Koufonisia Classical Music Festival
Kornilios Michailidis's chamber-music festival on Ano Koufonisi — one of the smallest inhabited islands in the Cyclades, with fewer than four hundred residents — is expected in the second half of August 2026, running into early September as in recent editions.
The Koufonisia Classical Music Festival is an annual chamber-music festival held on Ano Koufonisi in the Cyclades, founded in 2016 by the conductor and pianist Kornilios Michailidis, whose family residence on the island serves as the festival’s home. Ano Koufonisi has fewer than four hundred residents and no airport. The 2026 edition is expected in the second half of August, running past the turn of the month into early September — the window the festival has kept in recent editions, its tenth having run from 20 August to 10 September 2025.
The concerts move through the village across the fortnight — the courtyard of St George’s church, the schoolyard and the rooms of the Michailidis house — gathering soloists and ensembles from Greece and abroad. The festival holds the patronage of the J. F. Costopoulos Foundation. In its 2025 anniversary season, the festival closed on Keros, the uninhabited Early Cycladic sanctuary across the water, with a concert of ancient Greek hymns performed on replicas of period instruments.