The Royal Court has announced its 70th anniversary programme: honouring the past, celebrating the present, and shaping the future of theatre.
The announcement details an entire year of programming for 2026, with 12 productions across the venue’s two historic stages, alongside new national projects and partnerships to drive investment and ambition for the next decade of new writing in the UK.
Artistic Director David Byrne said: “Everybody back to ours. The Royal Court is turning 70 with the most thrilling season we could imagine. On our stages and far beyond, we’re throwing a legendary, year-long party and you’re all invited.”
The Jerwood Theatre Downstairs at the Royal Court Theatre kicks off its 2026 season with a dynamic lineup featuring two world premieres, two European premieres, and two blockbuster revivals, celebrating the venue’s enduring legacy. The year opens with the romantic drama Guess How Much I Love You? by Luke Norris, starring Robert Aramayo and Rosie Sheehy under the direction of Jeremy Herrin, while Ryan Calais Cameron’s epic The Afronauts – exploring Zambia’s space race ambitions – closes the program in late 2026. Marking the theatre’s anniversary ties to its 1956 debut season, the European premieres include Kimberly Belflower’s John Proctor is the Villain, directed by Tony Award-winner Danya Taymor fresh from its Broadway triumph, and Rajiv Joseph’s Pulitzer Prize finalist Archduke, offering a fresh lens on Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in a new production helmed by Lyndsey Turner with striking designs by Es Devlin.
Revivals bring star power and historical resonance: Tilda Swinton makes a triumphant stage return after over three decades to reprise her iconic 1988 role in Manfred Karge’s Man to Man, reuniting with director Stephen Unwin and designer Bunny Christie for a production that will transfer to Berlin’s Ensemble and New York in spring 2027. Complementing this is Gary Oldman in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, giving London audiences a four-week run of the acclaimed York Theatre Royal staging. Paired nightly as a curtain-raiser is 18-year-old Leo Simpe-Asante’s witty comedy Godot’s To-Do List, a gem from the 2025 Young Playwrights Award directed by Resident Director Aneesha Srinivasan, echoing the original 1958 premiere structure. Simpe-Asante is also named the 2026 Jerwood New Playwright, backed by the Jerwood Foundation.
Since its founding in 1956, the year-round promise of the Royal Court is that anyone writing in English can send a play for equal consideration. Honouring the Royal Court’s long-standing commitment to new writers, the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs season features four new plays discovered entirely through the theatre’s open script submissions, whereby the Royal Court reads over 3,000 new plays each year.
The Upstairs programme presents debut plays, original voices and bold new stories received through open script submissions – from prehistoric cannibalism in Jack Nicholls’ The Shitheads directed by Aneesha Srinivasan & Artistic Director David Byrne; to digital voyeurism in Georgie Dettmer’s Are You Watching?; ancestral conjure in Joy Nesbitt’s Blood of my Blood directed by Tatenda Shamiso; and Welsh community politics in Rhys Warrington’s Monument, directed by Francesca Goodridge and co-produced with Sherman Theatre, Cardiff.
Additionally, Palestinian-Isaeli writer-performer Yousef Sweid and Isabella Sedlak’s Between The River and The Sea, a personal story of family, fear, and imagining a future beyond borders, comes to the Royal Court following international acclaim, originally produced by Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin.
Launching for the 70th anniversary, the Jerwood Royal Court Commissioning Scheme will provide major new investment in UK-wide playwriting, creating six brand new play commissions every year for writers and producers beyond the Court’s own stages, with annual open applications for six grants of up to £6,000 each.
Reaching beyond London to nation-wide audiences, a collaboration with BBC Radio 4 will include a new radio production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, first premiered at the Royal Court in 2016 before transferring to Broadway. Further sharing the Court’s cultural legacy, playwright Mark Ravenhill will curate radio adaptations of Royal Court plays spanning seven decades of BBC archives, available on Radio 4Extra and BBC Sounds.
Following the successful London pilot of the Young Playwrights Award in 2024-25, the 70th anniversary will feature the Court’s first National Young Playwrights Award Festivalin July 2026, celebrating the best work by teenagers from across the country – with submissions open from January, lead supported by the Dominic Webber Trust and with prizes and winners’ publication supported by Nick Hern Books.
Further details on all the above, including dates, application processes and broadcasts will be announced in due course.
Executive Director Will Young said: “Our 70th anniversary isn’t just about the past – it’s a moment to direct every bit of new thinking and resource into the pipeline for the next 70 years. Collectively, these new projects and partners not only expand our ambitions on stage, but also represent an additional quarter of a million poundswhich the Royal Court will invest every year in the future of playwriting, all dedicated to supporting new writers and developing new plays.”
Tickets for all newly announced productions are on sale now at https://royalcourttheatre.com/
