The summer festival circuit is widening, with more African and experimental work alongside the classics.
The festival calendar around Carthage and the capital remains one of the liveliest in the region, and recent editions have widened their gaze. Alongside the established names there is more room for African artists, younger Tunisian performers, and work that takes risks.
The shift reflects a country whose cultural life has always punched above its size, and an audience hungry for more than nostalgia. Music, theatre and film share programmes that increasingly treat Tunisia as a crossroads between the Arab world, the Mediterranean and the rest of the continent.
The challenge is funding and continuity, the perennial worries of culture in a tight economy. But the appetite is unmistakable, and a festival season that reaches beyond the canon is exactly the kind of soft power Tunisia can afford to build.
