Standard Bank Joy of Jazz reveals 2026 line-up as festival leans into legacy
From Angélique Kidjo to Thandiswa Mazwai, this year’s Joy of Jazz programme connects legacy acts with emerging voices across four curated stages
Black News 
The Standard Bank Joy of Jazz has announced the full line-up for its 2026 edition, returning to the Sandton Convention Centre from September 25 to 26. Now in its 27th year, the festival continues to position itself as a meeting point between generations, geographies and evolving ideas of what jazz can be.
This year’s programme brings together a mix of international heavyweights and South African mainstays across four stages, with a curatorial focus that leans heavily on tribute, collaboration and reinterpretation. It is a familiar structure for Joy of Jazz but also one that feels newly weighted by the historical markers shaping this edition.
At the top of the international bill is Angélique Kidjo, an artist whose career has long been defined by movement across borders, genres and generations. Four decades into her recording life, Kidjo remains in a state of creative expansion, building projects that connect different corners of the world without ever losing a sense of purpose. Her latest album HOPE!! carries the spirit of both personal reflection and global collaboration, reinforcing a catalogue that has consistently treated music as a shared language.
She is joined by Kamasi Washington, who will make his Joy of Jazz debut. Washington’s arrival signals a continuation of the festival’s engagement with contemporary jazz at its most expansive, where orchestration, spirituality and hip-hop lineage intersect.
If the international names provide scale, the local line-up anchors the festival in something deeper. Thandiswa Mazwai, Judith Sephuma, McCoy Mrubata, Khaya Mahlangu and Ndabo Zulu form part of a programme that reads less like a line-up and more like a living archive of South African jazz.
Mazwai’s presence, in particular, carries a sense of continuity that extends beyond performance. Across her career, she has positioned herself as part of a longer cultural thread, an artist working within a lineage that stretches back generations while consciously shaping what comes next. The orientation makes her tribute to Hugh Masekela feel less like homage and more like continuation, an act of reinterpreting a body of work that helped define the country’s musical and political identity.
A similar logic underpins Sephuma’s inclusion. More than two decades into her career, she remains one of the most enduring voices in South African jazz, moving between Afro-soul, gospel and orchestral work with a consistency that has carried her across continents. Her approach to performance has always prioritised connection, creating spaces where audiences are invited not just to listen but to sit with the music, to absorb it. In a festival context, that sensibility becomes part of the broader atmosphere Joy of Jazz has spent years cultivating.
The programme also foregrounds the next layer of the lineage through the inclusion of 2026 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners Gabi Motuba and Manana, artists who represent the shifting edges of the genre.
Beyond individual performances, the structure of the festival reinforces its long-standing emphasis on collaboration. A project titled “4 Bass Lines” will bring together AusTebza, Rochelle Rautenbach, Chantal Willie-Petersen and Orlanda Da Conceição in a rare configuration that centres women instrumentalists as primary architects of sound. It’s a subtle but significant recalibration of space within a genre that has historically sidelined such contributions.
Across the stages, the sense of intentionality continues. The Dinaledi Stage hosts a mix of international and local acts including Ibrahim Maalouf and Ola Onabule, while the Diphala Stage places a distinct focus on women-led performances with artists like Nubya Garcia and Lorraine Klaasen.
The Conga Stage shifts the emphasis toward rhythm, with appearances from Tank and the Bangas, Madala Kunene and Sibusile Xaba, while the Mbira Stage continues to blur genre boundaries, incorporating neo-soul and spoken word through acts like Floetry and Nomfusi.
Running alongside the performances is a layered programme of tributes. In addition to the focus on Masekela, Khaya Mahlangu will lead a tribute to Kippie Moeketsi, while the Mbira Stage includes a celebration of Busi Mhlongo. These moments extend the festival’s long-standing role as both a site of performance and a space of remembrance.
This year’s edition unfolds against a broader historical backdrop, marking 50 years since the Soweto Uprising and 70 years since the1956 Women’s March. The anniversaries are woven into the programming, shaping its thematic direction in deliberate ways.
