MIMO Festival

MIMO Festival occupies a heritage city for a few days and does not charge admission. Lu Araújo directs it. She founded it in 2004 in Olinda, Pernambuco. The music fits in a square, a church or a palace, and beside it there is cinema, talks and workshops. The file’s site stays on the page. The question sheet says the whole program is free. In some closed rooms a free ticket is required: if the person is not there on time, the seat goes to someone else.

The first one, Araújo says in an old O Globo interview, had five concerts. The first of those drew two thousand people. The reason for Olinda, in that same talk, is a beer bottle against the door of the Igreja da Sé at carnival: she wanted the city seen at another moment. From there the house page lists Recife, João Pessoa, Ouro Preto, Paraty, Tiradentes, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Itabira, Serra and São Francisco do Sul. In 2016 it reaches Amarante. A 2026 interview with DN Brasil puts about 24,000 people at that first Portuguese one and about 60,000 from the second on. In 2017 there is a collaboration in Glasgow with Celtic Connections. There was also an edition in Porto; Rimas e Batidas places it in the pandemic years. The about page speaks of 61 editions, 14 cities and more than two million people. The page from a year before said 60 editions and more than 12 cities. Nearly four thousand musicians and more than 600 concerts are house figures.

Access, on the sheet, includes an area for reduced mobility, adapted toilets, signage and staff. The shops are usually next to the main stage. The curatorship mail is curadoria@mimofestival.com, the workshop mail is educativo@mimofestival.com and the general one is mimo@mimofestival.com. There are volunteers for production, reception, press and educational activities. Food depends on the city. On the Amarante sheet, the food court at Parque Ribeirinho opens at 18:00. That is from 2025, not from Guimarães.

The 2025 sheet splits the calendar into Rio, 18 to 21 June; Amarante, 18 to 20 July; Olinda, 12 to 14 September; and São Paulo, 19 to 21 September. It adds four nights at Jazz in Marciac, on 23 and 27 June and on 6 and 7 August, inside the Brazil-France crossed season. JC, on 11 September 2025, still before the doors, calls the Olinda one the 16th and says it was returning after seven years. JN calls that July’s Amarante one the 6th. O Globo, days later, calls it the 7th and speaks of 60,000 to 70,000 people. Amarante Magazine writes that 2024 and 2025 were imposed by the Supremo Tribunal Administrativo and that, at the close, Araújo did not know whether the city would continue. She said MIMO would not leave Portugal.

In 2026 the music settles for the first time in Guimarães, from 3 to 5 July. The cinema goes separately, from 27 June to 1 July, because Araújo saw that the screen lost when it competed with the concert. She tells Rimas she was ready to wait for a later year and that the council asked to do it then, on the only free date, and not in the third week of July, which was hers. She calls that edition a point zero because of the short time. Campo de São Mamede, she says, was a car park: no power, no sewer, no water and no ramp. Months of building so that it would still hold. Marco António Vieira walks the three days. The main stage has the castle behind it and the name projected on the wall. On Friday, hundreds of people on the grass. Oumou Sangaré arrives with seven musicians. Fernanda Abreu, also with seven, turns the field into a dance floor and is, for him, the most festive concert of the night. On Saturday, at 17:00, in the garden of the Paço dos Duques there is nobody in the sun: the heat will not allow it. Alaíde Costa, Mauro Senise and Cristóvão Bastos cross choro, jazz and bossa. Near 1:30, DJ Reborn carries on even when a technical fault kills the music for a moment. On Sunday, Mah Damba sings in that garden with a quartet of violin, cello and clarinets. K.O.G. cancels at the last hour and the gap closes fast. Zé Ibarra plays on the field. When he finishes, the public and the musicians turn toward a screen: Vieira writes that Norway eliminated Brazil in the World Cup and that this took the wind out of the close. Unsafe Space Garden, nine musicians from the city, fills that gap. Daddy G and Don Letts close. The last piece, over a drum and bass pulse, is Unfinished Sympathy.

The following Monday, the council approves by unanimity a private sponsorship of 150,000 euros. The price of the contract with Memories and Heritage Artes drops by about 122,000. Turismo de Portugal brings about 170,000, in the band of projects over half a million. The mayor, Ricardo Araújo, is not kin to Lu in these pages. He says the bet came good by what he saw, and that the report on audience and hotels is not in yet. There is no festival camp in these accounts. People sleep in the city. In Amarante the sheet mentions campsites in the area as lodging, not as a gate to the grounds. The shape left standing is a few free days among wall, church and square. The weekend these papers walk through to the close is 3 to 5 July 2026, in Guimarães. Araújo says that at two in the morning she learned the orientation was to continue there. The later date is not printed in these pages.