Berlin‘s favourite jazz festival is cancelled
Despite a dedicated budget line approved by the Berlin parliament, the administration refuses to release funding. Berlin’s largest jazz festival cannot take place. All letters to the administration, the Senator for Culture, and the Governing Mayor have gone unanswered.
Berlin, 9 March 2026. The XJAZZ! Festival, Berlin’s largest jazz festival and winner of the 2022 German Jazz Prize for “Festival of the Year”, will not take place in 2026. Berlin’s cultural administration has failed to implement the funding approved by the House of Representatives for the third consecutive year.
A festival that a 40-member federal jury voted the best festival in Germany, that has built an international profile for Berlin’s jazz scene with a uniquely young audience, and whose operations have been frozen for four weeks, is being driven out of existence by Berlin’s cultural administration through delayed funding decisions, financial clawbacks, and now a funding cancellation.
What Happened
In December 2025, the Berlin House of Representatives approved a dedicated budget line for the XJAZZ! Festival for the third year in a row – recognising the festival’s relevance and the need for professional planning lead time. The festival began preparations accordingly, as it had in every previous year, when the final funding approval regularly arrived only weeks or even days before the festival’s opening.
To address the recurring problems caused by delayed funding decisions, the festival has for years proactively reached out to the respective Senators for Culture. This year, the festival wrote to the Senator for Culture on 6 January with a detailed letter requesting clarification of the funding structure, the approved project start date, and proposing a fixed-amount funding model. No substantive response was received.
The festival management only learned of the apparently already finalised internal decision to deny funding through an accidentally forwarded internal email from the administration. The official cancellation was communicated only days later.
On 10 February 2026, the head of the cultural administration informed the festival’s managing director that funding would not be provided in 2026. Verbally only. No written justification was given. No legal remedies were indicated. The decision was made, while the festival was already in the middle of implementation.
Since then, all planning has been frozen. For four weeks now, the festival has been unable to sign contracts with artists, venues, or service providers. Advance ticket sales have been halted. The damage grows with every passing day.
On 16 February, the festival wrote again to the Senator. No response.
On 2 March, the festival wrote simultaneously to the administration, the Senator for Culture, and the Governing Mayor – presenting a concrete solution (a one-time postponement of the festival to the autumn) with a deadline of 6 March, as the festival would otherwise have to shut down due to the damage caused by the ongoing funding uncertainty. None of the three responded.
Instead, on 5 March – one day before the deadline – the festival received, without comment, the announcement of an extensive audit of its accounts for 2022 – the very year in which the festival had to pivot at extremely short notice from pandemic mode back to a live event. In parallel, an appeal is already underway against a clawback demand of nearly €20,000 for the year 2024. The administration has cited the festival’s – in its view justified – appeal against this clawback as one of the reasons for withholding funding in 2026.
A Structural Problem
The situation facing the XJAZZ! Festival is not an isolated case but a symptom of a systemic problem in Berlin’s cultural funding. A festival in May requires planning to begin in the autumn of the previous year, with implementation starting no later than the budget approval in December. Yet for years, the final funding approval has consistently arrived only weeks or days before the festival.
The delayed funding approval effectively forces the festival into non-compliant spending: international headliners, major venues, hotel blocks, technical production, and marketing obviously require more lead time than a few weeks. Rather than adapting its processes, the administration then retroactively penalises the festival for having made the event possible year after year, despite these administrative obstacles and at significant personal financial risk to the organisers. What should be recognised as professional, efficient, and pragmatic management is instead classified as improper business conduct.
The festival has raised this issue with the administration and successive Senators for Culture for years. Constructive proposals – including a switch to fixed-amount funding, which worked seamlessly for the same festival under a federal grant from Initiative Musik – have been ignored.
Adding insult to injury: The festival’s core team has worked without pay for years, covering the damage caused by the administration’s dysfunction out of their own pockets – only to face additional financial penalties on top.
The Consequences
The XJAZZ! Festival 2026 is cancelled. Approximately 60 to 80 planned concerts are affected, including around 40 concerts by Berlin-based artists, the youth and family programme, a performance by the Berlin Brandenburg Youth Jazz Orchestra, and the networking event “Berlin Market.” Over 10,000 visitors – including a uniquely young audience for a jazz festival – attended in recent years and helped the festival achieve international reach.
In 2025 alone, the shareholders had to contribute €125,000 from personal funds to compensate for delayed, reduced, and retroactively disputed funding. Another cancellation of this magnitude is financially unsustainable.
“The House of Representatives approved a dedicated budget line for our festival three years in a row. The administration refuses to implement it. Instead: audits, penalties, and now a funding cancellation – in the middle of production. We’ve exhausted every option. Without a political solution, the festival is finished.”
– Sebastian Studnitzky, Managing Director XJAZZ Festival GmbH, Echo Jazz and Opus Klassik laureate, currently nominated in two categories for the German Jazz Prize, Professor of Trumpet at the HfM Dresden
HOW YOU CAN HELP
The situation facing XJAZZ! is a symptom of a systemic problem in Berlin’s cultural funding – one that many of you know from your own experience. If you want to support the festival, it would be enormously helpful if you could write to the Senator for Culture and the cultural administration – a brief statement that this festival matters to Berlin’s scene and that the funding structures need reform.
Senator for Culture Sarah Wedl-Wilson: post@kultur.berlin.deCultural Administration (Dept. of Culture): post@kultur.berlin.de, attn. Dr. Steinhilber
The more visible the solidarity, the greater the pressure for a swift resolution.
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Thank you for your support and your trust in the XJAZZ! Festival. We will fight.