On the evening of September 14, the 2026 Peking Opera Culture Season, themed "Peking Opera Shines, Gathering in Xicheng," opened at the CPPCC National Committee Auditorium in Beijing. This year's season was hosted by the China Theatre Association together with the Xicheng District Party Committee and government, and organized by the Xicheng District Party Committee's Publicity Department and the Xicheng District Federation of Literary and Art Circles — another edition of a comprehensive cultural program centered on Peking Opera that the district has staged on a continuing basis, and one of the autumn cultural brands the district has focused on building up in recent years.

This year's Peking Opera Culture Season aims to keep polishing Xicheng's cultural brand as the "birthplace of Peking Opera" and deepen the inheritance and innovation of opera culture, with content spanning professional performances, academic seminars, cross-genre innovation and public-benefit activities for all, running from September through November. Beijing's Xicheng District has long been known as the birthplace of Peking Opera — since the Qing dynasty, numerous renowned performers and troupes have been active in the area, and the performance conventions behind Peking Opera's four role types (sheng, dan, jing and chou) and its disciplines of singing, recitation, acting and combat were all honed and passed down by generations of artists in this district — and this year's season seeks to build on that historical foundation to further energize the contemporary inheritance and dissemination of the art form.

The opening ceremony followed a narrative arc titled "Sound Begins — Roots Grow — Art Passed On — Fate Gathers," bringing together established masters and rising stars, with traditional classics playing off contemporary expression. Peking Opera performing artists attending the opening included Ye Shaolan, Tan Xiaoceng and Yan Guixiang, while well-known artists Yang Lixin, Xu Di, Zhao Baole and Jiading also turned out to support the season's launch, giving the evening a star-studded atmosphere.

The opening ceremony's program was carefully conceived: the opener "Beauty Shared Together" blended instrumental music with dance, followed by the beating of the Peking Opera hall drum to formally kick off the full performance. The "Roots Grow" segment opened with a short film, "Ancient Charm Lives On," looking back at the heritage path of Peking Opera's birthplace, followed by "A Flourishing of Schools," a joint performance by masters showcasing the distinct character of different Peking Opera schools. The lineup also included a newly composed revolutionary-themed Peking Opera piece, "Red Army Story: Half a Cotton Quilt," the creative cross-genre piece "Qi Tian," and a joint performance by young performers titled "Heaven and Earth Like Brocade." A tribute segment, "Masters Passing On the Art, Life Without End," brought together three generations of Peking Opera artists — veteran, mid-career and young — on the same stage to show the passing of the torch. The full performance closed with the theme song "Five Continents Singing Together, Bound by Opera," expressing Peking Opera culture's openness and its journey onto the world stage, bringing the opening performance to a fitting close.

The "Gathering in Xicheng" Peking Opera Culture Season is not a one-off event but an annual cultural brand the district has now staged for a third consecutive year. The inaugural 2024 edition, themed "The Splendor of the Opera Garden, Gathering in Xicheng," opened on the evening of November 8 that year at the Mei Lanfang Grand Theatre in Beijing and ran through December 23. The second edition in 2025, themed "The Lingering Charm of Hui Opera, Gathering in Xicheng," ran for nearly three months, featuring dozens of premium performances and a range of cross-genre activities, before concluding on the evening of November 24 at the Beijing Tianqiao Performing Arts Center. Compared with previous editions, which typically launched in late autumn, this year's "Peking Opera Shines, Gathering in Xicheng" opened earlier, in mid-September, with a correspondingly longer run. This year's season also introduced a new overall framework described as "One Core, Two Threads, Borderless Scenarios": the opening ceremony serves as the "core," the "Heritage" and "Outreach" threads form the "two threads," and "Borderless Scenarios" — which breaks down constraints of time and place — rounds out a clearly structured program.

Following the opening ceremony, this year's season will continue along three thematic threads — "Heritage," "Outreach" and "Borderless Scenarios" — spanning professional performances, academic exchange, cross-genre innovation and grassroots public-benefit activities, aiming to build an opera culture ecosystem shared by the whole community, so that audiences of different ages and backgrounds can each find their own way to take part.

"Heritage" holds fast to the core of this national art form, rolling out premium play performances, opera-education-themed shows and performances of "classic backbone plays," while also establishing a Grand Canal Culture Belt Theatre Culture Alliance and holding specialized seminars aimed at ensuring Peking Opera's inheritance has successors. "Outreach" uses youthful forms of expression to energize the tradition, launching a call for original Peking Opera "opera songs," staging a concert fusing folk music with Kunqu opera, presenting a "national trend" (guochao)-themed show paired with an exhibition on intangible-heritage opera aesthetics, and upgrading the "Peking Opera Encyclopedia" short-video series into multiple languages, hoping new media formats will carry the sound of this national art form to a wider stage and reach a more diverse audience.

The third thread, "Borderless Scenarios," is dedicated to breaking down the limits of time, space and venue. It includes grassroots public-benefit activities such as community opera-fan performances, dedicated opera sessions and a "Peking Opera Master Class," as well as a Sino-foreign theatre exchange forum, public-benefit screenings of opera film and television, recruitment of "Peking Opera Ambassadors," and the development of cultural-creative IP — all aimed at extending Peking Opera beyond the theatre stage into communities, campuses and online platforms, broadening the art form's audience reach and giving more residents and visitors a chance to experience this traditional art up close.

Analysts note that this year's season places equal weight on academic discussion, cultivating young talent and new-media dissemination, with the establishment of the Grand Canal Culture Belt Theatre Culture Alliance in particular seen as an attempt to move Peking Opera beyond a single locality and into a broader, coordinated cultural-belt development framework. The multilingual "Peking Opera Encyclopedia" short-video series and the "Peking Opera Ambassador" recruitment drive likewise suggest organizers hope to use digital and international distribution channels to draw more young and overseas audiences toward the art form, giving this traditional art fresh vitality in a new era.

Peking Opera took shape in Beijing in the mid-19th century, blending the vocal styles and performance conventions of several regional opera forms, including Hui opera, Han opera, Kunqu and Qinqiang, gradually developing into a genre of nationwide influence with a history of roughly 200 years. It is celebrated as a Chinese national art form and was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2010. In recent years, both central and local Chinese authorities have continued pushing for the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional opera culture, with themed cultural seasons and arts festivals springing up one after another in many localities, becoming an important lever for local cultural development. As the birthplace of Peking Opera, Beijing's Xicheng District has used this year's high-profile opening ceremony, systematic three-pronged programming and digital dissemination channels to turn local Peking Opera resources into an ongoing cultural brand — offering a model other regions could draw on as they pursue the inheritance and innovation of their own traditional opera cultures and explore deeper integration between culture and tourism.