A Guide To April 2026 Photography Festivals & Exhibitions

EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival, The Heart Of The Matter by Carrie Mae Weems at FOMU, Fotografia Europea, Kyotographie, Photobooks Switzerland, and Bolol by Eva Diallo at Photoforum Pasquart are among the photography events to visit next month.

EXPOSED Torino Foto Festival 2026

Turin, Italy / 9 April - 2 June

The third edition of EXPOSED Torino Photo Festival is curated and produced by CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, under the artistic direction of Walter Guadagnini. This year's theme, Mettersi a nudo (My Heart Laid Bare), carries a perspective that permeates the entire festival program, containing exhibitions, talks, events, and city-wide initiatives, engaging both national and international artists and institutions.

Exhibited artists include Toni Thorimbert, Yorgos Lanthimos, Bernard Plossu, Dean Chalkley, Paola Agosti, Diana Markosian, Fabio Bucciarelli, Enrico Gili, Deka Mohamed Osman, Marco Rubiola, Ralph Gibson, Karla Hiraldo Voleau, Paolo Ventura, Claudia Amatruda, Máté Bartha, Benedetta Casagrande, Anna Orlowska, Ada Zielinska, Yana Wernicke, Mark Leckey, Federica Belli, Silvia Camporesi, Sara Lorusso, Claudio Majorana, Zoe Natale Mannella, Fabio Paleari, Camillo Pasquarelli, Leila Erdman Tabukashvili, and more.

Find the complete program at EXPOSED Torino Photo Festival's website.

The Heart Of The Matter by Carrie Mae Weems at FOMU

Antwerp, Belgium / 20 March - 23 August

Curated by Sarah Hermanson Meister, The Heart Of The Matter comprises more than 100 photographs and videos by American artist Carrie Mae Weems, marking her first retrospective in Belgium. The exhibition includes landmark works such as Museums (2006) and Kitchen Table Series (1990). Especially for this exhibition, Weems created the series Preach (2024), which points to the importance of faith both personally and societally. In this series, the art and architecture of spirituality emerge as powerful forms of resistance.

Weems often appears in her photos as a subject, a guide, and a muse. Her experiences as a Black woman inform her exploration of ‘forgotten’ histories. Her work invokes personal stories to address the complexities and injustices of the world around us.

Find out more on the FOMU’s website.

Fotografia Europea 2026

Reggio Emilia, Italy / 30 Apr - 14 Jun

Fotografia Europea returns to Reggio Emilia for its 21st edition, under the artistic direction of Arianna Catania, Tim Clark, Walter Guadagnini, and Luce Lebart. The festival takes place across different locations in the city, and a rich program of events, conferences, screenings, workshops, portfolio reviews, and site-specific performances accompanies the exhibitions. This year’s theme, Ghosts Of The Moment, serves as a call to action; it invites visitors to seek out the unseen and the invisible, opening up new paths for the imagination.

Among the displayed artists are Felipe Romero Beltrán, Mohamed Hassan, Salvatore Vitale, Marine Lanier, Ola Rindal, Giulia Vanelli, Tania Franco Klein, Frédéric D. Oberland, Simona Ghizzoni, Emilia Martin, Federica Mambrini, Elena Bellantoni, Susanna De Vido, Karim El Maktafi, Alice Jankovic, Cinzia Laliscia, Anie Maki, Eva Rivas Bao, and Federica Torrent.

For more details, go to Fotografia Europea's website.

Kyotographie 2026

Kyoto, Japan / 18 April - 17 May

Kyotographie presents a compelling main program under the theme Edge, bringing together 13 photographers and artists from 8 countries to explore experimental image-making, social and historical peripheries, urban and technological thresholds, humanity's encounter with nature at its extremes, and much more.

Among the exhibiting artists are Daido Moriyama, Linder Sterling, Juliette Agnel, Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, Atsushi Fukushima, Thandiwe Muriu, