April 21, 2026
Edinburgh’s grass roots arts festival, Hidden Door, returns to a huge abandoned industrial site for another ambitious and unique multi artform experience.
Responding to the vast complex of forgotten warehouses, factory floors and offices, this year’s festival programme celebrates “The Last Shift” for the building.
From Wednesday 3rd – Sunday 7th June, the festival brings together the talents of over 100 creatives to offer live music, immersive art installations, dance performances, poetry and spoken word, unique collaborations and much more.
The festival will explore how spaces and objects hold memory, and how fragments of everyday activity become preserved, misremembered or reimagined over time.
Audiences will navigate deep into the site as the programme unfolds around them. Unique experiences will be shaped through individual routes, encounters and personal perspectives. No single path will reveal the whole truth as the building and performances shift around you.
Each night of the festival offers a diverse roster of musical acts, kicking off on Wednesday with enigmatic electro-pop sensation BIG WETT and experimental artist ICHI taking the concept of a one-man band to new limits with his quirky handmade instrument inventions.
Thursday brings punk duo Cowboy Hunters along with a mystery headliner to be revealed soon, whilst Friday presents local dream pop duo Sarah/Shaun, electronic genre hopper Makeness and Norwegian singer-songwriter, producer and novelist Jenny Hval before feminist DJ collective EPiKA get the party started in the club space.
On Saturday Skye natives Valtos present their acclaimed High Water Mark show, fusing traditional Gaelic folk with club-ready electronic music. Later that night in the club space, Fred Deakin, the legend behind Lemon Jelly, will take to the decks to play us out. Then on Sunday, the last shift welcomes the endless energy of Tinderbox Orchestra, harpist Dara Dubh and the hypnotic orchestral pop of Lauren Auder.
We’ve got more musical surprises to be revealed in the coming weeks, including the ten bands selected from over 300 applications to our open call, in partnership with Creative Edinburgh and the National Centre for Music.
Once again, the festival’s visual art programme will make the most of its unique setting, inviting audiences to explore and discover every corner of The Paper Factory. Discover a range of work including large sculptural installations, wall-based work, projection and textiles, all curated amongst the defunct machinery and industrial spaces.
The visual artists confirmed so far include Chema Rodriguez Alcantara, Ellie Harrison, Emma Macleod, Tiphereth, Fraser MacBeath, Iris Ollier, Jamie McNeill, Jo Fleming Smith, Lilian Ptacek, Michele Marcoux, Nathan Smith, Oana Stanciu, Pandora Vaughan, Ray Downie, Rosie Aspinall Priest, Silas Thomas Parry, Stuart Stafford, Tess Glen and Holly Booth.
Thought provoking, personal, funny and moving – this year’s programme brings the power of spoken word back into a building that has fallen silent; the factory’s atmospheric chambers echoing with the voices of raw human expression.
Over the five nights, our spoken word programme will feature Iona Lee, Josh Cake, Emily Grace Briggs, RJ Hunter and Sean Wai Keung.
Once again, the Paper Factory will play host to cutting-edge dance performances, popping up around the cavernous industrial spaces.
Look out for experimental multidisciplinary artist and choreographer Ellen Crofton seeking rhythms in chaos and repetition, plus award-winning duo PCK Dance, celebrated for pushing the boundaries of contemporary dance. Elsewhere, Lothian Youth Dance Company present Flies, reimagining the classic Lord of the Flies through a raw and physical dance language, with choreography by Tough Boys Dance Collective.
Threading throughout the 2026 programme are four newly commissioned interdisciplinary collaborations, waiting to be encountered by visitors as they explore The Paper Factory.
Artists, musicians, dancers and performers have joined forces to create something unique for this year’s former factory space. Between them they tell the Paper Factory’s story – both real and imagined – through its past, present and future.
Ghosts in the Machines is a physical theatre and roaming performance art piece featuring animal-like ghost figures emerges from the fragments and residues of the site itself. Awoken by last year’s festival, the Ghosts will return but not all is the same. They now move across the site, searching for clues, performing rituals and searching the factory for their missing pigeon companion.
Everyone Left is a live, site-responsive performance; immersive encounter between dance, architecture and moving image. Dancers navigate the industrial environment and the traces left behind when bodies disappear. The work also draws on the after-hours life of such spaces, shaped by decades of unofficial gatherings and temporary use, where activity continues beyond their original function.
