Otranto prepares to welcome the New Year where Italy’s first sunrise is born.
From 27 December 2025 to 1 January 2026, Alba dei Popoli returns — the collective ritual that since 1999 has transformed the City of the Martyrs into a luminous bridge between cultures, sounds and visions.
A programme that weaves together music, spirituality and civic participation, offering a poetic response to the fractures of our present time. The beating heart of the event will be the dawn of 1 January, when, at 7.00 a.m. on the Spiaggia dei Gradoni, Raphael Gualazzi will accompany the rising sun with an intimate yet powerful concert: jazz, soul and classical echoes becoming a promise of renewal.
New Year’s Eve will ignite the square with a DJ set by Tobia Lamare & La Pupa, followed by the ritual energy of the Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino, both guardian and innovator of popular tradition. After midnight, the decks will pass to Mike Joyce, legendary drummer of The Smiths, for a DJ set destined to remain in memory.
Through cultural workshops, interfaith dialogues, candlelit concerts and tributes to Carmelo Bene, Otranto once again chooses light as a universal language. Alba dei Popoli is not merely an event: it is a gesture of peace, a shared breath, the emotion of a new beginning that illuminates the sea — and with it, the future.
