Founded in 2015, the festival provides a platform for artists from Hamburg’s independent scene every year and invites professionals from all over Germany to Hamburg for exchange and networking. The main thing is that Hamburg's festival of independent performing arts is free.

For two weeks, the festival becomes a platform for artistic productions, contemporary trends, aesthetic innovations, socio-political discourses and scientific impulses. Hauptsache Frei is supported by the Alliance for Festivals of Independent Dance and Theater Creators in Hamburg eV, a supporting association consisting of various institutions - venues but also interest groups such as the DfdK Hamburg eV - of the city.

The focus »#BeyondDigital« takes a digital artistic look at the festival – without focusing on digital technologies.

This year, an interdisciplinary team of Hamburg and international artists will also accompany the first week of the festival, visit performances by colleagues and develop digital artistic answers and reactions to the program. As a #BeyondDigital Speculation Unit, they look for the unasked questions about digitality in the program: Which interfaces were used and what political dimensions do they bring with them? Which open source technologies could have been used? Which digital policy questions arise? And what would the implementation of a piece in VR have looked like? The team designs serious, humorous and perhaps also self-critical answers and prototypes, while commenting on the festival in a digital diary for the entire festival community.