What should Brussels residents expect from the queer choir festival Various Voices?

host city and centre of the festival impact

The City of Brussels is the largest municipality and historical centre of the Brussels-Capital Region, as well as the capital of the French Community of Belgium, the Flemish Region, and Belgium. The City of Brussels is also the administrative centre of the European Union, as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions in its European Quarter.

European queer choir festival running from 24 to 28 June 2026

festival concert venue and named stakeholder

The Centre for Fine Arts is a multi-purpose cultural venue in the Royal Quarter of Brussels, Belgium. It is often referred to as BOZAR in French or by its initials PSK in Dutch. This multidisciplinary space was designed to bring together a wide range of artistic events, whether music, visual arts, theatre, dance, literature, cinema or architecture.

festival concert venue

La Madeleine is een gemeente in het Franse Noorderdepartement in de regio Hauts-de-France en maakt deel uit van het arrondissement Rijsel. De gemeente telde 21.790 inwoners op 1 januari 2023.

festival concert venue

The Cirque Royal (French) or Koninklijk Circus (Dutch), meaning "Royal Circus", is an entertainment venue in Brussels, Belgium. Conceived by the architect Wilhelm Kuhnen in 1953, the building has a circular appearance, but in fact is constructed as a regular polygon. It can hold 2,000 spectators, and nowadays is primarily used for live music shows.

festival concert venue and site of participatory choir on 27 June

The ING Arena is an indoor arena in Brussels, Belgium, that is part of the Brussels Expo complex. Located on the Heysel/Heizel Plateau in Laeken, it was originally built as the twelfth hall of the complex in 1989, but was extensively redesigned and reopened in its current form in September 2013. It now hosts major events, such as concerts, conferences, entertainment shows and major sporting events for a maximum capacity of 15,000 people.

festival venue and guided-tour location

The Royal Palace of Amsterdam in Amsterdam is one of three palaces in the Netherlands which are at the disposal of the monarch by Act of Parliament. It is situated on the west side of Dam Square in the centre of Amsterdam, opposite the War Memorial and next to the Nieuwe Kerk. During the Batavian Republic, the public floors of the building became the first Amsterdam museum under Louis Bonaparte.

place around which street concerts are expected

The Mont des Arts or Kunstberg, meaning "Hill/Mount of the Arts", is an urban complex and historic site in central Brussels, Belgium, including the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), the National Archives of Belgium, Square – Brussels Convention Centre, and a public garden designed by the landscape architect René Pechère.

place around which street concerts are expected

Sainte-Catherine is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais department in the Hauts-de-France region of France 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the centre of Arras.

European federation of LGBTQ+ choirs overseeing Various Voices

Legato is an Israeli artificial intelligence software company that develops an AI-powered platform that enables business users to build applications, workflows, and automations directly within enterprise software platforms using natural language.

named Belgian and Brussels stakeholder

The City of Brussels is the largest municipality and historical centre of the Brussels-Capital Region, as well as the capital of the French Community of Belgium, the Flemish Region, and Belgium. The City of Brussels is also the administrative centre of the European Union, as it hosts a number of principal EU institutions in its European Quarter.

named Belgian and Brussels stakeholder

Het RainbowHouse Brussels voorheen Regenbooghuis is de koepel van Nederlandstalige en Franstalige holebi-verenigingen van de Brusselse regio. Het RainbowHouse is gevestigd aan de Kolenmarkt 42 in Brussel.

named Belgian and Brussels stakeholder

The French Community Commission is the local representative of the French-speaking authorities in the Brussels-Capital Region, one of the three regions of Belgium.

named Belgian and Brussels stakeholder

The Flemish Community is one of the three institutional communities of Belgium, established by the Belgian constitution and having legal responsibilities only within the precise geographical boundaries of the Dutch-language area and of the bilingual area of Brussels-Capital.

named Belgian and Brussels stakeholder

In Belgium, the French Community refers to one of the three constituent constitutional linguistic communities. Since 2011, the French minority has used the name Wallonia-Brussels Federation, which is controversial because its name in the Belgian Constitution has not changed and because it is seen as a political statement. The name "French Community" refers to the French language and not to France.

city where Various Voices began in 1985

Cologne is the fourth-most populous city of Germany and the largest city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and over 3.1 million people in the Cologne Bonn urban region. Cologne is also part of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, the second biggest metropolitan region by GDP in the European Union.

previous edition location

Bologna is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy, with 390,734 inhabitants from 150 different nationalities. Its metropolitan province is home to more than 1 million people as of 2025. Bologna is most famous for being the home to the oldest university in continuous operation, the University of Bologna, established in AD 1088.

previous edition location

Dublin is the capital and largest city of Ireland. Situated on Dublin Bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, and is bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, part of the Wicklow Mountains range.

previous edition location

Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is not a state of its own, and it ranks as the 11th-largest city in the European Union (EU).

candidate city in the 2021 choice

Barcelona is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain after Madrid.

central Brussels area of strong local impact

Brussels Park is the largest urban public park in central Brussels, Belgium. The park was formerly known and is still sometimes colloquially referred to as the Royal Park. It was the city's first public park, being originally laid out between 1776 and 1783 in a neoclassical style by the French architect Gilles-Barnabé Guimard and the Austrian landscape architect Joachim Zinner, as part of an urban project including the Place Royale/Koningsplein.

central Brussels area of strong local impact

Bourseul is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department of Brittany in north-western France.