There is an art form that refuses to be tamed. It lives in the stomp of a heel on a wooden stage, in the ache of a voice reaching for something beyond language, in the precise tension of a guitarist’s fingers coaxing fire from six strings. Flamenco is not something you simply watch — it is something that finds you, grabs you, and doesn’t let go. It transmits the anguish, the pain, the joy and the passions of life, all expressed thorough fiber and sinew and an ancient calling from the past.

The 24th Chicago Flamenco Festival, presented by the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago in collaboration with the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, brings an extraordinary international lineup to the city from March 1 through March 17, 2026. All performances take place at the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago, 31 West Ohio Street in the River North neighborhood. Tickets range from $20 to $35, and the full schedule with ticketing is available at chicago.cervantes.es.

This year as in years past, the festival in Chicago coincides with the World Flamenco Congress (Congreso Mundial de Flamenco), a global initiative founded in 2021 by the headquarters of the Instituto Cervantes in Spain. Chicago is one of the principal host cities in 2026, placing our city squarely at the center of an international conversation about flamenco’s past, present, and future. That is not a small thing. That is Chicago being recognized as a major North American home for one of humanity’s most profound art forms — one that UNESCO itself declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity back in 2010.

A Festival Built on Depth

Teresa Hernando, Cultural Programs Curator at the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago and the architect of this festival’s vision, puts it plainly:

“This Festival was born from the conviction that Chicago deserved to experience flamenco at the highest artistic level,” said Teresa Hernando, Cultural Programs Curator and Festival Producer. “For twenty-four years, we have built a platform where master artists and visionary creators meet an informed and passionate audience. It is not a showcase; it is a dialogue
between history and the present. Here, tradition and risk coexist.”

The 2026 program is remarkable in its range. Rather than serving up a single, monolithic vision of flamenco, it places the art form in honest dialogue with its own complexity — its Andalusian roots, its Moorish and Mediterranean inheritance, its contemporary restlessness, and its capacity for genuine cross-cultural encounter.

The Full Performance Schedule

Sunday, March 1 — RAW (Opening Night) Granada-born dancer and choreographer Irene Morales opens the festival alongside cantaor El Calerito and guitarist José Fermín Fernández. RAW strips flamenco to its essential architecture — rhythm, breath, gesture, silence — while weaving in electronic textures that expand the form without losing its pulse. This is flamenco distilled to its bones, and it is the perfect entry point for the festival.

Friday, March 6 — Latente/Malagueña Guitarist Dani de Morón — born in Morón de la Frontera and shaped by the legendary lineage of Diego del Gastor — brings original compositions alongside the deeply traditional Malagueña. A collaborator of José Mercé, Paco de Lucía, and Antonio Canales, Dani de Morón is one of the most technically authoritative guitarists working in flamenco today.

Saturday, March 7 — YARIN One of the most conceptually daring offerings of the festival. Andrés Marín, one of flamenco’s most innovative choreographer-dancers, meets Jon Maya and the acclaimed Kukai Dantza company in an encounter between flamenco and ancestral Basque dance. Kukai Dantza — winners of Spain’s National Dance Award for creation in 2017 — bridges ancient Basque tradition with contemporary movement. Live music by Basque musician Julen Achiary and the haunting rhythms of the txalaparta percussion instrument make this an evening unlike anything Chicago stages regularly. YARIN is a reminder that identity and artistic dialogue are not mutually exclusive — they can be the same conversation.

Saturday, March 14 — José Antonio Rodríguez ⭐ Co-produced by the ILCC Guitarist José Antonio Rodríguez brings an evening dedicated entirely to the flamenco guitar repertoire, bridging classical structure with contemporary harmonic language. This concert is co-produced by the ILCC, making it a particularly meaningful night for our organization and our community. Tickets are $20–$35 at chicago.cervantes.es — don’t miss it.

Tuesday, March 17 — Seffarine: From Fez to Jerez ⭐ Co-produced by the ILCC | Festival Closing Night The festival closes — and what a closing it is. Seffarine, led by Moroccan vocalist Lamiae Naki and multi-instrumentalist Nat Hulskamp, joined by dancer Manuel Gutiérrez and bassist Yosmel Montejo, traces centuries of musical exchange between North Africa and Andalusia. The program illuminates something that often gets overlooked in popular presentations of flamenco: its deep, living roots in the Moorish world of medieval Iberia. From Fez to Jerez is not just a concert title — it is a historical argument made in music and movement. This closing night is also co-produced by the ILCC. Tickets are $20–$35 at chicago.cervantes.es.

The ILCC’s Role: More Than a Partner

The ILCC’s connection to this festival runs deep. Our Deputy Executive Director, Mateo Mulcahy, is co-producing both the March 14 and March 17 concerts, bringing the ILCC’s creative energy and community reach directly into the heart of the programming.

Mateo had this to say about the collaboration and what these two concerts mean:

The International Latino Cultural Center (or the ILCC) values the opportunity to showcase the bonds between Spain and Latin America through collaborations with the Instituto Cervantes and the Chicago Flamenco Festival. The power of flamenco in its many forms and expressions inspires us to seek out and explore the cultural connections between Spain and Latin America.

