Wild Horizon

Wild Horizon is a free, two-day festival of circus and play that turns Cherry Street Pier into a walk-through playground. Instead of a single stage, performances happen all across the pier: pop-up acts and roaming characters, interactive pieces that sit somewhere between performance and workshop, and stations where visitors can try circus skills for themselves.

Almanac Projects conceived Wild Horizon and produces it with partners Ninth Planet, Rebel Arts Movement, and the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation. It was created in response to the closing of Circadium, Philadelphia's circus school, to keep the city on the map as a center of circus innovation and to bring a spirit of play and imagination back to public space. Almanac leads the festival's production, local sponsorship, and documentation, and continues to produce it.

The first edition, in May 2026, brought artists from Australia, Lithuania, and Portugal together with Philadelphia performers, debuted Wild Seeds, a residency in which artists made new work on site in the days before the festival, and put middle school students from Rebel Arts Movement in charge of four circus-skills stations for visitors of all ages.