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The profile · researched 21 September 2026
Three weeks in autumn: how JAZZMI turned Milan into a working jazz circuit
Born in 2016 as a joint venture between Triennale's theatre and the promoter Ponderosa Music & Art, JAZZMI has grown into a city-wide autumn festival that drew more than 40,000 people in 2025; its eleventh edition runs from 19 October to 8 November 2026, opening with two nights of Erykah Badu.
Milan builds itself a jazz festival, 2016
The first JAZZMI ran from 4 to 15 November 2016. It was conceived and produced by Teatro dell'Arte — the theatre inside Triennale Milano — together with Ponderosa Music & Art, in collaboration with Blue Note Milano and with backing from the city council. The artistic direction was handed to Luciano Linzi and Titti Santini, who still hold it a decade later.
The opening edition was already built on scale rather than a single stage: more than 320 artists, around 80 concerts and some 120 events in total, including exhibitions, talks and workshops. Ron Carter's Golden Striker Trio and David Sanborn with the Christian McBride Trio opened it; John Scofield, Robert Glasper Experiment, Enrico Rava and Gregory Porter followed. Beyond the two main rooms, concerts ran at Santeria Social Club, BASE Milano, Salumeria della Musica and Magnolia.
A parallel free strand, JAZZMIFREE, put emerging players into Museo del Novecento, the Pinacoteca di Brera and Palazzo Litta. That decision — that a share of the programme should cost nothing and happen in buildings people already visit for other reasons — set the pattern the festival has kept ever since. The premise was never a single festival site but a temporary rewiring of rooms the city already has.
Two poles, and the map between them
The festival is now produced by Associazione JAZZMI with Ponderosa Music & Art and Triennale Milano Teatro, in collaboration with Blue Note Milano. Linzi and Santini direct; Giuseppe Ponti handles artistic programming and has chaired the association's board since 18 December 2023.
Structurally, JAZZMI works off two anchors. Triennale Milano Teatro takes the seated, listening-room end of the programme — trios, solo sets, commissioned work. Blue Note Milano, a club with table service, takes multi-night residencies by visiting Americans. Everything else radiates outward: Teatro Arcimboldi, Teatro Dal Verme, Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber, Teatro Nazionale and the Conservatorio for the larger draws; Alcatraz, Santeria Toscana 31, BIKO, Fabrique and BASE Milano for standing-room shows; Auditorium San Fedele, ADI Design Museum, Armani/Silos and Apple Piazza Liberty for the smaller and often free items.
The funding mix is public and corporate in roughly equal measure. In 2024 the association recorded €46,382 from Italy's Ministry of Culture, a further €18,437 in music-festival grants and €39,869 from the City of Milan. Volvo and Intesa Sanpaolo were main partners for the 2025 edition, with Corriere della Sera, Radio Monte Carlo and Billboard Italia as media partners. That structure is what allows a programme of this size to keep a free tier at all.
The tenth edition, and what it actually delivered
The 2025 edition, the tenth, ran from 23 October to 9 November, with a preview concert by Diana Krall on 20 October. The final accounting was more than 40,000 attendances across 17 festival days, 23 sold-out shows, over 200 live events and more than 300 artists, supported by a crew of over 150 technicians and organisers.
The programme ranged wider than the word jazz usually covers. Dee Dee Bridgewater and Mike Stern took residencies at the Blue Note; Anouar Brahem, Abdullah Ibrahim and Paolo Fresu appeared alongside younger draws including Samara Joy and Oscar Jerome. Flying Lotus played Fabrique Milano on 4 November. The closing weekend put the Abdullah Ibrahim Trio into Triennale Milano Teatro on 8 November, then Chris Thile at the same venue and Gonzalo Rubalcaba with Hamilton de Holanda at the Blue Note on 9 November.
Around the concerts sat a cinema strand, The Body of Jazz, built that year around Henry Mancini; a listening-session series, Ascolti Inauditi; and Hardcoro, a pop-up choir format open to anyone who turned up. More than 120 self-produced Night & Day events ran in hotels and smaller rooms across the city. On 30 October 2025 a documentary about the festival itself, BEAT – un film sul jazz e l'ottava edizione di JAZZMI, directed by Mattia Ramberti, went up on Prime Video.
