Open Panoràmic 2026

Those working with image based practices are asked to respond to the theme Burning With Desire. Shortlisted applicants will receive a cash award and have their work exhibited at Panoràmic 2026 in Barcelona, Spain.

Overview

Panoràmic is a festival of arts and visual cultures that explores the relationship between disciplines such as cinema, photography, and emerging image-based practices. Each edition is built around a central theme explored through the many forms and representations of the image. This tenth edition revolves around the concept: Burning With Desire.

On the bicentenary of photography, rather than merely celebrating an invention, the Panoràmic festival seeks to honour the radical transformation of the modern ways of seeing. They commemorate the humble heliograph that Nicéphore Niépce captured from the window of his home in 1826; the oldest surviving photographic image. Since that view was fixed on a photosensitive surface, humanity has learned to examine itself through a formidable tool for constructing narrative, identity, memory, truth, and fantasy.

Photography and, later, cinema have not been mere technologies of representation; they have been active forces of emotional, social, and political change. They have shaped collective imaginaries, legitimised power, and fuelled resistance. They have served as instruments of proof and deception, of denunciation and propaganda, of poetry and symbolic violence. They have documented revolutions and defeats; they have furthered emancipation as well as surveillance; they have made invisible lives visible, in both poetry and control.

In assessing this dense trajectory, Panoràmic positions photography and cinema as practices of desire: the desire for memory, the desire for justice, the desire for beauty, the desire for permanence in the face of the ephemeral, the desire to exist. A desire that burns because it can never be fully satisfied, as each image generates a renewed need to look, to understand, to begin again.

This year's theme, then, beyond paying tribute to the pioneers and to two centuries of photographic production, is also a question addressed to the present: what makes us burn today in a world so saturated with images? What makes us burn when images not only reveal the world but also replace it? “Burning with desire” is thus an invitation to revisit these two hundred years not through nostalgic chronology, but through the living tension between past and future. In an age saturated with images, in which artificial intelligence produces visions without body or time, what does it mean to photograph today? What does it mean, even now, to believe in the testimonial power of an image? How can we preserve the critical, poetic, and political potential of photography?

Practical Info

There are three categories photographers can apply to.

Still Image: Projects must be specifically conceived for exhibition. Submissions must include a project description, details of materials or media, and a proposed installation plan. Both single works and series are eligible. Transport, installation, and deinstallation conditions will be agreed upon between the festival and the selected artist, if necessary.

Audiovisual Essay: Submissions must take the form of an audiovisual essay (film, cinematic, or video essay). The project should develop a reflection on the festival’s theme, engaging with documentary, experimental cinema, video art, or the broader field of non-fiction. Format: .MOV or .MP4. Duration: minimum 5 minutes / maximum 18 minutes.

Installation & Other Formats: This category is intended for projects in which still or moving image is not the primary medium, yet visual culture remains central. It includes installation, performance, and technological approaches such as apps, interactive formats or virtual reality.

Each of the nine finalists will receive a fee of €400 and will take part in the Open Panoràmic exhibition at Fundació Lluís Coromina in Barcelona, Spain, during Panoràmic 2026. Among the finalists, a special mention will be awarded in each category, accompanied by a €1,000 prize.

About Panoràmic

Panoràmic proposes a space of knowledge and reflection between the still image and the moving image. And it does so by deploying all the areas where the image is present to us, that is, through screenings of feature films and short films, video, video installations, video games, mappings, exhibitions, workshops, conferences, workshops, TV, installations facilities, archives, bibliography, photo books or interactive projects among others.

Panoràmic is consolidating itself as a reference festival for culture that is shown through the visual arts expanded into multiple forms and creative processes. The festival is directed by Joan Fontcuberta, Laia Casanova and Albert Gusi, and has an advisory team made up of Andrés Hispano, Mercè Alsina and Fèlix Pérez-Hita.