Mayworks Festival 2026

Holding the Line, 2026 poster by Ibrahim Abusitta

Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts

May 1 – 31, 2026
Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area
mayworks.ca/2026-festival

From May 1 – 31, Canada’s longest-running labour arts festival returns with an inspiring program of live theatre, film, animation, installation, music, and pastry-making, presented throughout the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. All events are free! Registration is required.

The artists of this year’s festival engage with our world as it is. They bring us into the lives of workers, both local and international: a truck driver in Brampton, a health care worker in Thunder Bay, an activist in Montreal, a miner in Morocco, a sugar cane worker in the Dominican Republic, a guide in Palestine, and a contract worker in Mozambique.

Their works raise such issues as wage theft, labour misclassification, technological displacement, union busting, and incarceration as public policy. They also demonstrate how such issues are interwoven into a network of global supply chains, and how communities are organizing as agents of change.

Events offer both formal and informal opportunities for discussion among attendees—artists, workers, labour organizers, and community members.

Image of Parallel Play Collective and documentation from past events

The 2026 Festival Program Includes:

May Day Mayworks Festival Launch
Friday, May 1, 2026, 6:00 – 9:00pm (Doors at 6pm)
United Steelworkers Hall, 25 Cecil Street, Toronto
mayworks.ca/project/2026-mayworks-festival-launch

The festival opens on May 1st with a May Day celebration at the United Steelworkers Hall with an event featuring live music by Parallel Play Collective and a panel discussion inviting labour activists and organizers to address the issue of global supply chains and the power we have to disrupt them.

Local artist Ibrahim Abusitta’s 2026 festival poster art entitled Holding the Line will be on view at the venue and speaks to “what real, physical solidarity looks like…” and the power that workers have to disrupt supply chains as well.

A Film and a Play Developed Through Mayworks’ Labour Arts Catalyst
May 8, 9 & 21, 2026, 7:00pm
Tarragon Theatre & Gallery TPW, Toronto

Carabao, a play by Roann Enriquez developed in collaboration with Anakbayan Toronto, is inspired by the historic 74-hour strike at Nexperia Philippines Inc. in 2025 and depicts a Filipino family across borders. Workshopped with a director and actors over two days, a final read through is open to the public at the end of each day, May 8 and 9, 7:00pm at Tarragon Theatre.

Landlines, a short film by Miru Yogarajah and Jay Aramboo, developed in collaboration with the Peel Region Labour Council, follows migrant truck drivers living in the Greater Toronto Area as they navigate the unjust realities of the trucking industry—wage theft, inadequate training and unsafe conditions, exploitative pay, grueling hours, and constant surveillance inside their trucks. The film premieres on Thursday May 21, 7:00–8:30pm at Gallery TPW.

Image courtesy of Nima Esmailpour

Group Exhibition: Every Worker Should Have Equal Labour Rights
May 2, 2026, 6:00–9:00pm
Charles Street Video, 76 Geary Avenue, Toronto
mayworks.ca/project/every-worker-should-have-equal-labour-rights-exhibition

Every Worker Should Have Equal Labour Rights, a project curated by Nima Esmailpour, brings together distinct projects making connections across histories of labour injustice and worker-led resistance in the Global South. The project features five artists presented at various locations with a reception at Charles Street Video on May 2.

The five artists work includes: And For You, Flours and Flowers, edible confections by Dana Prieto and Safaa Alnabelseya; Rendition, a cinematic essay by Euridice Zaituna Kala; Know Problem, a poster by Deja Hosein; and L’Mina, a short film by Randa Maroufi.

Still from film Sugar Island (2025)

Film Screenings
May 8, 14, 22 & 30, 2026
Various Locations

Sugar Island (2024), immerses us in the Dominican Republic’s sugarcane fields and introduces us to a family whose daily lives are shaped by the harsh labour that defines their world.

True North (2025) is a documentary set during the 1969 student uprising at Montreal’s Concordia University, shedding light on the history of anti-Black racism in Canada.

With Hasan in Gaza (2025) is a documentary put together from two-decades-old camcorder footage and captures the filmmaker’s travels through Gaza with Hasan, a local guide.

Sambizanga (1972) tells the story of the rise of Angola’s independence movement, featuring nonprofessional actors who were behind the anticolonial resistance themselves.

True Chronicles of the Blida Joinville Psychiatric Hospital in the Last Century, when Dr Frantz Fanon Was Head of the Fifth Ward between 1953 and 1956 (2024) Set in French-ruled Algeria in the 1950s, before he was renowned as one of the most influential thinkers and contributors to postcolonial philosophy, Frantz Fanon was a trained psychiatrist.

About Mayworks

Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts is a community-based festival which annually presents works by a diverse and broad range of artists, who are both workers and organizers. The programming presents bold, insightful, responses to pressing issues at the intersection of art, social justice and labour.

Mayworks operates within an anti-oppression framework. We are actively engaged in a social dialogue that challenges the logics of capitalism, and seeks to reimagine and represent a just future. Mayworks is situated upon the traditional territories of the Wendat, Anishinabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. We recognize the enduring presence of Indigenous peoples on this land and support the right to self determination of Indigenous people here and around the world.

Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts
Various locations in the GTHA
www.mayworks.ca
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Accessibility:
Mayworks 2026 Festival venues are partially accessible. For more information, visit each event page on our website.