We are pleased to announce more of CTM 2025’s programming, which unfolds a kaleidoscope of voices amidst our chaotic and shifting realities, mirroring and adding to the confusing polyphony of our current moment. For this edition, we’ll be jumping into Alte Münze for the first time as we fully take over the three floors of its labyrinthine basement with concerts and high-octane sounds.

Seeing the Berlin government’s chaotic budget planning and severe cuts to the city’s overall funding including culture, the fact that a festival like CTM 2025 can take place at all at this very moment in time is anything but a given. We are resolutely focused on creating an inviting and enrichening event more than ever despite the bumpy last few months, while standing in solidarity with all our colleagues in Berlin's cultural landscape who are currently facing significant to existential fights against a policy that does not sufficiently recognise the essential importance and fragility of diverse cultural initiatives for inclusive democracy, social cohesion, and the prosperity of the city of Berlin.

Newly confirmed artists and projects are:

• Adela Mede with Marta Forsberg & Nindya Nareswari (INT) – World Premiere
• aya x MFO (UK/DE)
• Caterina de Nicola (IT/CH)
• Deize Tigrona (BR)
• Donna Haringwey (PT)
• Elischa Heller (CH)
• Emme (US/DE) pres. »Heaven Help Me«
• femtanyl (CA)
• Gibrana Cervantes x Colombian Drone Mafia (MX/CO) – World Premiere
• Hassan Abou Alam (EG)
• Jamira Estrada (CH)
• Joginda (NL)
• Kasimyn (ID)
• LazerGazer (NL)
• Lénok with Grinderteeth & Synthati (INT) – World Premiere
• LnHD (MM/KH)
• Loto Retina (FR) – Debut Album Premiere
• Minna-No Kimochi (JP)
• Oldyungmayn b2b Van Boom (PS-EG/KW)
• Plus44Kaligula (UK)
• Rattlesnakke (AR) Live
• rEmPiT g0dDe$$ (MY)
• Saadet Türköz & Eldar Tagi (INT)
• Sealionwoman (UK)
• Takkak Takkak feat Brandon Tay (INT) – World Premiere
• Tati au Miel (CA)
• Theo Alexander with Omar El Sadek feat Otteswed & Klara Pudlakova (INT)
• Volition Immanent (BE)
• Xafya (CH) Live

transmediale x CTM Synthesis concerts with:

• Hulubalang feat Brandon Tay (ID/SG) – »Bunyi Bunyi Tumbal«
• Portrait XO (US/DE) — »The Cost of Connection«
• Rick Farin & Actual Objects (US) – »Chaos Play Live«

MONOM x CTM present »MONOM Archive« Listening Sessions with:

• Maria W Horn (SE) – »Lo! The Dim Shadows of the Night«
• MONOM team (INT) – »The Elements: Aether, Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind«
• Thomas Ankersmit (NL/DE)
• Venus Ex Machina (UK) – »Marshlands«
• Walter Sallinen (FI) – »Matrix of Modernity«

A2A workshops will be led by:

• Abdullah Miniawy (EG/FR)
• Alan Courtis (AR)
• Agustín Genoud (AR)
• DJ Love (PH)
• Grinderteeth (SE/DE)
• Olivia Oyama (DE)
• Portrait XO & Noah Pred (INT)
• Saadet Türköz (TR/CH)

»Close The App, Make The Ting« lecture by Elijah (UK)

Speakers taking part in the 2025 Research Networking Day hosted by Anita Jóri (HU/DE), Jovana Maksić (RS/CH), Miriam Ackermann (DE), and Thomas Pasdzierny (DE) with talks by:

• Cynthia Nkiruka Anyadi (Royal Holloway University London, UK)
• Dragoș Rusu (University of Bucharest, RO)
• Jiawen Uffline (University of the Arts Bremen/Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE)
• Lucy Havelock (Goldsmiths University London, UK)
• Matwe Kascak (Masaryk University Brno, CZ)
• Nilufer Musaeva (Hochschule für Künste Bremen, DE)
• Sri Rama Murthy (independent artist Hyderabad, IN)
• Olia Sosnovskaya (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, AT)
• Yann Martins (HGK Critical Media Lab Basel, CH)

Stay tuned as much more programming will be revealed in January.

