The 28th edition of the festival will be opened on Friday, 12 August 2016, with three shows presented at HAU Hebbel am Ufer. During the festival around 65 performances will be shown at 8 venues right across Berlin, with more than 150 artists from 14 countries in a total of 26 productions.

On the opening weekend Tanz im August will bring to stage new works by Emanuel Gat and Awir Leon, Eszter Salamon with Christophe Wavelet, MOTUS and Sebastian Matthias. As a special surprise the swedish collective JUCK will have various unannounced performances all over the city.

Apart from the Opening Party at WAU with Silvia Calderoni (MOTUS) at the turntables on 12.8. the festival will also celebrate the openint of the newly established Bibliothek im August on the second floor of HAU2 on 13.8. The Bibliothek is part of the festival centre and serves as a meeting point between audiences and artists. Open throughout the festival, its collection includes books suggested by the artists involved in Tanz im August 2016 that offer additional insights on the works presented in the programme. Numerous audience engagement formats will take place in the Bibliothek im August: book presentations, book circles and many more events involving the Tanz im August artists. The Berlin-based collective Luftmenschen takes the stage at the festival centre and the entrance to the Bibliothek im August with its fluorescent tape installation FLUOROMETRY. The interior design of the library was developed in collaboration with interior designer Kaisa Kivela, Finnish Design Shop, and Matteo Greco/Adrian Hermanides ("Seven Edens / 7 Corners ", Indoor Garden).

Contemporary classics, performances by a new generation of New York-based artists and many new works by international and Berlin-based choreographers make up the programme of the 28th edition of Tanz im August, including familiar choreographers and companies such as Peeping Tom, VA Wölfl, Cullberg Ballet / Deborah Hay, Yoann Bourgeois, Lisbeth Gruwez and newcomers such as niv Acosta, Mia Habib, Liz Santoro und Mithkal Alzghair.