Fotofestiwal Open Call 2026

Fotofestiwal invites artists to present their works to the audience of the International Festival of Photography held in June 2026 in Łódź, Poland.

Overview

The Fotofestiwal Open Program gives an opportunity to artists with exceptional personalities and projects which present bold visions. The call invites specialists from the world's most important media and photographic institutions to join the jury. From among the submitted projects, the jury will select six which, in cooperation with the curators of the festival, will be presented in the form of an exhibition.

From the submitted projects, Fotofestiwal nominates at least one artist each year for the FUTURES program. FUTURES is a Europe-based photography platform bringing together the global photography community to support and nurture the professional development of emerging artists across the world.

From all projects, Fotofestiwal selects one for a publication in Pismo' magazine. Pismo' is an independent media project run by the Pismo Foundation. It is a monthly magazine publishing investigative reporting, non-fiction, fiction and image (illustrations, comic stories and photo reportages). Pismo also produces non-fiction podcast series like Pismo Investigation or the The Sámi: Scandinavia's Guilty Conscience.

Practical Info

Applicants must submit a complete photo projects including 10 to 20 photos with no thematic or age limits. Each participant can submit up to two projects. Selected authors receive an exhibition during the festival in Łódź (for 6 artists), a €1,000 artistic fee, accommodation for the main opening weekend of the festival, reimbursement of travel costs up to €300, and a €500 exhibition production budget.

Jury is composed of Viktoria Bavykina (Curator and sociologist of culture), Monica Allende (Curator, creative director), Franek Ammer (Curator of Fotofestiwal in Lodz), Mohamed Somji (Director of Gulf Photo Plus), and Justyna Kociszewska (Co-director of Institute of Photography Fort).

Among the previous selected artists are Claudia Fuggetti, Akshay Mahajan, Carlos Idun-Tawiah, Emilia Martin, Hannes Jung, and Massimiliano Corteselli.

About Fotofestiwal

Fotofestiwal was established in 2001 as one of the first photography events in Poland. Since then it has grown into one of the most relevant photographic festivals in Europe but its core mission has not changed: presenting photography in its various ways (via exhibitions, films, slideshows, workshops etc.) but also talking about important social issues and introducing the unobvious beauty and unique history of our city to the audience. For such reason they organize thematic exhibitions in various post-industrial spaces, which Łódź is well known for, they put stress on networking parties – (they are quite famous for those), but also every year they try to develop new ways of talking about photography: via events such as Photo-Match: Completely Different Portfolio Review, during which they focus on having equal status granted to the curators as well as artists, with formula of presentation that numerous festivals are applying worldwide now with a success. Since 2016 they work as a collective, with no board of directors, developing a new way of cultural institution management.