In 1620, when Lope de Vega created The Knight of Olmedo, the world had many things to know and many that were yet to happen. There were no punk bands in decline like the one Pablo Remón proposes in Verborrea. Nor classrooms for children with special educational needs like the one María Velasco portrays in Keep out of reach of children. Nor, of course, were there the Chekhov texts that Javier Bardem will now - and for the first time - take to the stage under the baton of his teacher Juan Carlos Corazza.
And yet, everything comes together in this last quarter of 2026. Because the theater, despite the changes, is still there.
The Knight of Olmedo, by Laila Ripoll
One of the great texts of the Spanish Golden Age to start the theater course. The director of the National Classical Theater Company proposes returning to the production that Lope de Vega wrote in 1620 with the knowledge that four more centuries of history have given humanity. Because what The Knight of Olmedo hid under that appearance of a friendly sitcom, under those histrionic costumes, under that traditional romantic love story has not changed excessively despite the time that has passed and the social changes that it has brought about.
Comedy Theater (Madrid). From €12 to €25. From September 24 to November 22.
Verbiage, by Pablo Remón
After Los farsantes and Vania x Vania, Pablo Remón and Javier Cámara join forces again in their third theatrical adventure to form this time a punk band - fictitious, of course - in which Marta Nieto, Israel Elejalde and Emilio Tomé will also be involved. The truncated expectations of the future, the fear of irrelevance and the ruins of what everything could have been are once again the central elements in the latest production by the Madrid playwright. But there is a question that surrounds everything: what is more hopeful than resistance?
Ship 10 Matadero (Madrid). From €15.75 to €21. From October 1 to November 1.
Behind closed doors, by Ainhoa Amestoy
Two women and a man who do not know each other find themselves locked in a dark space, guarded by an official from the world of the dead. They are three condemned corpses that seek to move towards a new reality and who are united by something: the evil that they have applied throughout their lives. The text by the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre will premiere in Avilés, but from December 5 to 30 it will arrive at the Teatros del Canal, in Madrid.
Palacio Valdés Theater (Avilés). From €10 to €24. October 9.
Júlia - 15 years later, by Christiane Jatahy
In 2011, the Brazilian playwright Christiane Jatahy premiered her very free version of Miss Julia by August Strindberg, which arrived in Spain two years later in Estación Alta. Now it is the Girona festival itself and the Teatre Lliure in Barcelona that have commissioned Jatahy to recover that text, adapt it to the present and set it in modern-day Catalonia. A dialogue between two productions that explore intolerance, prejudice and misogyny, as present in the 19th century as in the 21st.
Teatre Lliure (Barcelona). From €14 to €32. From October 22 to November 15.
Torcidxs, by Las Nenas
The Navarrese company, made up of Ane Sagüés and Cristina Tomás, debuts with this production of the Escena Poblenou Contemporary Creation Festival. An encounter between misplaced divas and martyred artists that is halfway between performance, improvisation and text theater, Torcidxs aims to be one of the most daring proposals this fall.
Beckett Room (Barcelona). From €11 to €22. From October 24 to November 8.
Keep out of the reach of children, by María Velasco
The National Prize for Dramatic Literature María Velasco, who already in 2025 left one of the productions of the year with Will the aliens and they will have your eyes - will also repeat in this rentrée in Nave 10 Matadero -, has constructed a first-person text about her school childhood in special educational needs classrooms. From the fear of feeling excluded to the dream of revenge at an anniversary dinner for former students, María Velasco seeks to become the Carrie that Stephen King already drew to celebrate her first time on the stage of the Teatro de la Abadía accompanied by the singer Al-Blanco and the performer and dancer Mario Patrón.
Abbey Theater (Madrid). From €19 to €25. From October 29 to November 22.
Yerma, by Eduardo Vasco
In the year that marks 90 years since the death of Federico García Lorca - whose texts fill programming throughout the country -, the director of the Spanish Theater recovers the production that the Granada native premiered with Margarita
Spanish Theater (Madrid). From €6 to €22. From October 30 to December 27.
Chekhov, Chekhov!, by Juan Carlos Corazza
Javier Bardem's stage debut, directed by his acting master, is an event in itself for this closing of the theater season. The great Spanish actor of his generation, the one who has accumulated the most Goya Awards, the one who has managed to storm Hollywood faces his first time on stage with texts taken from the comedies of Anton Chekhov, one of the most scrutinized fathers of contemporary theater in recent years. The bad news? All tickets are sold out.
Zafra Space (Madrid). €60. From November 5 to January 31.
Magda, by Chela De Ferrari and Luis Alberto León
The story of Magda Goebbels, wife of the great propagandist of the Nazi regime and author of the murder of her six children in a bunker in 1945, now comes to the stage of the National Dramatic Center. One of the great attractions of this production is seeing those six children converted into realistic puppets manipulated, in addition, by immigrant actors. Precisely, what the protagonist considers a threat to the world in which she lives becomes here her own offspring.
María Guerrero Theater (Madrid). From €12 to €25. From November 13 to December 27.
Faust. fet, no dit, by Romeo Castellucci
After its premiere in Paris, one of the priests of contemporary European theater brings his interpretation of the myth of Faust to the Montaña Alta festival. The moment before the man meets Mephistopheles, when evil already dwells within him even before that meeting. Romeo Castellucci thus returns to delve deeper into the darkness of the world around us, one of his great obsessions.
