XXV Wrocław Industrial Festival: SPKtR, The Legendary Pink Dots and unique collaborations mark the 25th edition

Twenty-five editions after a self-financed experiment in a bunker beneath Wrocław’s Wzgórze Partyzantów, Wrocław Industrial Festival reaches XXV. From 5 to 8 November 2026, Industrial Art brings another four days of industrial, experimental electronics, noise, ritual music, dark ambient and related forms to Stary Klasztor, Sala Gotycka and Sala Witrażowa at ul. Purkyniego 1, with Kino Nowe Horyzonty at Kazimierza Wielkiego 19a/21 also part of the festival infrastructure.

The anniversary line-up is appropriately difficult to reduce to one generation or one definition of industrial music. SPKtR / SPK, The Legendary Pink Dots, In The Nursery and Crash Course in Science bring histories reaching back to the formative years of post-industrial and experimental electronic culture. Around them sit artists from power electronics, ritual ambient, rhythm’n’noise, dark folk and contemporary noise, together with two collaborative performances created specifically around meetings between artists.

Good to know, because WIF has never functioned particularly well as a nostalgia festival. Its history is built as much on juxtaposition as preservation: originators of industrial culture appear alongside artists who inherited, distorted or ignored its vocabulary completely.

From a bunker to the 25th edition

The first Wrocław Industrial Festival took place in 2001, founded by Maciej Frett and Arkadiusz Bagiński, both associated with Job Karma. Frett later recalled that the inaugural festival was financed from their own savings and held in the former bunker beneath Wzgórze Partyzantów. The early editions subsequently moved into Sala Gotycka, at that point still an austere, unheated space hardly designed for concerts; organisers have recalled hauling stage equipment through a second-floor window.

The first edition brought together ten friendly projects. By 2025, Frett estimated that well over 500 acts had appeared in Wrocław across the festival’s history, ranging from musicians directly involved in establishing industrial music to successive generations of experimental artists.

WIF has retained its identity as something broader than a sequence of concerts. Film, audiovisual work, performance, exhibitions, publishing and encounters between artists have repeatedly entered the programme. The festival’s own anniversary reflections have described it as a meeting point for an international community rather than simply a showcase for a genre.

In 2026, that history arrives at edition number 25.

SPKtR / SPK: not simply reopening an archive

The most historically important name on the bill is SPKtR / SPK. SPK dates back to Sydney in 1978 and became one of the defining projects of early industrial and noise culture. The present incarnation is centred on Graeme Revell and Robert J. Revell, but its stated purpose is explicitly not to reproduce the old project unchanged. The new SPKtR material is conceived as a continuation of SPK’s experimental logic through contemporary technology and composition.

There is an especially strong Wrocław connection here: SPKtR’s own official site describes its November WIF appearance as the point at which the harder, noise-and-rhythm-oriented SPKtR XXX direction will culminate in a major live statement. Robert Revell will additionally perform his own solo material at the festival. His debut solo album, “Torn Remnants of Nobility”, appeared in 2025; he is also part of the current SPK line-up.

The Legendary Pink Dots

The Legendary Pink Dots bring another extraordinarily long history to Wrocław, although from a very different branch of the underground. The group formed around Edward Ka-Spel and Phil Knight in 1980, subsequently relocating its centre of gravity from Britain to the Netherlands. More than four decades later, the project remains active rather than functioning solely around its catalogue; the official discography continues through 2026.

Their psychedelic electronics, experimental song structures and surreal, frequently unstable relationship between pop form and abstraction make them particularly appropriate for WIF: recognisable enough to possess a long-established following, but historically resistant to fitting comfortably into a single scene.

In The Nursery: cinema becomes part of the festival

One of the most distinctive elements of XXV WIF will come from In The Nursery, the Sheffield project built around twin brothers Klive and Nigel Humberstone, active since 1981.

Rather than presenting a conventional concert, In The Nursery will perform their score to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc”. The music belongs to the duo’s long-running Optical Music Series, through which they have composed new scores for classic silent cinema; the Joan of Arc score itself was released in 2008. Their official site describes the work as following both the extraordinary intimacy of Renée Falconetti’s close-up performance and the escalating violence of the film’s final sequences.

Maciej Frett has specifically identified this as the special cinema concert opening the festival.

Crash Course in Science

Philadelphia’s Crash Course in Science provide another direct connection to the beginnings of electronic post-punk. Formed in 1979 by art-school students Dale Feliciello, Mallory Yago and Michael Zodorozny, the group developed a deliberately raw, percussive electronic sound whose influence subsequently travelled into both industrial music and techno.

Placed alongside SPKtR, they make the historical component of XXV WIF more interesting than a simple procession of “industrial pioneers”: these artists arrived at machine music from distinctly different cultural and musical positions.

Two collaborations made for the moment

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the programme is found in its collaborative projects.

N.U. Unruh & Meta Meat will bring together the co-founder and percussionist of Einstürzende Neubauten with French duo Meta Meat, itself built around Phil Von of Von Magnet and Hugues Villette of 2Kilos &More. Meta Meat describe their work as “tribal-industrial”, combining acoustic percussion, physical performance and electronic structures.

This is not simply two existing sets placed next to one another. Meta Meat have confirmed that the Wrocław performance with Unruh is a completely new work created specifically for the festival, while Frett has described it as the collaboration’s first public appearance.

The second collaboration, Flint Glass & Ah Cama-Sotz, joins Paris-based Gwenn Trémorin and Antwerp-based Herman Klapholz. Their latest album, “The Shadow of the Torturer”, was released by ant-zen in April 2026 and draws on Gene Wolfe’s “The Book of the New Sun”, combining cinematic electronics, ritual elements and darker rhythmic structures.

