In 2025 POLIS Teatro Festival reaches its 8th edition, after seven successful years for one of the few Italian theatre festivals investigating fundamental issues such as the defence of civil rights, climate change, and the role of art in society. Since 2018, the festival has become known on the international theatre scene, becoming an established appointment, with the merit of bringing to theatre every year also citizens who do not go there for economic or social reasons and hundreds of young people under30.

After the second edition, in 2020 the pandemic led the festival to rethink itself in a virtuous way and transform into an international online conference on the future of theater involving 67 artists, professionals and scholars from 12 different countries (published in the book Quale teatro per il domani?, Editoria & Spettacolo 2020).

In 2021, the festival came back live with a considerably enlarged program, rewarded by the spectators for the combination of the high level artistic program and the care for communicative aspects.

The great innovation of 2022 was the opening of the festival to the European scene with a special focus on contemporary French dramaturgy, that brought masters such as Pascal Rambert and Ivica Buljan to Ravenna, raising the festival to the attention of the national critics and the audience, and with which the festival earned the highest quality rating in its category at the Ministry of Culture’s Fondo Unico dello Spettacolo and two Premi Ubu for the co-production with Compagnia Licia Lanera of Pauline Peyrade’s Con la carabina.

In 2023, it put a Balkan Focus at the center that solidified the festival’s new international format and in 2024 continued its international opening with a German Focus. Hosting prominent international artists such as Oliver Frljić, Jeton Neziraj, She She Pop, Mats Staub, Rimini Protokoll, and younger promises such as Žiga Divjak, Gemma Hansson Carbone, Zone-Poème.