The Royal Ballet brings together the talented young dancers of today with its Next Generation Festival. Hosted in the Linbury Theatre, this year’s festival will include performances from some of the world’s best junior companies and dance schools. The line up comprises Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera, The Royal Ballet School, School of American Ballet, Chance to Dance, Rambert School / Junior Company of The Polish National Ballet, ZooNation Youth Company, English National Ballet School / John Cranko School and Just Us Dance Theatre Apprenticeship Company.
The Royal Ballet has a storied history of welcoming the dance community to share its stages, and the Next Generation Festival gives audiences the unique opportunity to witness an incredible display of young talent.
The festival opens on the 12 June with Youth Company of the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera’s Strauss 2225: Dances for the Future, a new work by Canadian Choreographer Robert Binet. Created in the light of Johann Strauss II’s 200th birthday, featuring original choreography, libretti and musical compositions, Binet’s work asks the question: In what kind of world will people be dancing in 200 years?
Next, in its centenary year, The Royal Ballet School presents a programme that celebrates its 100-year heritage as an incubator for new choreographic work. Audiences can expect to see pieces created and performed by students, alongside an array of new works by influential 21st century choreographers, including Christopher Wheeldon, Cathy Marston, David Bintley and Jessica Lang. Each work in the programme has been created especially for students of the School.
Following this, The Royal Ballet School’s 2026 100th cohort of graduates join forces with the advanced students at the School of American Ballet to present a special showcase of young talent. Founded in 1934 by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, the School of American Ballet will honor its co-creator with a performance of Balanchine’s windswept waltz, Valse Fantaisie, alongside a suite of solos and pas de deux from his glittering Who Cares?
On 21 June, The Royal Ballet’s flagship young talent programme Chance to Dance returns to the Linbury stage with a mixed programme of works inspired by Peter Wright‘s Romantic ballet Giselle. Chance to Dance works in partnership with independent dance schools across the country to welcome young dancers from all backgrounds to reach their highest potential. For this year’s Next Generation Festival, children from the Bradford and North East Legacy companies will perform alongside the Chance to Dance: Connect Company. Chance to Dance: Connect builds upon the well-established national Chance to Dance programme, bringing together talented dancers of Global Majority Heritage aged 11-18 who aspire to a career in Classical Ballet. As part of this mixed programme, Chance to Dance alumni Jacob Wye and Monique Jonas choreograph two new works on the Chance to Dance: Connect Company and also on fellow alumni Rishan Benjamin (Scottish Ballet First Artist) and Ishan Mahabir Stokes who perform a new duet inspired by the young people.
Another compelling mixed programme follows, performed by the students of Rambert School and the young members of the Junior Company of Polish National Ballet. As part of their performance, Rambert School will present three new works: Session 1 by Ben Duke, Blues in Three by Holly Blakey and Outside the Stadium by Alesandra Seutin. The Junior Company of Polish National Ballet will perform a series of short works including Reverentia, a 2026 work choreographed by Dawid Trzensimiech, Fluxus by Katarzyna Kozielska and Verses by Robert Bondara. The evening will also feature Anna Hop’s duet Gnossienne No.1 and Antonio Lanzo’s playful folk-inspired piece, Rumänische Volkstänze.
The energetic ZooNation Youth Company (ZYC) returns to the Linbury Theatre on 28 June with two inspiring works. They present 1776, a collaboration between Memphis Jookin’ pioneer Lil Buck and ZooNation’s Artistic Director Dannielle ‘Rhimes’ Lecointe, Body Politic and The Schwarzman Centre. This international collaboration builds bridges across generations and geographies, connecting communities through dance. The piece is paired with Offline, a co-creation between the Lecointe and ZooNation Youth Company.
On 30 June and 1 July, leading dance schools English National Ballet School and John Cranko School will come together to deliver an exciting mixed programme of renowned choreographers and celebrate the legacy of Sir Anton Dolin. The John Cranko School present Variations For Four choreographed by Anton Dolin, When Light and Dark Meet by Jordan Pellitari, At Last by Xenia Wiest and All long dem day by Marco Goecke. English National Ballet School perform Dolin’s Pas de Quatre. Closely connected to the history of English National Ballet, Pas de Quatre remains one of the most enduring works of the Romantic ballet repertoire, originally created by Jules Perrot in 1845 and later reconstructed by Dolin in 1941.
Finally, Just Us Dance Theatre presents the Just Us Apprenticeship Company. Bringing the festival to a close is A Night of Hip Hop Theatre, a triple bill of Hip Hop works. The Company is the UK’s first and only Hip Hop training and development programme (12 weeks) that provides bursary support for young people to take part, providing a much-needed supported route into the professional performance sector, particularly for early career Black and Global Majority dancers. The programme is run by Just Us Dance Theatre, a Hip Hop development charity, led by Artistic Director and former Royal Ballet Choreographic Residency artist 2023/24 Joseph Toonga. The evening will feature a newly commissioned work from Dutch artist and choreographer Chandenie Gobardhan, a repertory work by Joseph Toonga and a powerful new collaboration by choreographers Kenrick ‘H2O’ Sandy MBE and Joseph Toonga.