PEOPLE Festival 2026: "Expect the unexpected"
The team behind the unique, unprogrammed festival on letting artists return to the roots of music creation inside Funkhaus.
In 2015, musician and composer Bryce Dessner — most famous for his role in the indie rock band The National — was in Berlin working on the film score for The Revenant at Funkhaus Nalepastraße, the city’s DDR-era radio broadcasting centre turned recording studio. And, according to fellow musician Josh Berg, he was hungry.
“There was no food. Back then, Funkhaus was like an island. So he asked [the Michelbergers], ‘Could you guys bring us some sandwiches? We're dying out here.’ They came by and they were like, ‘Oh, this is the place for the music festival’,” Berg recalls.
That’s how PEOPLE fest, a weeklong event that draws hundreds of artists to Berlin for musical collaboration and performance, found its home. Created in joint effort by Bryce Dessner and his twin brother Aaron, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, and the Berlin hoteliers Nadine and Tom Michelberger, PEOPLE held its first edition in 2016, bringing 128 artists to Berlin. The premise was simple but revelatory: hang out, share music, collaborate, jam, make something new — and at the end of the week, the public would arrive at the Funkhaus to roam the historic building and hear whatever had been created.
