Ponta Delgada will officially launch its year as Portugal’s Capital of Culture on January 29 at the Coliseu Micaelense, with two special performances marking the occasion.

The first session, institutional in nature, will take place at 11 a.m. and will be aimed at invited guests and school audiences. The second performance, scheduled for 7 p.m., will be a public celebration open to the entire community, symbolically ushering in what promises to be a landmark year for the city.

Admission to the evening performance will be free, though tickets must be reserved in advance. Tickets will be available shortly at the Coliseu Micaelense box office.

According to a press release, the official opening of PDL26 will be marked by the performance “Deixa Passar a Vida” (“Let Life Pass”), under the artistic direction of António Pedro Lopes. Lopes is a seasoned professional with an established career in artistic direction, cultural programming, consultancy, and creative strategy, and previously led Ponta Delgada’s bid for European Capital of Culture.

Inspired by Ode to Peace, a poem by Natália Correia, the production was conceived to offer audiences a fully immersive cultural experience—one that engages the senses and creates a space for listening, emotion, and presence.

The artistic proposal invites each spectator to feel and interpret the poetic word, allowing every verse to be experienced both intimately and collectively, in a shared encounter between text, body, sound, and image. The work thus asserts itself as a poetic celebration of life, memory, and hope, encouraging reflection on the present and on artistic creation as a space for the collective construction of possible futures—aligned with the values guiding Ponta Delgada as Portugal’s Capital of Culture.

Ahead of the official opening, PDL26 will host a public presentation on January 27 at 11 a.m., also at the Coliseu Micaelense. During this event, organizers will present the flagship projects of PDL26, the program for the first quarter of 2026, and the main artistic axes of the opening performance, Deixa Passar a Vida.

About Deixa Passar a Vida

“Deixa Passar a Vida” is the opening performance of PDL26 – Portugal’s Capital of Culture. Drawing from Natália Correia’s poem Ode to Peace, the doors of the Coliseu Micaelense open to a celebration of existence as a creative force—part poetic manifesto, part sensory experience.

It is a call to what wounds and what builds: to memory, hope, peace, respect, and diversity, understood as imperatives of life and coexistence. It is a manifestation that embraces the architecture of the space, using it as a compass, a playing field, and a source of productive disorientation. The great communal arena becomes a circular space of the collective.

Here, Ponta Delgada and the Azores fit inside. Here, artists, collectives, and island residents of different ages and worlds come together. Collectively, they give body to an invocatory and insubordinate poem. They turn imagination into celebration and revelry. They contemplate the paradoxes of the here and now, exalting what is born and renewed, what resists and flourishes—rising toward the unknown.

The performance calls for life as movement, listening as practice, and art as a path toward rebuilding the human. It claims peace as the most important and universal value for everyone, in this and in all turbulent moments of history.

Deixa Passar a Vida carries collective memory, a present marked by urgency and attentiveness, and the aspiration for a tomorrow shaped by change and active hope. It echoes the land, the persistence of beauty amid chaos, the cycle of life across generations, and the desire for a more just, possible, humane, and tender time. It explores the arts as a meeting place where we learn how to let life pass—and how to care for it.

In Atlântico Expresso-Natalino Viveiros, director

Translated into English as a community outreach program by the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL), in collaboration with Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno. PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.