This year’s program of the Onassis Foundation Stegi maps family bonds and presents faces and stories that explore relationships and the desire to belong.
By Chrysa Kakiori
This year, Stegi celebrates 15 years and inaugurates the season with a program around a theme that concerns everyone: family. Not only as a blood tie, but as a community, as memory that shapes us, as a desire to belong. From October 2025 to June 2026, the program unfolds a multifaceted family portrait: works about closeness and distance, about loves that endure and losses that persist, about memories—emotional, cultural, traumatic—that follow us.
This year Stegi also launches a new pre-sale model in three distinct phases. Phase A opened on Saturday, September 20, with Early Tickets in limited seats for selected performances on the Main Stage. Let’s see the highlights of Phase A.
you are invited | Juergen Teller — October 19–December 30, Onassis Ready
The emblematic photographer Juergen Teller inaugurates the new space of the Onassis Foundation in the heart of Agios Ioannis Rentis, with the most extensive solo exhibition of his in Greece. From Iggy Pop to Pope Francis, from Kate Moss to his personal family mythology, Teller sets up an honest, often humorous, always revealing look at the body, fame, and intimacy. A retrospective in a “family of images” spanning three decades.
Le Passé | Julien Gosselin — October 16–19, Main Stage
Julien Gosselin, a director identified with the adaptation of literature to theater, sets up a theatrical universe of multiple layers, with live cinematography, narrative alternations, and a cast in constant over-intensity. Le Passé resembles a postmodern requiem for the 20th century, exploring how the past remains alive and shapes loves, ideologies, and our very language. The work records extremes that occur “in the name of love”—from obsession and illusion to the political exploitation of emotion—without wagging a finger. A milestone work from the artistic director of the Odéon Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris, bringing to Athens a rare combination of literary density and theatrical adrenaline. After the performance on Sunday, October 19, 2025, a discussion with Julien Gosselin will follow on the Main Stage of Stegi.
Oedipus | Robert Icke — November 20–December 28, Main Stage
The award-winning adaptation by Robert Icke arrives at Stegi with a Greek cast: Nikos Kouris, Karyofyllia Karabeti, etc. Oedipus transforms into an electrified political-family thriller, where secrets, twists, and the relentless logic of power seal a cycle that closes definitively. From the West End to Athens, the internationally recognized British director and playwright signs a high-intensity performance.
The Dance of Lovers | Tiago Rodrigues — December 4–January 18, Small Stage
The sold-out of last year returns. Rodrigues—with Argyro Chioti in the Greek version—signs a hymn to love that breathes with the precision of a good poem. Nikos Karathanos and Marissa Triantafyllidou deliver a duo lesson in trust, humor, and tenderness.
STEGI.RADIO Takeover 2026 — February 13–14, Stegi
Two nights that transform the building into a large, inclusive club. From the techno legend of Detroit Carl Craig and Moodymann to the subversive MC Yallah and Omar Souleyman, Stegi fills with beats that call the “family” of the dancefloor to a shared rhythm.
A Voracious Shadow | Mariano Pensotti — March 5–April 26, Small Stage
Fathers and sons, mountaineering and falls, truth and fiction. The Argentine Mariano Pensotti sets up a stage essay on memory and fatherhood, where reality dialogues with a “cinematized” version of it. Icebergs and ghosts, revelations and comic twists follow one another, while Giannis Niarnos and Kostas Nikouli deliver a constant play of roles and transformation—mountaineers, actors, children—under the “shadow” of a mountain and a father, in their first theatrical collaboration.
Photographs | Giorgos Lanthimos — March 7–May 17
The first photography exhibition of the internationally acclaimed director, producer, and screenwriter ever presented in Greece. The exhibition includes three series of photographs born within the spaces of his films, taken over the last five years on locations such as New Orleans and Atlanta, but also in a studio in Budapest, where entire cities were set up as film sets. Simultaneously, a personal ongoing series of photographs that Lanthimos is creating in Greece is presented for the first time worldwide.
The Blues of the Little Prince | Giannis Aggelakas — March 12–April 26, Main Stage
The leading creator of the Greek rock scene Giannis Aggelakas returns with an electrified ode to The Little Prince, the famous 1943 book. Like a blues meeting Pavlos Sidiropoulos, a performance at the boundary of music and theater, directed by the award-winning creator of Magnetic Fields, Giorgos Gousis. Nostalgia without romantic illusions, adulthood without moralizing.
Dr. Gabor Maté — May 23, Main Stage
Dr. Gabor Maté at Stegi, in conversation with Afroditi Panagiotakou, illuminates psychological trauma, chronic stress, and parenthood. How does stress become the body? How do childhood wounds heal? Physician and author of international bestsellers, Maté shares decades of experience on addictions, ADHD, and the “wrong values” we have normalized. The Main Stage becomes a field of care and honesty, with tools from his Compassionate Inquiry method, helping reconnect mind, body, and emotion in practice.
The Wisdom of Trauma | Zaya & Maurizio Benazzo — Documentary Screening
The pioneering film with Gabor Maté highlights the wisdom of trauma and the path to healing. A work that essentially complements the public discussion of the same day.
The Distance | Tiago Rodrigues — May 7–10, Main Stage
Tiago Rodrigues, a major storyteller of contemporary theater, in his latest work delivers a love letter to the family. Year 2077: father on Earth, daughter on Mars. A work-letter that traverses planets, with the stage rotating like the orbits of their lives. The performance that moved Avignon reaches Stegi as an ode to the family-sign amid the noise: two lives far apart, yet closer than ever.
By Heart | Tiago Rodrigues — May 11–12, Small Stage
Ten spectators, ten chairs, a Shakespeare sonnet. In a time when we remember codes, Rodrigues asks us to learn something “by heart” in order to keep it “inside.” A lesson in collective memory, with the director himself on stage.
First-Person Knowledge with Two Masterclasses
Masterclass with Julien Gosselin — October 18, Small Stage
How one of the most important European directors works: from staging Le Passé to the relationship between stage, camera, and text. For professionals and those who love theater beyond the public square.
Workshop with Dr. Gabor Maté — May 23, Small Stage
Based on the book The Myth of Normal, an experiential workshop on trauma, illness, and healing in toxic cultures. A practical counterpoint to his public talk.
This year, Stegi does not simply offer a repertoire; it composes a living experience where the words “home,” “bond,” and “memory” acquire stage, musical, and visual entity. It is a season that invites us to redefine the family we create every time we share a hall, a gaze, a story. At Stegi, this seems like the most generous invitation.