The Last Worker at the Paper Factory: A Musical Tour of 7 Visual Artworks. Poet and performer Josh Cake had conversations with seven Hidden Door visual artists about the processes behind their work to be featured at the festival. Cake turned these conversations into a musical story about the work and their creators, told through song.
The Machine Stops is a celebration of factory life told as a mini symphony of words, pictures and noise across five short acts, featuring DIY film footage, archive photographs, recordings of former factory workers and bespoke live and recorded sound.
These four works form key routes through the building, shaping distinct ways for audiences to encounter the festival. Alongside these works will be a wider set of collaborative projects creating additional pathways, connections and ways of navigating the space. Expect everything from visual art pieces, community-led projects, layered sonic installations and live drumming – we’ll be sharing more on these projects very soon.
This year’s festival also welcomes back Tinderbox’s Room to Play bringing interactive experiences through sound, art and performance with their customary playful spirit.
Hazel Johnson, Director of Hidden Door, said:
“We are excited to invite audiences to the Paper Factory’s “Final Shift” to witness the last, most vibrant chapter of this incredible site’s history.
“By bringing together sound, movement, performance and visual art, we are transforming these now silent warehouses into a living, breathing, shifting entity.
“It is a celebration of collaboration and the incredible artistic talent we have here in Scotland; this year’s programme has created the environment for our team to explore the story of a truly unique space. The result is going to be something entirely unrepeatable and spectacular.”
Hidden Door gratefully acknowledges the support of Creative Scotland whose Multi Year Funding has made this ambitious and unique celebration of creativity possible.
Paul Burns, Director of Arts at Creative Scotland said:
“Hidden Door continues to demonstrate the power in repurposing unused urban spaces for cultural events, and art as regenerative for communities both in its buildings and people.
“This year’s festival features artists and organisations working across a wide range of artforms, exploring the winding paths of The Paper Factory, and the festival’s commitment to inclusivity in ticketing and experience means that the doors are open for everyone.
“Now receiving Scottish Government funding through Creative Scotland’s Multi-Year Fund, Hidden Door is pushing boundaries in its creative offering and through exploring memory is making sure this year’s programme is one you won’t forget.”
With an ongoing commitment to inclusivity, Hidden Door has expanded its concessionary ticket options, ensuring that financial barriers and accessibility won’t prevent anyone from experiencing the event:
As always, the festival will be fuelled by a diverse and vibrant selection of local food talent, offering a global culinary journey to match the eclectic arts programme.
Attendees can enjoy award-winning authentic Japanese street food from Harajuku Kitchen, whose family recipes bring the soul of Tokyo to Edinburgh, alongside the bold Mexican flavours of El Dorado, specialising in slow-cooked meats, bold salsas and freshly made corn tortillas.
The House of Tapas will be serving up a true taste of Spain with their signature paellas, tapas and sangria, while Chicken Skoop introduces a playful twist on comfort food with their original fried chicken in freshly baked waffle cones.
Completing the line-up are Big Blu, providing expert artisan pizzas stone-baked to order from their iconic van, and a dedicated Artisan Coffee station to keep festival-goers energised.
Meanwhile over at the bars, the festival is once again partnering with Bellfield Brewery and Great Grog to offer refreshments to suit all tastes.
The colossal 15.5-acre Paper Factory site sits in Edinburgh’s Maybury Quarter, a former paper and cardboard manufacturing facility on the western edge of the city. The site features a mix of warehouses, factory floors, offices and outhouses.
The site is well served by a variety of public transport links, with frequent bus, tram and train services all stopping nearby, making it easy to reach from anywhere in the city or beyond to the west and Glasgow.
The full address is 1 Turnhouse Road, Edinburgh EH12 8NP.
Read more about The Paper Factory and how to get there
Hidden Door is a volunteer-run, independent charity which opens up urban spaces as a platform for new and emerging artists, musicians, theatre makers, performers, film makers and poets based in Scotland. Through organising temporary events Hidden Door works to showcase new work and create engaging environments for the public to experience, explore and discover. Since its inception, Hidden Door has attracted over 70,000 visitors to its events and created a vibrant showcase for over 3,000 artists.
Creative Scotland is the public body that supports culture and creativity across all parts of Scotland, distributing funding provided by the Scottish Government and The National Lottery. Further information at creativescotland.com. Follow Creative Scotland on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
