A record year for Open Amare: 60.000 visitors flock to the free events
June 2026, News
With summer just around the corner, Amare looks back on a successful season. In 2025, more than 331,000 people visited The Hague’s cultural center. The strongest growth came from Open Amare, the free-access program held in the building’s public spaces. With 60,000 visitors, Open Amare attracted more people than ever before and accounted for nearly twenty percent of the total number of visitors.
Five years after its opening, Amare is thus seeing a key ambition come to fruition: to be a cultural center that not only draws visitors for performances and concerts but also serves as an accessible gathering place for the city.
“Since the opening, we have deliberately invested in Amare as a so-called ‘third place’: a place where you don’t just come for a performance or concert, but where you can also work, create, meet others, and discover,” says director Leontien Wiering. “The fact that 60,000 people visited Open Amare this year shows that this vision is working.”
The regular program also performed strongly. Together with its co-tenants—the Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), the Residentie Orkest Den Haag, and the Royal Conservatory—Amare programmed a total of 1,390 events in 2025. These events collectively attracted 331,801 visitors. The number of visitors to paid performances and concerts rose by 10 percent compared to 2024, reaching 243,150.
Open Amare
Amare’s public spaces are designed as a so-called “third place”: an accessible meeting spot—besides home and work—where everyone is welcome. Visitors can meet up, study, work, or rehearse there. Every day, a diverse range of groups from the city make use of the spaces, from K-pop and Bollywood dancers to tango and Chinese-Dutch dance groups. Amare supports this use by providing, among other things, sound equipment, mobile mirrors, and stages.
In addition, Amare organizes an extensive free program in collaboration with partners, artists, and communities from The Hague under the name Open Amare. The offerings range from dance nights, concerts, and workshops to markets, talks, exhibitions, and community events. Through these initiatives, Amare reaches new audiences and provides a space for celebrations such as Keti Koti, the Shiva Festival, Chinese New Year, Pride The Hague, and Srefidensi Dey. Visual art is also a prominent part of Open Amare, featuring striking installations such as Poppy by Zoro Feigl and AH! OH! AH! OH! by FreelingWaters.
Knowledge Sharing and International Networking
Open Amare’s growth is the result of a deliberate choice to invest in free-access programming and sustainable collaboration with the city. Amare actively shares the knowledge and experience gained through this process with the cultural sector. For example, on September 21, Amare will host its second sector symposium on Open Amare. The symposium will focus on the organizational, financial, and cultural decisions behind free-access programming and their effects on audience development, partnerships, and positioning. In addition, Amare—together with DOKK1 in Aarhus and Körberhaus and LIFE HAMBURG in Hamburg—is a co-founder of the European Third Places Network, which promotes international collaboration and knowledge exchange among cultural gathering places.
Open Amare is made possible in part by Rabobank Regio Den Haag.
Five Years of Amare
In 2026, Amare will celebrate its fifth anniversary. During the anniversary weekend from November 20 through 22, we will celebrate how the cultural center has come to life over the past five years. Together with its neighbors—the Residentie Orkest Den Haag, Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT), and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague—Amare will present three days filled with music, dance, and community.
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