Having veteran Maestro José Antonio Rodríguez and Seffarine shows the contrast and evolution of an artform that has lived in our midst for centuries and can still demonstrate the capacity for innovation and growth.

This kind of partnership — between the Instituto Cervantes and the ILCC — reflects exactly what both organizations exist to do: build bridges. Between Spain and the Americas. Between the classical and the contemporary. Between an art form with 1,000 years of history and an audience that may be experiencing it for the very first time tonight.

Listen Before You Go: HablArte! Podcast

Want to go deeper before stepping into the theater? We’ve got you covered.

The latest episode of our HablArte! podcast features an unmissable conversation with Mateo Mulcahy, Teresa Hernando, and Nat Hulskamp and Manuel Gutiérrez of Seffarine. Together, they explore the creative vision behind the festival, the story of Seffarine: From Fez to Jerez, and the living connections between North African musical heritage and Andalusian flamenco. It is the kind of conversation that will completely transform how you hear and see these performances live.

[PODCAST LINK/EPISODE COMING SOON.]

An Invitation

I have been immersed in Latino and Spanish culture my entire life. I grew up in Spain. I attended Spanish schools. I know what it means to feel flamenco not as a spectacle but as a living, breathing thing — something inherited, argued over, reinvented, and fiercely protected by the communities that carry it.

What this festival offers Chicago is rare. It is not a greatest-hits tour. It is not a postcard version of Spain for tourists. It is the real conversation that flamenco artists, scholars, and cultural leaders are having right now, in 2026, about where this art form comes from, where it is going, and what it means for all of us — regardless of whether our family comes from Andalusia, Morocco, the Basque Country, Mexico, Puerto Rico, or Illinois.

Come on March 1. Come on March 6 or 7. Come on March 14 for a masterclass in guitar, or March 17 to hear the musical dialogue between Fez and Jerez close out the festival on a note that will stay with you for weeks.

You don’t need to know anything about flamenco to walk through that door. You just need to be willing to feel something. Willing to open your mind to new things and broaden horizons beyond where the sun rises.

Tickets: $20–$35 | All performances at Instituto Cervantes of Chicago, 31 West Ohio Street Full schedule and tickets: chicago.cervantes.es

The 24th Chicago Flamenco Festival is presented by the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago in collaboration with the International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago, and supported by the Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Tourist Office of Spain in Chicago, and Best Western River North Hotel.

With the hiring in January, 2022 of Mateo Mulcahy, former Director of Community Projects and Events at the Old Town School of Folk Music, as the ILCC’s Deputy Executive Director and music and dance curator, the Chicago Latino Music began to take shape.

He walked through the ILCC’s doors with guns a-blazing. Not only did he add the ILCC as a co-presenter to the many World Music Wednesdays concerts he had already scheduled at the Old Town School of Folk Music for the year before his departure. Under his leadership, the ILCC presented and co-presented concerts featuring such high profile artists as Alex Cuba (the musical guest of the ILCC’s fundraising dinner on November 14), Los Van Van, Chilean singer-songwriter Pascuala Ilabaca, and São Paulo musician and educator Paulo Padilha. 

The 2022 Chicago latino Music Series wrapped up the year with an equally eclectic lineup which included: a Zapotec folk dance troupe (Galguez Laxá) and a Zapotec rock group (Dizá) as part of the city of Chicago’s Indigenous Peoples Day celebrations; explores the influences of Middle Eastern music on Andalusia, Spain (The Andalusian Trail and flamenco guitarist Juan Carmona); presented 16-year-old guitar prodigy Juan Ausiàs Parejo from Valencia; and celebrated the tradition of las tunas (that dates back to 13th century Spain and Portugal when students went about singing and playing music out of the pure need to survive and pay their school fees) with La Tuna de Oro de Guanajuato. 

The following year, produced 33 music concerts in 18 venues, featuring some big names including: Olga Cerpa, one of the most important female voices in the Canary Islands, and her group Mestisay at the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center in the West side neighborhood of Hermosa; Juan de Marco González and his Afro-Cuban All Stars at Dominican University’s Lund Auditorium in the suburb of River Forest; Argentinian rocker Kevin Johansen and graphic designer and illustrator Liniers collaborating on a multimedia show at the Old Town School of Folk Music, the Afro-Peruvian folk-electronica group Novalima as part of that year’s Indigenous Peoples Day celebration at Chop Shop, a music venue/restaurant/butcher shop located in the Wicker Park neighborhood; and son jarocho legends Mono Blanco at Instituto Cervantes. 

When it comes to big names, however, the ILCC took a big gamble by joining forces with national events producer Backstage Productions to present the Chicago debut of samba superstar Zeca Pagondinho on June 14 at The Vic Theater. Born Jessé Gomes da Silva Filho in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Zeca started his career as a child in the 1970s and became a regular performer in samba gatherings, where he perfected a samba style known as Pagode. This new style triggered a samba revival in the 1980s, when Zeca became known as its true face. It was in the most important of these pagodes, the one that gathered the bloco carnavalesco Cacique de Ramos, that he became acquainted with another samba legend, Beth Carvalho, who became his madrinha, or protector. Does that name ring a bell? 

