Winter Jazz Fest

The New York Winter Jazz Festival proudly announces its 2026 edition: Still We RISE. More than a series of concerts, this year’s festival is a curated visual and sonic experience, an immersive ode to resilience, and a collective proclamation rooted in the timeless words of Dr. Maya Angelou.

With official permission from Caged Bird Legacy, LLC, the festival draws its core inspiration from Dr. Angelou’s seminal poem, “Still I Rise.” This becomes “Still We RISE”—a deliberate shift to the communal, echoing through every booked venue, every commissioned artwork, and every scheduled note. In an era where cultural and historical erasure persists, the festival stands as an unshakable pillar, centering Black American music not as a genre of the past, but as a living, breathing language of power, protest, and profound joy.

The Visual Anthem: Art as Resistance and Offer

The festival’s striking visual identity is a dialogue across eras and imaginations. It harnesses the urgent, bold lines of political poster art, merges with the brilliant, boundless possibilities of Afrofuturism, and is infused with the narrative richness of artists like Kerry James Marshall and the psychedelic reverie of Mati Klarwein.

Central to this aesthetic is the recurring symbol of the flower—particularly the rose. Here, roses are multifaceted: they are beauty and protest, celebration and mourning. They bloom as sound erupting from a saxophone’s bell, as intricate threads weaving musicians into a cohesive whole, and as offerings of joy planted defiantly against silence. At the heart of the key artwork are two hands, cupped and rising upward—a gesture of both offering and receiving. This is the essence of jazz itself: a prayer carried on rhythm, a gift passed between artist and audience, a cycle of giving that fuels collective ascent.

The Sonic Manifesto: Where Gathering is Resilience

“Still We RISE” translates this visual philosophy into a powerful sonic journey. The festival lineup—to be announced in the coming weeks—will reflect the full spectrum of the Black American musical tradition and its diasporic echoes. From the deep roots of the blues to the cutting edge of avant-garde, from soul-stirring gospel to the pulsing heart of hip-hop, the programming asserts that this music is, and has always been, a primary site of cultural preservation and innovation.

The festival recognizes that in a fractured world, the simple, sacred act of gathering is an act of resilience. To share a space, to feel the vibration of a collective groove, to witness improvisation as a model for survival—this is the festival’s beating heart. Here, protest is not separate from joy; it is fueled by it. Music is not an escape from power; it is the very expression of it.

Manhattan Marathon

On January 9, 2026, Winter Jazzfest’s legendary Manhattan Marathon once again transforms Lower Manhattan into a living map of sound, with music coursing through LPR, City Winery, City Winery Loft, Nublu, DROM, The Bitter End, and Zinc Bar. Audiences will be able to wander between venues and encounter strikingly different musical worlds that nevertheless speak to one another in surprising ways.

At LPR, experience lush, orchestrated textures alongside vibraphone and trumpet-driven ensembles exploring the percussive and electronic edges of contemporary improvisation. At City Winery, hear socially conscious bandleaders embodying jazz’s activist spirit, alongside a fiery tribute to John Coltrane. At Nublu, genre-benders join forces, creating exchanges where so-called “jazz” collides with ambient and electronic textures. At DROM, experience global currents flowing into contemporary jazz and the avant-garde.  Late-night settings like Zinc Bar and The Bitter End keep the energy alive with cross-genre sparks originating from NYC to Paris, the Middle East and beyond. Our marathons are a kaleidoscope of rhythm, harmony, and expression—an open invitation to journey across the many shades of jazz in 2026 and beyond.

Brooklyn Marathon

For the fourth year in a row, on January 10, Winter Jazzfest’s signature Marathon heads to Brooklyn for its second night; a night of expansive sounds spread across Music Hall of Williamsburg, Brooklyn Bowl, Superior Ingredients, Loove Labs Annex, Baby’s All Right, National Sawdust, and Union Pool. Like our Manhattan Marathon, our Brooklyn Marathon highlights artists who blur genre lines while staying rooted in jazz’s spirit of invention.

At Music Hall of Williamsburg, rising stars of jazz dovetail with folk-rooted finger-style guitarists and singer-songwriters whose instrumental and vocal storytelling intersect folk traditions with jazz. Brooklyn Bowl offers a global pulse, summoning trance-inducing diasporic traditions from Ethiopian jazz to Gnawa to Afrobeat and contemporary Afro-Cuban music. At Loove Labs Annex, we present a Fully Altered Artists showcase connecting multiple generations of forward-thinking jazz with radical reimaginings of improvised music.

The avant-garde thrives at Baby’s All Right, with a cornucopia of cutting-edge improvisers lik. National Sawdust features exploratory voices  in the Black Music continuum, while Union Pool’s Dada Strain showcase, now in its third year, offers genre-agnostic and boundary-breaking collaborations.

The Brooklyn Marathon is a meeting ground for tradition, experimentation, and the global resonance of jazz today.

Join the Ascent

The New York Winter Jazz Festival: Still We RISE invites audiences to move beyond passive listening. We are called to be participants in a ritual of collective uplift, to add our voices to the chorus, and to carry the warmth of this gathering forward.