Location: AmberExpo, Gdańsk
Date: 13/11/2026 and 14/11/2026
Organizer: Inside SeasideThe first wave of Inside Seaside 2026 was already a statement. Jessie Ware, Editors, Hermanos Gutiérrez announced, three completely different worlds sharing the same floor plan. If that opening salvo told you what kind of festival this is, the latest wave of names confirms it beyond any reasonable doubt: this is a programme that refuses the comfort of genre, and it’s building something genuinely strange and genuinely great.
Fourteen new acts. Three stages. Two nights. Here’s what you’re in for.
Start with Variété, because you have to. The band from Bydgoszcz who walked onto the Jarocin stage in 1984 and changed the shape of what Polish music could sound like. Cold wave was the foundation, but they never stayed in one room, evolving through free jazz, trip-hop and nu-jazz across four decades without ever losing the thread. Grzegorz Kaźmierczak’s lyrics have always been the anchor: minimal, precise, and somehow enormous in their emotional reach.
Closing UPstage on the same night is Marysia Osu, a Polish-British harpist and producer who has been quietly making noise across the London jazz scene. Her debut album “Harp, Beats and Dreams” sits at a genuinely unusual intersection: classical training, ambient texture, modern electronics.
Opening the Miasto Gdańsk Stage on 13 November is Kathia, a producer, composer and multi-instrumentalist whose music lives somewhere between indie pop, folk and electronics. Her album “Nie chcę być tu sama” has been gathering the kind of quiet critical approval that tends to precede something louder. And then Łąki Łan take over, bringing what might be the most uncontainable live show in Poland, full of Slavic psychedelia and funk, outrageous costumes and genuinely unstoppable energy. Material from “DżDż” lands on the Miasto Gdańsk Stage like a small disaster, in the best possible sense. And to close the Saturday night on that same stage, Mela Koteluk, a Fryderyk winner, with her latest album “Harmonia” and a voice that could make a shipping container feel intimate.
The ERGO Hestia Theatre Stage on 13 November belongs to Dobrawa Czocher and the world she’s built out of cello, synthesisers and layered vocals. Her album “State of Matter” was inspired by the Baltic coastline.
AcidSitter arrive at UPstage on 13 November from the psychedelic underground, a Polish-Japanese collective whose second album “Escape From Egoland” was recorded entirely on tape by Maciej Cieślak of Ścianka. The result is exactly what that combination promises: raw, pulsating, and quietly unsettling in the way that only the best psychedelic music manages. “Doomscroller’s Blues” is the name of a track on that record. It is also an accurate description of the mental state this music addresses.
Also on 13 November, Hańba! and Hiob Dylan bring what is one of the stranger and more compelling collaborative projects in Polish music, a collision of punk energy and the aesthetics of 1930s street bands. Their album “Za kim idziesz” is rooted in interwar poetry and the life of provincial Poland, delivered through what the promotional material correctly identifies as backyard instrumentation and a countrypunk spirit. It is theatrical, uncompromising and completely original.
Ciśnienie are from Katowice, and they play instrumental post-rock with jazz and ambient in the mix. Their latest album “Angry Noises” is the kind of title that tells you exactly what kind of band this is. Expect cinematic tension, improvisation and walls of sound that arrive from nowhere and take the room with them.
Friday 14 November opens at UPstage with SNAKES SNAKES SNAKES, a quartet from Łódź who channel post-punk and garage rock into something genuinely hypnotic. Their debut album “Syk” moves between dance-rock, psychedelia and furious punk without breaking a sweat. Singer Żaneta Zawierta‘s voice is an instrument in itself, and “Fck It” opens like a crowd-killer should: immediately, without warning. Following them on UPstage is Jakub Skorupa, whose songs draw directly from lived experience, from miners’ gatherings to corporate London, and land somewhere between indie rock and raw storytelling. Winner of the Grzegorz Ciechowski Award and creator of “Zeszyt drugi“, he is one of the most genuinely honest Polish songwriters working right now. And Spoiwo, winners of the Sea You Music Showcase Audience Award, will perform on 14 November, bringing post-rock and fragile electronics that feel entirely at home in an autumn Gdańsk.
At the Miasto Gdańsk Stage on Saturday, WaluśKraksaKryzys arrives with Fryderyk-winning material from “+ piekło + niebo +” alongside the latest release “Tematy i Wariacje“, and Krzysztof Zalewski closes the stage with the kind of rock intensity and pop ambition that puts an end to the argument about whether Polish artists can compete at this level.
Wiraszko, the solo project of Michał Wiraszko, frontman of Muchy, opens the ERGO Hestia Theatre Stage on 14 November with minimalist alternative music and “Tak młodo się nie spotkamy“, an album that Radio 357 named their Album of the Year. This is quiet music with an enormous emotional footprint. And closing that stage is Dobrawa Czocher, who deserves every bit of the word “world-class.”
And then there’s Maruja. Manchester’s most important band right now, and one of the most exciting acts anywhere in Europe, arrive on 14 November to take over the ERGO Hestia Theatre Stage. Their debut album “Pain to Power” came out in September 2025 and landed like a grenade in a library: post-punk, jazz, noise rock and genuine political rage, all held together by saxophone and a belief that music can still mean something. Their live show is already the stuff of word-of-mouth legend. The ERGO Hestia Theatre Stage is the right room for them: contained enough to feel confrontational, big enough to hold what they bring.