Last year, the ILCC launched the inaugural season of the Levitt VIBE Belmont Cragin Music Series at Riis Park, in the far northwest mostly Latino community of Belmont Cragin. Supported in part by the Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation, which partners with changemakers and nonprofits across the country to activate underused outdoor spaces through the power of free, live music, the series featured a mix of local, national, and international artists (some making their Chicago debut) from across the Latino diaspora for 10 consecutive weeks from mid-June to mid-August,. Artists included: the cumbia-punk-queer group Kumbia Queers; Montreal-based Haitian musician Wesli; singer-songwriter Sara Curruchich, the first indigenous Guatemalan singer and songwriter to sing in Kaqchikel; and Chicago’s ESSO Afrojam Funkbeat.

Speaking of Chicago debuts, the ILCC joined forces with the Instituto Cervantes to bring two of the most exciting, innovative flamenco women performers as part of Cervantes’ annual Flamenco Festival in March of last year: María José Llergo and Las Migas. Llergo had already been the subject of a New York Times article that helped elevate her profile in the United States while Las Migas were celebrating their 20th anniversary with a new lineup and a Latin Grammy award in 2022 for their album Libres in their pockets. Las Migas would return to Chicago for an encore performance on November 15 at the Old Town School of Folk Music to present their brand new album Rumberas, a tribute to rumba in all its forms.

Another highlight of what turned out to be a hectic 2024 series was a program of two concerts the ILCC titled The Galicia/Portugal Connection, an exploration, through music, of the cultural ties that bind Portugal with Galicia, in the Northwest region of Spain. The series featured the return to Chicago, after ten years, of acclaimed Galician bagpipe player Carlos Núñez. Considered the “7th member of The Chieftains” and proclaimed the “Jimi Hendrix of bagpipes” by Billboard. The concert, produced in partnership with the Irish American Heritage Center and with community partner Instituto Cervantes, was held at the Irish American Heritage Center on October 15.

Then, on November 2, fado sensation Carminho kicked off her US tour at City Winery, to support the release of the EP Carminho at Electrical Audio, which was co-produced and engineered by the late Steve Albini in his Chicago studio, Electrical Audio. Albini is known for his work with some of the finest musicians including Nirvana, Page & Plant, and The Pixies, among others. The EP includes a duet with the iconic Brazilian artist Caetano Veloso.

Lessons learned from last year’s Levitt VIBE Belmont Cragin Music Series were applied this year to the Levitt VIBE Chicago Music Series. Instead of mid-afternoon, most concerts would start after 6 pm, guaranteeing a larger audience. Through social media, the ILCC reached out to neighborhood organizations and businesses to get out of the word. The concerts were still held on Saturdays from mid-June to mid-August but instead of taking place in one park, the series expanded to four: Riis Park and, on the south and southwest side, La Villita Park, Gage Park and Rainbow Beach. For the first time in its history, the ILCC featured Regional Mexican Music as part of its programming through this summer series with performances from local stalwarts La Ley del Norte, Banda el Recuerdo and Grupo Love Secreto. This year’s series also featured the Chicago debut of Las Karamba, an all-female ensemble based in Barcelona that brings together six musicians from Venezuela, Cuba, Catalonia, France, and Argentina who infuse traditional styles like Son, Cha-Cha-Cha, Salsa, and Timba with rap and urban influences. 

Outside of the Levitt series, the ILCC was far more judicious and strategic when it came to the number of concerts produced this year, especially given this current administration’s attack on the arts Besides after-Levitt shows for Los Crema Paraíso and Dos Santos at Fitzgerald, a second show of Las Karamba at the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center and multiple appearances by Los Gaiteros de Pueblo Santo at outdoor events and indoor venues during the summer, the ILCC also presented two kickass jazz shows at Constellation: Paquito D’Rivera, Fareed Haque and multi-instrumentalist Howard Levy on May 14, followed on June 6 by Puerto Rican trumpetist Charlie Sepúlveda and his band The Turnaround with Eligio “Prodigio” Claudio in the Puerto Rican cuatro.

What will the Chicago Latino Music Series look like in 2026 and beyond? Well, that’s where you, our dear reader and supporter, come in:

As part of its fundraising campaign commemorating its 25th anniversary, the International Latino Cultural Center will be hosting a dinner celebration at CineCity Studios, 2429 West 14th St. on Friday, November 14, featuring a solo performance from Grammy® and Latin Grammy® Award winning artist Alex Cuba and the very best in Latino cuisine. Doors open at 6 p.m. For more information, visit the ILCC’s official fundraising dinner page. 

Unable to make the event? Never fear, you can still be part of our campaign with your individual contribution. Every single bit helps our mission to preserve in the city of Chicago a space for Pan-Latino arts in all its glorious disciplines. For more information on individual giving visit our individual giving page.

The International Latino Cultural Center of Chicago is a 501(3)(c) nonprofit cultural organization. All contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent allowed by the law.