Wrocław is particularly important for this project too: Klapholz has confirmed that WIF will host their first concert together.

From rhythmic force to ritual space

The rest of the international programme moves deliberately across very different understandings of industrial music.

Belgium’s Imminent, the project of Olivier Moreau, sits at the harder intersection of sophisticated rhythmic programming, industrial electronics and technoid force. His recent “Mythrality” material continues the combination of intricate rhythm, distorted sequences and colder atmospheric construction that has defined the project.

German project Apoptose moves in almost the opposite direction. Active since around the turn of the millennium, its work has long centred on dark ambient, ritual structures and field recording. The 2025 album “Die Zeit und die Dunkelheit” returned explicitly to forests, natural recordings, solitude and slowly unfolding electronic environments.

American Control, Thomas Garrison’s long-running project, occupies the territory between power electronics and death industrial, using aggression less as uninterrupted assault than as part of a carefully constructed atmospheric architecture.

Finland’s Halo Manash, active since 2003, takes ritual even further. Its recordings draw heavily on drone, elemental field recordings and ceremonial approaches to sound; some releases originate directly from private ritual performances recorded in northern Finland.

Belgian Empusae brings another organic and electro-acoustic interpretation of post-industrial music, moving through ritual, ambient, doom and soundtrack-like composition.

And Blood and Sun, formed by Luke Tromiczak in 2011, takes the programme into dark folk: voice, strings, percussion and a musical language concerned with myth, spiritual experience and human struggle rather than electronics alone.

Robert Revell, PFFFT…! and Espectra Negra

Alongside his work in the current SPKtR configuration, Robert Revell will perform separately. His 2025 solo album “Torn Remnants of Nobility” brings together his background across noise, metal, musique concrète and experimental composition.

Berlin’s PFFFT…! reaches almost as far back historically as some of the festival’s best-known guests. The project describes itself as an autonomous, constantly mutating body whose first actions date to 1984; its 2025 “Bunkerbeschallung” sits between industrial electronics, noise and what the project itself tags as “miner wave”.

Espectra Negra, the Berlin-based project of Mexican artist Verónica Mota, works with ritualistic noise, industrial experimentation and politically charged sound. Her album “Empire” appeared through HANDS and includes contributions from artists including N.U. Unruh.

The Polish contingent

The Polish side of XXV WIF is equally broad.

Opowieść construct performances around noise, mechanical sound, film projection and live visual actions. Their album “Podróż” develops a language strongly associated with movement and train-like mechanical rhythm, while their concerts have been described by the project itself as forms of musical ritual combined with visual performance.

Rites of Fall & Fugavit continue their joint audiovisual project. Rites of Fall, created by Bartek Kuszewski, grew from experiments placing religious and folk material into new contexts; with visual artist Fugavit, the collaborative performance has previously appeared under the title “Into the Well”.

Warsaw duo Mazut, Paweł Starzec and Michał Turowski, have spent roughly a decade moving between acid, industrial, noise and experimental dance music. Their 2025 “Dirt Collector” deliberately slowed the project down toward gritty post-industrial ambience, while the 2026 “Live Collector” documents performances from Wrocław and Kraków.

Finally, Gdańsk-based Dystopian Control brings the uncompromising end of the Polish noise underground. The project’s first full-length album, “Nothing Changes the Narrative”, arrived through Zoharum in May 2026, using harsh noise as a foundation while pushing beyond straightforward genre formalism.

After the concerts

The announced DJ programme is equally substantial: Ancient Methods, Philipp Strobel, Blackdeath 1334 / Francesca, Eric and Paradroid are all currently confirmed.

The official festival page has not yet published a complete day-by-day running order, so individual performance times should not be assumed at this stage.

Who plays when

Thursday, 5 November 2026 – Kino Nowe Horyzonty

• In The Nursery – live score for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc”
• Afterparty: DJ Eric

Friday, 6 November 2026 – Gothic Hall

• The Legendary Pink Dots
• Crash Course in Science
• Halo Manash
• Control
• Blood and Sun
• Robert Revell
• PFFFT…!
• Afterparty: Ancient Methods & Philipp Strobel

Saturday, 7 November 2026 – Gothic Hall

• SPKtR / SPK
• N.U. Unruh & Meta Meat
• Flint Glass & Ah Cama-Sotz
• Imminent
• Apoptose
• Empusae
• Espectra Negra
• Afterparty: DJ Blackdeath 1334

Sunday, 8 November 2026 – Sala Witrażowa

• Opowieść
• Rites of Fall & Fugavit
• Mazut
• Dystopian Control
• Afterparty: DJ Paradroid

Practical information

• XXV Wrocław Industrial Festival 5-8 November 2026
• Main venue: Sala Gotycka / Sala Witrażowa / Stary Klasztor ul. Purkyniego 1, Wrocław
• Cinema venue: Kino Nowe Horyzonty Kazimierza Wielkiego 19a/21, Wrocław

The official Polish ticket page currently marks the four-day pass allocation as sold out. Single-day tickets are available, with the current early-bird period running until 31 August: Thursday 85 PLN, Friday 250 PLN, Saturday 250 PLN and Sunday 85 PLN.

Twenty-five editions in, perhaps the most convincing thing about WIF is that its anniversary programme does not attempt to summarise industrial music into a fixed historical style. SPK and Crash Course in Science connect directly with its formative period; In The Nursery bring cinema into the equation; Unruh with Meta Meat and Flint Glass with Ah Cama-Sotz create performances whose history is only beginning; while projects such as Dystopian Control demonstrate that noise and industrial practice are still producing new languages locally.

For a festival born in a bunker in 2001, that seems a more appropriate way to mark twenty-five editions than simply looking backwards.