This December, Goa is set to be turned into a colourful playground of creativity when Serendipity Arts Festival comes back with a bang to commemorate its historical 10th anniversary edition. The festival is set to take place from December 12 to 21 in Panjim.
The event will bring life to the heritage buildings along the Riverfront with over 250 projects. Over 35 top-notch curators have managed to bring together a lineup of incredible visual artists, chefs, musicians, performers and storytellers from India as well as around the globe. Festival director Smriti Rajgarhia tell us more on what to expect at the festival:
Does this year’s festival have a specific theme?
This year’s edition isn’t built around a single theme but around a set of questions that guide our engagement with the arts: how we remember, how we coexist, and how we imagine our shared futures. As we mark the festival’s 10th year, there are projects that respond to Goa’s layered histories and contemporary transformations, while others look outward to global concerns around ecology, technology, and identity. The diversity of responses across performance, craft, culinary arts, sound and visual practices creates a festival that remains rooted in place yet expansive in its thinking. The intention is to hold space for reflection as well as discovery.
What are the factors that went into selecting the artists for the festival?
Our selection of artists is guided by a commitment to diversity — of form, geography, language, experience and thought. We work closely with our curators, who bring their own research trajectories into the festival and invite artists whose practices respond meaningfully to contemporary cultural questions. This means welcoming emerging voices alongside established practitioners, and bringing together traditional craft knowledge, experimental performance, digital media and community-based work. Ultimately, we look for artists who expand how we see and think, and who can enter into dialogue with audiences in Goa and beyond.
Is anything different in this year’s festival compared to the other years
Being our 10th year, this edition has been a year long celebration. So in a sense, the festival is returning to Goa after a series of engagements across cities such as Birmingham, Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Delhi, Chennai, Gurugram, Dubai and Paris. These movements allowed us to extend the ethos of Serendipity to new audiences, and the energy from those collaborations now feeds into the 2025 edition. The programme also reflects a deeper integration of accessibility initiatives, expanded culinary and craft explorations, and our largest number of performances and exhibitions yet, spread across Panjim’s historic venues. It feels like a culmination of ten years of building — and the beginning of a new chapter.
Tell us a bit about the opening and closing sessions/performances for this year? Why have they been chosen to be so?
For our tenth edition, we wanted the opening moments of the festival to feel expansive and celebratory, which is why we begin with large-stage concerts at the Arena, Nagalli Hills Ground on December 12 and 13. The programming brings together artists who speak to both legacy and contemporary innovation: from Clay Play, a vibrant celebration of Goan folk and clay percussion traditions curated by Aneesh Pradhan and Shubha Mudgal (12 Dec), to powerful musical lineups such as Fading Traditions, Emerging Sounds (14 Dec) and the all-women hip-hop collective Wild Wild Women (19 Dec).
These choices reflect our desire to open the festival with work that honours tradition while embracing the pluralities of modern India. The closing days carry this energy forward through performances that bring communities together - from theatre adaptations and contemporary dance to concerts that mark the end of the festival with a sense of shared celebration. Together, the opening and closing frame the ten days as a journey through memory, innovation, and collective experience.
What can the visitors take away from this year’s festival?
We hope visitors leave with a sense of how expansive and interconnected the arts can be when they are made accessible to all. This edition invites audiences to experience the familiar and the unexpected — from craft traditions and culinary arts to contemporary performance, visual experimentation, and digital innovation. More than anything, we want people to feel that art is not distant or intimidating, but something that can shape how we understand ourselves and the world around us. If visitors walk away with a new question, a new connection, or even a moment of wonder, then the festival has done its work.
For more updates, join/follow our WhatsApp, Telegram and YouTube channels.