From a Galata Coffee Table to a City-Wide Celebration: How Istanbul's Underground Jazz Festival Became Essential

Walk through the narrow streets of Galata on any July evening and you'll hear it before you see it—the unmistakable wail of a saxophone drifting down from a rooftop bar, the snap of brushes on drums echoing off Ottoman stone. What began in 2019 as an informal gathering of four musicians has transformed into Istanbul's most anticipated summer event, drawing jazz enthusiasts from across Turkey and beyond. Yet few attendees know the real story: how a failed restaurant lease became the catalyst for something far more enduring.

Mehmet Kaya, a session guitarist who spent the early 2010s playing hotel lobbies along İstiklal Caddesi, recalls the turning point clearly. He had secured a small venue near Tophane—a 60-square-metre space wedged between a spice merchant and a print shop—intending to open a supper club. When the landlord cancelled three weeks before opening, Kaya found himself with a summer calendar and nowhere to play. Rather than abandon the idea, he called two saxophonists and a bassist he knew from the Nurbanu Kaya Cultural Centre's jam sessions. They decided to perform in the street itself.

"We literally put out chairs in Galata Dervish Street," Kaya recalled in a 2024 interview with a local arts publication. "Maybe 30 people came the first night. Half were tourists who wandered in by accident." Yet word spread through Istanbul's tight-knit jazz community, transmitted through WhatsApp groups and Instagram stories rather than formal marketing. By week three, crowds had swelled to 200. Neighbouring café owners, seeing foot traffic increase, began offering free Turkish coffee to musicians. A bookshop owner two doors down opened late specifically for festival nights.

Today, the Istanbul Underground Jazz Festival (as it was formally named in 2021) spans 18 neighbourhoods across the city—from Balat's Byzantine alleyways to Bebek's waterfront clubs—with 47 venues participating. The festival runs for three weeks each July, drawing an estimated 15,000 visitors and generating roughly $800,000 in direct revenue for participating businesses, according to a 2025 study by Istanbul's Chamber of Commerce.

What distinguishes this festival from more corporate-sponsored events is governance by musicians themselves. A rotating 12-member curatorial board—all working jazz performers—decides programming, selects emerging talent, and maintains what they call "artistic integrity over sponsorship pressure." This approach has occasionally meant rejecting lucrative deals from international beer brands and telecommunications companies.

As Kaya prepares for this year's festival opening on July 10th, the irony isn't lost on him: a cancelled restaurant lease created something far more valuable to the city than any business plan could have predicted. Istanbul's jazz scene, once fragmented and marginalised, now has a platform built entirely by those who play the music.

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