35 years of Independence: where Ukraine will sound this week — from the Dovzhenko Film Studio to Berlin

On 24 August 2026 Ukraine turns 35 as an independent state. The day before, on 23 August, the country marks the Day of the State Flag. And for the first time in years this week's calendar does not look like a row of official ceremonies but like a proper listings page — festivals, concerts and premieres in four cities on two continents.

We have put it all into one guide: what is happening, where exactly, when and for how much. Three of the four events are free or cheap, and none of them is built on pathos.

A date, a flag and 99 days

The Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on 24 August 1991. It was to gain legal force through a national vote — and it did on 1 December that year, when 90.32% of voters backed independence on a turnout of 84.18%.

Between those two dates lie exactly 99 days. They are the subject of the investigative historical drama "The Distance to Independence", premiering in Berlin this week: the plot rests on how the decisions of that autumn were actually made.

The Day of the State Flag, which precedes the main date, has been officially observed since 2004. This year 23 August falls on a Sunday and the 24th on a Monday, so the country effectively gets a long weekend — and the programme has adjusted to it.

Kyiv and Lviv: two different ways to celebrate

In Kyiv, Brave! Factory holds its seventh edition on the grounds of the Dovzhenko Film Studio — with an art programme curated by Oleksiy Sai and a closing Brave! Factory Epilogue featuring Acid Pauli and Viken Arman. The festival landed on the Independence dates deliberately.

Lviv chose the opposite register. The project "This Is How Independence Sounds" is classical music on the square in front of a former prison and transit camp. The Myroslav Skoryk Lviv National Philharmonic and the Territory of Terror museum have signed a memorandum, so the concert on 23 August is not a one-off but the first event of a long-term project.

Abroad, the main Ukrainian stage this week is in Warsaw. On 22 August PULSE OF NATION fest gathers Artem Pyvovarov, Jerry Heil, Khrystyna Soloviy, DREVO and SadSvit under one sky; tickets run from 90 to 449 zloty.

Berlin, by contrast, has stretched the celebration across five days. Ukrainian Week at Unity Hub Berlin runs from 24 to 28 August: an exhibition, workshops, an evening of Ukrainian song with the Lastivochky choir, an open discussion called "After the war: what will the Ukraine of the future be?" — and the premiere about 1991. Entry is free with registration.

"When Independence is the shared DNA of a country and a festival, there arises a natural wish to be collectively capable of supporting that independence not only with brave art but with the resources needed to defend it," the Brave! Factory organisers wrote, announcing their own fundraiser for partner brigades.

What will be left after 24 August

What all four events share is that none of them is an evening of reminiscence. Lviv signed a memorandum and is planning a continuation. Berlin replaced the retrospective with a discussion about the country's future. Kyiv paired the dancefloor with an army fundraiser. Warsaw put the Ukrainian scene on a Polish stage as a bill in its own right, not as a guest in someone else's programme.

For the music industry that matters more than the date itself. Thirty-five years is the age at which a country no longer proves that it exists and instead shows how it sounds. This week it will sound at once on six stages of a film studio, on a square in Lviv, in a Warsaw park and in a Berlin hall on Jägerstraße.

As reported earlier by ONE//FM, the Ukrainian scene can work at scale without a holiday too: Vyrii. Prostoneba drew seventeen thousand people to VDNG and staged twenty weddings at the festival itself.