The festival motto transcends genre boundaries: “TRANSmission”
Digital technologies shape our everyday lives – and have long since influenced art, theater and society. NEXT LEVEL, the nationally unique festival for digital gaming culture, will enter a new round in 2025. Over four days in November (13-16 November 2025), contemporary digital culture will be exhibited, questioned and celebrated in Dortmund with an extensive program of games, media art and innovative performances. Under the motto “TRANSmission,” the boundaries between art genres, realities and technologies will blur.
Here, “transmission” means more than just the sending of information—it stands for cultural transfer, artistic translation and the constant change of digital aesthetics. Visitors will experience a dynamic field of tension between personal experience and collective encounter: between digital theater formats, experimental games and immersive works of art, a space will be created that invites participation.
Arthouse meets attitude
The Games Parcours offers over 20 arthouse games that not only provide playful approaches to socially relevant topics, but also feature impressive design, inventive gameplay and compelling storytelling. Here, gaming becomes a space for reflection, a playground, a time machine to the future. The games on display here range from titles that have not even been released yet to the latest releases and community favorites.
The Academy for Theater and Digitality is opening its doors for the festival and presenting technology-driven plays, performances and VR experiences, as well as presentations by international partner institutions. One example: Department of Interfaced Dimensions (D.I.D) is an interactive mixed reality experience that intertwines digital game mechanics with physical props and virtual worlds. The work invites viewers to enter alternative realities and constantly switch roles: sometimes observer, sometimes manipulator, sometimes co-player. This creates a web of surveillance, interaction and cooperation that raises questions about identity, agency and control. Behind D.I.D. is not only an artist collective, but also an important international partnership with the V2_Lab for UnstableMedia in Rotterdam. The festival opens with Waluigi's Purgatory by the group DMSTFCTN, a live performance that admirably combines gaming, acting, music and interaction.
A VR installation that lets you experience sight through hearing
SONA shows how virtual reality can enrich us with extraordinary and empathetic experiences. It's a VR installation that lets you experience sight through hearing: We enter a darkened room measuring ten by ten meters, where there are no visual cues to help us find our way around. Instead, motion capture systems and sensory shoes record every movement and translate it into sound. Footsteps crunch in the snow, rustle through the forest, or glide over sand; walls can be felt through acoustic reflections; will-o'-the-wisps beckon with voices. The result is an acoustic labyrinth in which we learn to see with our ears.
The Künstlerhaus Dortmund is transformed into a laboratory for digital arts. As part of the festival, a media art exhibition is opening here that has emerged directly from the influences of gaming and live action role-playing. The works on display invite visitors to interact at their own pace, sometimes slowly, sometimes exuberantly. The diversity of digital arts presented here is evident in the juxtaposition of artists such as Mélanie Courtinat, Robin Baumgarten, Dorijan Šiško and Nathalie Lawhead.
Following last year's successful edition, the program is being expanded and extended further into the urban space. The first program highlights have already been published at www.next-level.digital, with more to follow by the beginning of October 2025. You can find the latest news and publications on the topic at and on the festival's social media channels (@nextlevel_festival).
This year's festival is being organized by Theater Dortmund with its Academy for Theater and Digitality in cooperation with numerous locations in the Dortmund city area. In addition to the Academy for Theater and Digitality, the venues for 2025 are: Schauspiel Dortmund, Koproduktionslabor, Dortmunder U (with uzwei, Kino im U and kiU), Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Nansen and Digitale Werkbank.
NEXT LEVEL Festival 2025
Opening November 13, 2025
November 13 to 16, 2025
Venues: Academy for Theater and Digitality, Schauspiel Dortmund, Koproduktionslabor, uzwei, Dortmunder U, Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Nansen, Digitale Werkbank
Festival theme: “Transmission”
Further information at: www.next-level.digital
If you have any questions about the program, dates or other contact requests, please contact:
Marketing: Milena Kidess (mk@next-level.digital)
Curation: Viv Lennert (vl@next-level.digital) and Lex Rütten (lr@next-level.digital).
The project is funded by Neue Künste Ruhr, a program of the Ministerium für Kunst und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, NRW KULTURsekretariat and Stadt Dortmund.