Tabori Prize 2025

This year, the Fonds Darstellende Künste was awarding the Tabori Prize for the 16th time. The prize was endowed with 100,000 euros. With this award, the Fonds Darstellende Künste honored not only an artistic position, but also the independent performing arts as another important pillar of the theater landscape alongside the diverse theater institutions and their aesthetic signatures and profiles in Germany. With this prize, the Fonds promotes the visibility and public perception of the award-winning artistic works as significant positions in the independent performing arts of their time.

The highest national award for the independent performing arts was presented on September 25, 2025, as part of “The Show Must Go ON. BUNDESTREFFEN25 of the Independen Arts” at HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

Further information on BUNDESTREFFEN25 

Tabori Preisträger*innen 2025

© Dorothea Tuch

pulk fiktion

The 2025 Tabori Prize of the Fonds Darstellende Künste went to pulk fiktion. The highest national award in the independent performing arts was endowed with €100,000 again this year. The jury justified this year's award as follows:

The pulk fiktion theater group has been setting standards for years with its artistic work for young audiences: formally unconventional, politically aware, aesthetically outstanding. [...] With the award, the jury is honoring a group that knows how to bring creativity and criticism, art and responsibility into productive tension. A theater that does not shy away from the present – and that gives young people a stage: as audience, co-creators and the key to the future. pulk fiktion is theater for today. And for tomorrow.

Read the full jury statement Press material for download

About pulk fiktion

  • Winners 2025

    What makes pulk fiktion's work so special? What topics do they deal with? This clip about the Tabori winners provides brief insights into their past productions.

  • #introducing

    What did you think when you found out you had won the Tabori Prize? What defines your artistic profile? We asked pulk fiktion – and they answered. They share their thoughts in short statements.

  • © pulk fiktion

    pulk fiction cosmos

    Still curious? Anyone who wants to find out more about the pulk fiktion collective is invited to visit the company's website and delve deeper into the pulk universe.

The Award Ceremony

© Dorothea Tuch

The highest national award for the independent performing arts was presented on September 25, 2025, as part of “The Show Must Go ON. BUNDESTREFFEN25 der Freien Darstellenden Künste” (The Show Must Go ON. National Meeting 25 of the Independent Performing Arts) at HAU Hebbel am Ufer.

Further information on BUNDESTREFFEN25

Jury

The award is based on the decision of a jury comprising members of the Fonds executive board and board of trustees as well as renowned experts in the field of independent performing arts. Holger Bergmann, managing director of the Fonds Darstellende Künste, acts in an advisory capacity to the jury. The jury members are Aljoscha Begrich, Amelie Deuflhard, Anne-Cathrin Lessel, Dan Thy Nguyen, Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Schneider, and Anna Wagner.