folkBALTICA Festival — Concerts Schleswig

Folk Music of the Baltic Sea Region in Schleswig

The folkBALTICA Festival was launched in 2005 to showcase the folk music traditions of the entire Baltic Sea region, spanning Scandinavia, the Baltics, Poland, and Northern Germany. The event is organized by the German-Danish association folkBALTICA e.V., which presents a program of around 30 concerts and workshops each spring. Schleswig, the historic Viking city in the district of the same name, is one of the regular venues.

Double Concert in St. John's Monastery

On Sunday, May 10th, 2026, the festival invites you to a double concert in the St. John's Monastery starting at 3:00 PM. The former 12th-century Benedictine convent, with its Romanesque columns and Gothic vaults, offers an exceptional acoustic and atmospheric backdrop for folk music. On stage:

• Baltic Sisters — four singers from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, who offer a modern interpretation of the Baltic vocal tradition with polyphony and multi-part singing
• Synnøve Brøndbo Plassen & Michał Żak — Norwegian violinist Synnøve Brøndbo Plassen and Polish clarinetist and multi-instrumentalist Michał Żak in an intimate duo

More Schleswig Concerts in 2026

On Thursday, May 7th, at 8:00 PM, another double concert will take place at the Slesvighus — featuring the Baltic Sea String Band and the trio Groupa & Marta Matuszna. Schleswig thus remains one of the central festival locations in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in 2026.

More Than Concerts: A Festival of Encounters

folkBALTICA sees itself not just as a concert series, but as a festival of encounters. Workshops, family concerts, and special performances complement the program. In the concerts, artists from Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany meet — a musical geography that makes the Baltic Sea tangible as a connecting cultural space.