The main organizers of the festival are the National Theatre Craiova (represented by its General Managing Director, Mircea Cornisteanu) and the "William Shakespeare" Foundation (presided by Emil Boroghina), and, since 2006, it has also taken place in Bucharest, in collaboration with Arcub, the Centre for Cultural Projects of the Bucharest City Hall and the General Council. Another important contributor is the Romanian Cultural Institute.
The Festival is mainly funded by the Ministry of Culture, the Government of Romania, Craiova local administration for the events in Craiova, and Bucharest City Hall and General Council for the events in Bucharest.
The Festival's aim has been to invite to Romania the most important Shakespearean performances staged in the countries with a long theatrical tradition, from Europe and worldwide. The first editions were represented mostly by Romanian performances, but also by foreign ones directed by reputed international directors.
In 2008, the Festival's motto was "Great Directors, Great Performances, Great Theatres of Europe and of the World", and it gathered on its poster the names of some of the most famous international directors such as: Peter Brook, Robert Wilson, Declan Donnellan, Lev Dodin, Eimuntas Nekrosius, and Silviu Purcarete. The 2010 Festival was dedicated to only one play: "Hamlet". The presentation of Shakespeare's masterpiece in different directorial visions and interpretations (Thomas Ostermeier, Oskaras Korsunovas, Monika Pecikiewicz, Yoshihiro Kurita, Yun Taek-Lee, Elizabeth LeCompte, Eimuntas Nekrosius etc.) represented an opportunity for theatre professionals and audiences to compare, discuss, comment, and debate. The motto of the ample program of the 2010 festival was: "The time is out of joint: O cursed spite/ That ever I was born to set it right", and was meant to invite everybody to think about the responsibility of all of us regarding the great questions and problems of humanity. The motto of the 2012 International Shakespeare Festival in Romania will be: "The world is a stage, and we are the actors".
The Festival also includes seminars and conferences, workshops on acting, directing, design and criticism, film projections of famous performances, symphonic concerts, theatre design, painting, photographic, and philatelic exhibitions, as well as theatre book and DVD launches.
Numerous foreign and Romanian theatre critics attending the festival throughout the years have spoken of the event's high standard and placed it among the best thematic festivals in Europe. The Theatre Union of Romania granted the International Shakespeare Festival its most important award, the Prize for Excellency.