Read the full programme announcement

A range of CTM Festival passes and tickets to most events are on sale now in limited quantities. You can choose from CTM Festival passes which grant access to most CTM events, Weekend Passes for each respective CTM Festival weekend, or Connect Passes for CTM+transmediale.

Buy CTM 2025 passes and tickets
 

Sister festivals transmediale and CTM come together this year for two shared performance programmes at the Miriam Makeba Auditorium of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Incorporating the latest developments in generative AI, A/V storytelling, and data sonification to explore a conflictual past, present and future, the works offer personal, critical, and speculative reflections on how AI is facilitating new understanding and intimacies with our histories, with the world around us, and with one another?

»The Cost of Connection« is a live audiovisual performance by Portrait XO that explores global challenges using AI and data sonification.

In the performance of Rick Farin & Actual Objects AV-performance »Chaos Play Live,« original music by Rick Farin is »performed« by a seemingly endless cast of digital characters, both CGI & AI generated, that take audiences into nether zones where human expression and machine artefact meld insolubly into each other to herald a new chaotic era in which fabrication and reality will be inseparable.

Hulubalang’s work »Bunyi Bunyi Tumbal« mourns the marginalised figures of history, echoing the shattered innocence of disrupted rituals and the pain of unacknowledged sacrifices. The solo venture of Kasimyn—producer, DJ, label owner, and one-half of Gabber Modus Operandi—features visuals by Singaporean artist Brandon Tay, who applied machine learning techniques to expand on visual artefacts found in various archives, blurring the line between the corporeal and incorporeal.

The programme will be rounded out by a last act to be announced soon.

More information & tickets

On Sunday 26 January at silent green Betonhalle, Elijah—DJ, writer, lecturer and co-founder of the influential grime label Butterz—will present ideas from his »Yellow Squares« project, which investigated the state of creating for DIY artists from 2021–2024 across hundreds of short notes on Instagram. The talk brings the project to a conclusion showing the process behind the writing, visual installations, album, book and lecture series Elijah has taken around the world.

Tickets 5€

A2A Transmission is a series of workshops for artists by artists, with an aim to help sound and AV practitioners expand their skill sets and practices while also connecting to fellow artists. The workshops will be held at Morphine Raum with Agustín Genoud, Saadet Türköz, Olivia Oyama, Grinderteeth, Portrait XO and Noah Pred, DJ Love, Abdullah Miniawy, and Alan Courtis.

More information & tickets

The Research Networking Day will assemble nine students, scholars, and artists/researchers from a variety of fields who will present research addressing one of several themes reflected within three different labs at CTM 2025—affection as explored in the CTM 2025 Radio Lab, engaging with traditional sound forms and ideas as per the Resynthesising the Traditional artistic lab, and playing with anarchic qualities of AI as explored in the Wilding AI lab. The selected candidates will give short presentations within different thematic modules, with discussions after each presentation and at the end of each session. Presentations will be  in English, and entrance to the event is free.

This year’s speakers were selected from over 200 applicants to our open call. We look forward to hearing from: Lucy Havelock, jiawen uffline, Matwe Kascak, Nilufer Musaeva, Sri Rama Murthy,
Cynthia Nkiruka Anyadi, Dragoș Rusu, Yann Martins, and Olia Sosnovskaya.

This RND edition will take place in collaboration with the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), Freie Universität Berlin, and the Berlin-based network and project space Trust.

Detailed RND programme

Funded by
Senate Department of Culture and Social Cohesion | The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media | Goethe-Institut | German Federal Foreign Office | Creative Europe Programme of the European Union | Pro Helvetia | Embassy of the Netherlands

In Cooperation with
transmediale | Alte Münze | Berghain | Morphine Raum | MONOM | OXI | radialsystem | RSO.Berlin | silent green | Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

Programme Partners
4D SOUND | Berlin Technical University | Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) | Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD | Dancecult | Deutschlandfunk Kultur Hörspiel / Klangkunst |Freie Universität Berlin | ORF Ö1 Kunstradio | SHAPE+ | Somerset House Studios | tekhné | Trust

Media Partners
Deutschlandfunk Kultur Hörspiel / Klangkunst | Refuge Worldwide | The Wire 

Supported by
d&b Audiotechnik | SAE | Berliner Pilsner | Tanqueray | Don Julio