Best of Poetry Slam Day 2026 | Awards

In the organizer's words:

Come, let's celebrate the festival that poetry slam deserves. We celebrate the spoken word in all its colorful facets - the battle of the arts invites you to a location that gives even the most experienced poetry slam stars goosebumps. In this one particularly special concert hall - the Elbphilharmonie.
And just after New Year's Eve, we'll be shooting all the lighting effects of this event format, which has grown up but is still as vibrant as ever. Look forward to sparkling performances, bubbling gag volcanoes, glittering eyes and a fat spark of madness. Either way, it's going to be a brilliant day, divided into three shows.
The centerpiece of the day is Hamburg's first slam award gala. The Kampf der Künste takes a bow to the greatest slammers there are and, for once, awards them not only with applause but also with a prize for their fantastic work. As performers, as organizers, as part of a scene. Of course, there will also be various rousing performances at this show.

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Tanasgol Sabbagh
Her lyrics carry the audience away, take them by the hand and form lyrical gems far removed from classic feel-good poems. Words perfectly placed, spoken with strength and sound completed, Tanasgol Sabbagh paints spoken word texts like paintings, applies fine brushstrokes of language as well as large blocks of words and forms a performance with every appearance that deserves so much more than just applause.

Fabian Navarro
The Hamburg exile and prodigal son returns: Fabian Navarro was the figurehead of the Hamburg slam scene for many years, impressing with poetic fireworks on stage, combining emotions and the astonishing in his poems and creating worlds in five minutes that radiate with beauty and can warn of the future. But he has also stirred up the literary world as a novelist, be it as the cat thriller master behind the Miez Marple series or with his latest work "Vienna Falling".

Elias Hirschl
From fantastic vocal poems to Ingeborg Bachmann Prize à la Poetry Slam to award-winning and highly acclaimed novels, Elias Hirschl has already done so much in contemporary literature that he doesn't have to prove anything to anyone and yet he does it again and again with every performance and every piece of prose and poetry. Between subtlety and brute humor, Dadaism and politics, Elias always shows attitude and his mischievous grin - and all with an incredible amount of love for the spoken word

Paulina Behrendt
She was long regarded as an up-and-coming star of the slam scene, but it can now be confidently said that her star status is fully justified. Paulina Behrendt is exactly that - she reads the room completely, performs as professionally as she does authentically, every punch line is spot on, every rhyme is cast as if for her texts, which range from humor to great emotion. Her success proves her right: her first solo tour was completely sold out and fans are just waiting for the next one.

Florian Wintels
Multiple rhyme after multiple rhyme, banging prose with punchlines and substance: Florian Wintels is not only a master of rapid speech, he is also quite rightly the German-language poetry slam champion and unique on stage. His language is profound, his rhymes perfect, every jambus polished and superbly presented - Florian practically dances across the stage, playfully tackling the big issues and wrapping the moral in his love of language and detail.

Pauline Füg
She is one of the most outstanding voices on the spoken word scene, has been touring Germany for many years and each of her performances is unique. Pauline Füg is the epitome of a poet, drawing the essence and beauty out of every moment, but never glorifying the view and never shying away from defending points of view and addressing injustices. Pauline's lyrics are linguistically at the highest level, never too sweet or too bitter, always full-bodied for the connoisseurs, but still light enough for all newcomers.

Moderation: Ken Yamamoto
An awards gala needs a suitable presenter. And who is more gallant, charming and non-chalant than Ken Yamamoto? The Berlin slam poet not only writes incredibly well, he also presents as if it were a God-given talent. Be it cheeky and humorous or full of class and prestige - Ken not only finds the right words, he feels them on stage. No empty phrases, just genuine emotion.

A slam by Kampf der Künste

A production of 10 Punkte GmbH

Organizer: Elbphilharmonie Hamburg

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