SOUK Amsterdam Arabic Festival next edition, 2026 concert and past editions

What is SOUK?

SOUK – Amsterdam Arabic Festival puts Arabic and Western music side by side in the Concertgebouw. The evening has three parts: a big concert in the Main Hall, where an Arab star plays with a Dutch orchestra and dancers from the ballet; the foyers around it, which are turned into a souk, an Arabic market, with food, music, poetry, art and dance; and a party afterwards.

The festival is run by Stichting SOUK, a foundation with a volunteer board. Its aim is to bring young people and Dutch people of every background into contact with one another through Arab and Western art, with big cultural institutions drawing that audience in. Programming is by Jeroen Heinen, Jan Pieter Koch and Joris Nassenstein together with the Concertgebouw. The partners are the Concertgebouw, the Nederlands Kamerorkest, Het Nationale Ballet and Stichting Marmoucha.

Is there a SOUK in 2027?

No new edition has been announced. Neither the SOUK website nor the Concertgebouw lists one, and SOUK has never been an annual festival: it was held in 2005, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2017, 2023 and 2025.

The last full edition was on Friday 30 and Saturday 31 May 2025, SOUK's 20th anniversary. In between editions the Concertgebouw has started SOUK Presents, single concerts by a big Arab artist: the first was the Lebanese singer Myriam Fares in the Main Hall on Friday 2 October 2026. The Concertgebouw calls SOUK a festival held every two years, which fits 2023 and 2025, but it has named no date for the next one.

Look for a new edition on souk.nl and on the Concertgebouw calendar. Once there is a date, the events of that edition are listed on this page.

Every SOUK so far

11 September 2005: the first edition, then called SOUK, Dutch Moroccan Music Experience, presented by Entrée and Holland Symfonia (today the Balletorkest). It already had the three parts the festival still has: a show in the Main Hall, a foyer programme and a party.

Thursday 17 May 2007: SOUK 2, Dutch Arabic Music & Dance, with Michiel Borstlap, Najib Amhali, De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig and dancers of Het Nationale Ballet next to Arab artists.

28 April, 3 May and 5 May 2012: three halls instead of one, De Doelen in Rotterdam, Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. The Syrian singer Assala Nasri played with Holland Symfonia, and Michiel Borstlap and Moss were on the bill.

1 and 2 May 2014: the Lebanese singer Carole Samaha and the Moroccan hip-hop group Fnaïre with Holland Symfonia.

Thursday 23 and Friday 24 November 2017: the fifth edition, with the Moroccan singer Asma Lmnawar. For the first time SOUK worked with the Nederlands Kamerorkest.

Friday 9 and Saturday 10 June 2023: the sixth edition, with the Lebanese singer Nawal El Zoghbi. A first half took the audience down the Nile with presenter Sabri Saad el Hamus, with the Nederlands Kamerorkest under Jochen Neuffer.

Friday 30 and Saturday 31 May 2025: 20 years of SOUK, with Carole Samaha, the Iraqi ud player Naseer Shamma, the Sudanese singer Mohamed Al Tayeb, the Nederlands Kamerorkest under Bassem Akiki and the storyteller Fahd Larhzaoui. The programme followed the travels of the 14th-century explorer Ibn Battuta from Tangier.

SOUK Presents in 2026: Myriam Fares in the Main Hall

On Friday 2 October 2026 the Concertgebouw presented Myriam Fares, presented by SOUK: a concert by the Lebanese singer and her full band, her first show in the Netherlands. The Concertgebouw calls it the first spin-off of the SOUK festival: under the name SOUK Presents, a well-known Arab artist gets an evening of their own between festival editions. It was not a full SOUK edition.

The doors opened at 19:15 and the ud player Karam Abdulrahman played in the Mirror Hall (Spiegelzaal) at 19:30. The concert started at 20:15, and afterwards there were two parties: the Amsterdam DJ Jimmy Moon with the percussionist Hashem Kabreet in the Mirror Hall, and DJ Zobayda in the Entrance Hall.

Tickets ran from €49 to €110, depending on the category, plus a €5 fee per order.

What a SOUK evening is like

In recent editions the concert in the Main Hall has followed a theme. In 2025 it was a musical journey after Ibn Battuta, with the Nederlands Kamerorkest enlarged with ud, qanun and darbuka players and a new piece by Het Nationale Ballet.

In the foyers the festival turns the building into a market. In 2025 that meant Arabic coffee brewed on sand, Egyptian street food such as koshari and hawawshi, a Hummus Museum, an exhibition of pop-art posters by Amine Habti, live music from the Marmoucha Orchestra, Wasim Arslan and Mohamed Al Tayeb, and afterparties with DJs until about one in the morning. The 2023 foyers had Moroccan food, a jam session, spoken word and poetry.

In 2025 there was also SOUK Kids, a mini festival for children aged 6 and up on Saturday 31 May, from 15:15 to 17:00, with a concert in the Main Hall.

How to hear about the next SOUK and get tickets

Tickets for SOUK concerts have been sold by the Concertgebouw, so the Concertgebouw calendar is where a new edition appears. You can also sign up for the Concertgebouw's newsletter.

SOUK itself posts on Instagram and TikTok as @soukamsterdam and on Facebook as @souk.nl, and its website is souk.nl. The foundation's address is [email protected]; it asks for collaborations and ideas.