Where it stands now: 19 October to 8 November 2026
The eleventh edition runs for three weeks, from 19 October to 8 November 2026, with a preview event on 12 October. The line-up was rolled out from mid-July 2026, and a full programme presentation is scheduled at Triennale Milano on 23 September 2026. Forty-odd ticketed concerts form the spine, spread across Teatro Nazionale, Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber, Teatro Arcimboldi, Teatro Dal Verme, the Conservatorio, Auditorium San Fedele, Triennale Milano Teatro, Blue Note Milano, Alcatraz, Santeria Toscana 31 and BIKO.
Erykah Badu opens it with two nights at Teatro Nazionale on 19 and 20 October, billed as IMEHO – An Intimate Experience with Erykah Badu. Paolo Fresu's quintet plays a new live treatment of the Ascensore per il patibolo score at Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber on 29 October. Gregory Porter is at Alcatraz on 3 November, Ibrahim Maalouf with The Trumpets of Michel-Ange at Teatro Arcimboldi on 4 November, Dee Dee Bridgewater back at the Blue Note on 4 and 5 November, and the Bill Frisell Trio at Triennale Milano Teatro on 7 November. Calibro 35 close the festival on 8 November with a project titled Calibro 35 vs L.A.
The rest of the bill shows how loosely the festival reads its own name. Lake Street Dive, Tommy Emmanuel, Nate Smith, Richard Bona, Rokia Traoré, China Moses, Isaiah Collier, Corto.alto, Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids, and The Messthetics with James Brandon Lewis sit next to Fabrizio Bosso, Sergio Cammariere and Enzo Favata. Two commissions stand out: A New Sketches of Spain, pairing the flamenco dancer and choreographer Israel Galván with the trumpeter and composer Michael Leonhart, and a set by Merope drawing on Baltic folk and Nordic minimalism. The organisers describe the remit as an open territory crossed by soul, electronics, afrobeat, contemporary improvisation, art music and new forms of global songwriting.
The half of the programme that is not a concert
Every edition carries a daytime layer: masterclasses, public conversations with the artists, film screenings and book presentations, all of it framed as a way of putting the music next to the writing, film and design that surround it. The 2026 edition keeps that structure intact.
It is also the part that defines the festival's audience. The organisation quotes an attendee's line back at itself on its own site — that the benches were full of grandparents, parents and children, not the usual jazz crowd, and that all of them liked the music. Whether or not that is typical, it is plainly the target: a festival that spends three weeks trying to be a normal thing to do in Milan in autumn rather than a specialist gathering.
The show, now
There is no single JAZZMI show, which is the point: the 2026 edition spreads roughly forty ticketed concerts over three weeks and eleven-plus venues, and what a night looks like depends entirely on which room the ticket is for. Triennale Milano Teatro is seated and quiet, built for single sets by trios and solo players — the Bill Frisell Trio on 7 November, and in 2025 the Abdullah Ibrahim Trio and Chris Thile. Blue Note Milano runs the club model, with visiting Americans taking two consecutive nights at tables: Dee Dee Bridgewater on 4 and 5 November 2026, as Mike Stern and Bridgewater did in 2025. The large theatres — Teatro Nazionale for Erykah Badu's two opening nights on 19 and 20 October, Teatro Arcimboldi for Ibrahim Maalouf on 4 November — take the headline draws, while Alcatraz, Santeria Toscana 31, BIKO and Fabrique handle standing-room shows such as Gregory Porter on 3 November and, in 2025, Flying Lotus. Most bills are single-artist rather than support-plus-headliner, with commissioned projects (A New Sketches of Spain; Paolo Fresu's live Ascensore per il patibolo on 29 October) presented as one-off evenings. Daytimes carry masterclasses, talks, screenings and book presentations, plus a long tail of small free and self-produced events across the city — more than 120 of them in 2025. The audience it draws is deliberately not specialist: the festival's own site quotes an attendee describing benches full of grandparents, parents and children rather than the usual jazz crowd. The 2025 edition closed with 23 sold-outs and over 40,000 attendances, which is the clearest signal available on how the current shows are landing.
Researched from jazzmi.it · musicajazz.it · musicletter.it · indie-eye.it · ondalternativa.it · gazzettadimilano.it · mentelocale.it · milanoweekend.it