Jaha Koo is the winner of The International Ibsen Award 2026!

Koo has been awarded the prize for “his innovative and deeply human theatre” – a description we wholeheartedly endorse. Koo visited BIT and METEOR – our festival for contemporary theatre and performing arts – in November 2025 with the production Haribo Kimchi, and moved us and our audience deeply with his subtle and gripping storytelling.

– The theatre he creates is quiet, yet deeply political. It cuts through ideological noise and speaks directly to our shared human experience, says Ingrid Lorentzen, chair of the jury for the International Ibsen Award and ballet director at the Norwegian Opera & Ballet.

The jury goes on to write that “through humour, poetry and technological ingenuity, Koo opens up reflections on identity, belonging and the aftermath of colonial histories”.

The International Ibsen Award is the world’s foremost theatre prize, awarded every second year for outstanding achievements in the spirit of Henrik Ibsen. Koo is the youngest recipient of the prize, and the first of Asian descent.

We cannot congratulate Jaha enough on this well-deserved achievement – and look forward to celebrating him and his artistry at the award ceremony in Oslo in September!

The Committee Statement:
In a world too often positioned through the ‘for’ and ‘against’, The International Ibsen Award 2026 rewards the imagining of theatre as the space in-between – as a site for assembly, a place to envision and inspire what we might not yet know.

The practice of theatre made through compassion and kindness, so critically needed for our times.

The experience of art as a reminder of the human capacity to nurture and share beauty, hope and joy, as new ways of being and seeing.

Theatre forging time and space for the reflection of the ongoing quiet works that are democracy in action. This vision is personified in the world of South Korean theatre and performance maker, music composer, and video artist Jaha Koo.