Image: Barbican Centre, London
The Barbican has announced a Haruki Murakami season running from 8 October to 21 November 2026, bringing together stage adaptation, cinema and contemporary music under the banner of the Japanese author’s work. The programme, titled 'Haruki Murakami', will unfold across the centre in London and is described by the Barbican as an exploration of the writer’s “intricate, emotional worlds.”
According to the centre’s season page, the line-up will include 'End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland', a theatre adaptation of Murakami’s novel about consciousness and identity, as well as a reimagining of his Tokyo jazz club, 'Jazz at Peter Cat'. The season also includes film screenings that the Barbican says speak to Murakami’s emotional worlds, bringing the author’s fiction into dialogue with the institution’s theatre, cinema and music programming.
The Barbican’s wider website places the season alongside a busy autumn programme spanning art, cinema, music and theatre. In that context, the Murakami series sits within the centre’s multi-venue approach, rather than in a single gallery or auditorium. The Barbican says the events are intended to pull together “the sensibilities and aesthetics” associated with one of Japan’s best-known authors.
The opening theatre event, 'End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland', is listed for 8–11 October 2026. The Barbican describes it as a “dazzling stage adaptation” of Murakami’s popular novel, with the boundaries between dreams, memories and realities blurring in the story. The work is presented as one of the season’s central dramatic components and anchors the early part of the programme.
Cinema is also part of the sequence. On 10 October, the Barbican will screen 'Battle Royale + Introduction', identified on the event page as a revisit to a landmark of Asian Extreme Cinema with an introduction by lead actor Tatsuya Fujiwara. The following day, 'Haruki Murakami in Conversation + Tony Takitani' will feature Murakami reading aloud from 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' (2023) and discussing his work with interviewer Simon McBurney, before the season continues toward its closing musical event.
That closing event, 'Haruki Murakami’s Jazz at Peter Cat', is scheduled for 21 November 2026 and is billed as an immersive reimagining of the literary icon’s historic Tokyo jazz club. The Barbican says the concert will feature performances from Japanese jazz bands, including Junko Onishi Trio and TReS, giving the season a live musical dimension rooted in the author’s association with jazz and atmosphere.
Elsewhere on the Barbican’s site, the centre notes that the season is running “across our Centre,” underscoring its spread across departments rather than a single art-form category. The programme is part of a broader calendar that also includes visual art, film seasons and other live events, but the Murakami series itself is focused on a compact autumn run from 8 October to 21 November 2026 at the Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London.
