Tallinn Music Week returns to Estonia’s capital with music, ideas and a city-wide festival

From 9 to 12 April 2026, Tallinn Music Week returns to Tallinn, Estonia, bringing more than 200 artists from around the world to one of northern Europe’s best-known new music festivals.

Now in its 18th edition, the event has evolved far beyond a conventional showcase. Alongside concerts across clubs, churches and concert halls, Tallinn Music Week also hosts a major international music industry conference and a city festival of exhibitions, films, food events and public discussions. The result is something broader than a run of gigs: for four days, Tallinn becomes a stage for thinking about what culture can do for a city.

This year’s programme brings together 204 artists from 39 countries. Estonian acts include the folk innovators Duo Ruut, punk veterans J.M.K.E., the popular Sadu, the experimental Apparatus&Apparata and the Ellerhein Girls’ Choir.

International names include South Korean improviser Dasom Baek, Canadian singer Paris Pick, Finnish pop artist Goldielocks and the Ukrainian-Canadian project Daughters of Donbas. The music programme closes on 11 April with an afterparty headlined by the Grammy-nominated German electronic duo Booka Shade.

Yet Tallinn Music Week has long been as interested in context as in line-ups. The conference, held at Nordic Hotel Forum on 10 and 11 April, brings more than 150 speakers to Tallinn for discussions on how music shapes cities and regions, the pressures facing artists and promoters, mental health and burnout in the cultural sector, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in music and media.

Among the speakers are Magne Furuholmen of a-ha, Resident Advisor co-founder Paul Clement, Ninja Tune co-founder Matt Black and veteran British agent Ian Huffam, who has worked with artists including Robbie Williams, Gorillaz and Moby.

The festival’s broader ambitions were clear from the start. On 8 April, it opened with a public debate on the future of Tallinn City Hall, or Linnahall – a reminder that Tallinn Music Week is interested not only in new music, but in the cultural future of the city itself.

Free City Stage concerts across Tallinn, a youth festival at Terminal record shop and the children’s programme Big Bang push the festival beyond its core music audience. Add food events stretching from Rotermann to Kopli, and Tallinn itself begins to feel like part of the performance.

That is what gives Tallinn Music Week its edge. It is still a key showcase for Estonian artists seeking international attention, but it also treats music as part of a bigger civic and cultural question. In Tallinn, the festival is about more than the line-up; it is also about the kind of city culture can help build.