On 27 May 2026, the famous Slovenian conceptual collective Laibach will return to Estonia. At the Salme Cultural Centre, audiences will hear material recorded by the group over the past two years as well as selected pieces dating back to the 1980s.
Born in 1980 in the coal-mining town of Trbovlje in what was then socialist Yugoslavia, Laibach is one of the most internationally renowned pop-culture phenomena to emerge from the former Eastern Bloc. The British music press once called this fusion of avant-garde art and industrial music “the most dangerous band in the world.”
Laibach has always been adept at creating myths and mystique around themselves. They are co-founders of the fictional state Neue Slowenische Kunst and were the first ambassadors of Western pop culture to perform in North Korea. Their totalitarian-militaristic aesthetic and synthesis of the arts have been labelled both ultra-left and ultra-right, yet even criticism has served more as a creative catalyst for them.
Laibach has the ability to convincingly realise even the most absurd projects—to create music for performances synthesising Bach, Nietzsche and German stereotypes, to reinterpret songs by the Beatles and Queen, and even to rework the national anthems of the world. Their album Alamut, released this March, is based on a novel about the 11th-century Order of Assassins led by Hassan-i Sabbah.
Laibach member and ideologue Ivan Novak has said: “Our music is an empire of senses and transformations. We are not responsible for everything that is bad or good in the world, but we have a good nose for detecting places where dangerous situations are ripening.”
According to Laibach’s compatriot, the renowned philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Laibach uses artistic exaggeration to reveal how dictatorship manifests to some degree in every political system and within every individual.
Laibach last performed in Estonia in 2023 with the music and visuals of the musical Wir sind das Volk and the sci-fi comedy Iron Sky – The Coming Race. This time, they will present both their unreleased tracks from the past two years and selected pieces from their extensive catalogue spanning more than four decades. The pink-blue colour palette and neon lettering of the new tour’s promo photos playfully allude to the glossy imagery of 1980s consumerism and the dazzling spectacles of pop music.
Laibach will perform at the Salme Cultural Centre in Tallinn on 27 May 2026.
Doors open at 18:00, the concert starts at 19:00.
Tickets priced 48–68 euros are now on sale at Piletilevi.
