This marks the end of nearly fifty years of championing international artists, radical storytelling, and new ways of imagining theatre.

It breaks our hearts to make this decision. For several years now, we’ve been trying to find a way to keep the Gate going in an increasingly precarious climate: without regular subsidy, with rising production costs, increasing competition for funds and, since 2022, without a permanent home. We’ve adapted, changed how we work and kept making ambitious theatre. Although we’ve had some wonderful successes along the way, living hand-to-mouth means there’s just no way for us to continue… and so we’ve reached the end.

Following the pandemic and a re-evaluation of the venue’s physical accessibility, we left our Notting Hill home for Theatro Technis in Camden in 2022. In that same year, we learned that the Gate would lose its regular Arts Council funding from April 2023.

Despite this, our 2023 season was a success, featuring critically acclaimed productions including Bootycandy, HOT IN HERE and Brassic FM. We went on to become a producer-led organisation, creating and sharing international work beyond a single building.

Since 2022, we’ve employed 128 freelancers and reached more than 300 participants through our Gateways programme. Our partnership with Woven Voices received record-breaking submissions for the Prize for Playwriting, celebrating the work of first-generation migrant artists. Wish You Were Here sold out its run at Theatro Technis in 2024, with 9 out of 10 audience members coming to the Gate for the first time. Scenes from the Climate Era, at the Playground Theatre in 2025, received widespread critical acclaim and won an OffWestEnd Award for Best Production.

We are immensely grateful to everyone who has made our work possible: artists, staff, trustees, funders, partners, champions and audiences. To everyone who bought a ticket, made a show, sat in a rehearsal room, took a chance on an artist, wrote about a production, opened a door, gave their time: thank you.

It has never felt more important to tell stories from beyond our borders, and to be reminded that the world is much bigger, stranger and more connected than the divisions we are so often asked to believe in.

As a team, we are devastated that the Gate is closing. But just as the shows we make live on in the memories of those who saw them, we know, too, that the Gate will live on.

Towards the end of Wish You Were Here, Rana tells Nazanin: “when I think about where I’m from, I think of you.”

When we think of where we’re from, we’ll think of the Gate.

With love and gratitude

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