Most Amsterdammers go out of their way to avoid the area, whether by bike or by car. Tourists, by contrast, are drawn here. They indulge in fast food, waffles, joints, drinks, and mushrooms, and gawk at the sex shops and the sex workers behind the windows. Drunk, they stumble through the narrow alleys. The medieval center of Amsterdam — with its alleyways and Red Light District, and the Warmoesstraat and Zeedijk as its main thoroughfares — has for centuries been an infamous place for excess and heavy drinking.

Yet it remains a neighborhood of residents: butchers, florists, families raising their children there, artists and musicians, and entrepreneurs struggling to survive. People who were born there and still live there. Newcomers from all over the world who do not want to leave. There is a present, a past, and a future here that are invisible to tourists, and unknown to the Amsterdammers who avoid the area.

In this centuries-old heart of the city — perhaps the very heart of the Netherlands — the first-ever edition of the Warmoes Biennale will take place from Saturday, March 7 through Sunday, May 3, 2026.

For two months, artists, entrepreneurs, cultural institutions, and residents will come together to show what lives in this neighborhood and how people from all over the world inspire one another here. The festival invites visitors to look differently at this much-discussed, criticized, yet also beloved part of the capital. With intimate and monumental artworks in sometimes unexpected locations, a diverse program of events, and the warm welcome of the neighborhood, the Warmoes Biennale presents in this first edition the ingredients that form the heart of Amsterdam.