Helsinki Analog Festival 2026 Open Call

The Helsinki Analog Festival 2026 invites artists worldwide to submit analog, handmade, and experimental works, across various mediums, welcoming submissions that celebrate materiality and craftsmanship.

Overview

The Helsinki Analog Festival (HAF) is looking for visual artists around the world who work with analog processes, inviting them to submit new work for a special Analog Practice exhibition at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki, Finland, to be held in April 2026. This international open call highlights artists who value materiality, craftsmanship, and experimentation in a world increasingly dominated by digital means.

For 2026, the festival centers on the theme Body, underlining a celebration of embodied artistic practices in contrast with the rampant virtual experience of our times. HAF encourages projects that emphasize slow-making, physical engagement, and sensory presence, favoring handmade or analog processes.

Practical Info

Proposed artworks must be created using analog, traditional processes, employing manual, non-digital techniques and physical media rather than digital tools such as computers, tablets, or software. The artist works directly with the materials, often producing unique characteristics and imperfections that are valued as part of the artistic expression. Each piece is typically one-of-a-kind or produced in limited editions. While some digital steps in image production are allowed, the final work must rely primarily on analog methods.

Submissions should be recent (from 2020 onward). Selected artists will be informed in January 2026, and works must be sent by 1 March 2026 to be part of the April–May exhibition. A total of 10 artists will be chosen to show in the exhibition at Gallery Hippolyte from 2 April to 3 May 2026.

Selected artists will receive a €500 expense allowance, courtesy of the Finnish Darkroom Association, to help with transport or materials.

About Helsinki Analog Festival

The Helsinki Analog Festival is organized by the Finnish Darkroom Association, a non-profit organisation founded in 2016 with the purpose of ensuring the preservation of analog photography. The mission of the association is to share and develop the skills and craft of darkroom printing in Finland, to support the network of individuals and organisations in the field and to create international cooperation. The association has built and continues to maintain Mörk, a fully equipped, professional black and white darkroom.

Photographic Gallery Hippolyte is an exhibition space for contemporary art. The program focuses on photographic art and its extended field. Inside the gallery there is a bookshop specializing in volumes of photographic art. Hippolyte is an artist-run, non-profit organisation managed by the Association of Photographic Artists.