapter to Dunya Festival’s return after a thirteen-year absence, bringing the two Rotterdam music institutions together in the south of the city.
Dunya returned to Rotterdam South
Dunya Festival filled the Zuiderpark with music, dance, stories and food from 13:00 to 22:00. The festival returned with a new location and an updated concept, while keeping the open-air and multicultural character many Rotterdammers remember from its earlier editions.
The collaboration came at a significant moment for both festivals. Dunya was making its comeback as an independent event, while North Sea Jazz is celebrating fifty years since its first edition opened in The Hague in July 1976.
Rotterdam Festivals helped bring the two organisations together. North Sea Jazz wanted to mark its anniversary with free programming elsewhere in the city, and Dunya offered a natural setting beside Rotterdam Ahoy, where music from different traditions and communities was already central to the day.
“North Sea Jazz is slightly less accessible than Dunya because you need to buy a ticket,” said Michelle Kuypers of Mojo, the organiser of NN North Sea Jazz Festival. “That is why it is so good that the Dunya audience can enjoy North Sea Jazz programming free of charge this year.”
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Theon Cross joined Rotterdam talent
The collaboration started before the festival gates opened. On Saturday 4 July, Theon Cross and Dutch drummer Kick Woudstra led a workshop with musicians from the Rotterdam Brass Band School.
Cross is a British tuba player and composer whose work places the instrument inside contemporary jazz shaped by Caribbean music, hip-hop and London club culture. The workshop gave the young Rotterdam musicians an opportunity to work directly with an international artist before joining him for a performance in the Zuiderpark the following day.
Cross also performed with his own band during Dunya Festival. The Rotterdam Brass Band School will appear again during NN North Sea Jazz, carrying the connection between the free festival programme and the anniversary weekend at Ahoy.
La Rouge brought another strand of the collaboration to the Perron Firmeza Stage. The Dutch-Surinamese band moves between salsa, soca, merengue, hip-hop, R&B and pop, fitting neatly into a programme designed to place jazz beside the many other sounds that move through Rotterdam.
Perron Firmeza linked music scenes
Perron Firmeza served as Dunya’s talent stage, giving emerging Rotterdam musicians space alongside more established performers. The name refers to a metro platform: somewhere people meet, move forward and begin a new journey.
House of Knowledge presented young makers from the city, while North Sea Round Town contributed artists from the Dutch jazz and music scene. North Sea Jazz added international names, creating a programme where developing artists and experienced musicians could share a stage rather than exist in separate festival bubbles.
That approach was about more than filling time between concerts. The organisers wanted the programme to encourage contact and knowledge-sharing between musicians at different points in their careers, from students and neighbourhood talent to artists already touring internationally.
Elsewhere at Dunya Festival, the programme included Cheba Zahouania, Mauritanian musician Noura Mint Seymali and Cape Verdean group Grupo Pilon. Together, the stages reflected the festival’s familiar mix of global music and Rotterdam communities, now transplanted to the Zuiderpark.
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North Sea Jazz turns fifty
The main NN North Sea Jazz Festival takes place at Rotterdam Ahoy from Friday 10 to Sunday 12 July. More than 150 performances are spread across 17 stages during an edition looking back at five decades of jazz while also presenting the music’s current and emerging directions.
The festival is celebrating beyond the Ahoy halls through collaborations, exhibitions, a film, podcasts and performances around Rotterdam. Its contribution to Dunya Festival was one of the clearest examples: anniversary programming brought directly into the city, without requiring a festival ticket.
North Sea Jazz began in 1976 with six stages, around 300 musicians and approximately 9,000 visitors. The festival now welcomes around 90,000 visitors annually, making its decision to join a free event in Rotterdam South a useful reminder that jazz does not begin and end behind the doors of Ahoy.
For Dunya, the partnership helped strengthen a comeback edition still finding its new shape. For North Sea Jazz, it placed international artists next to Rotterdam musicians and audiences before the official anniversary weekend. And for the city, it meant one more day when the distance between a major festival and a neighbourhood stage became considerably smaller.
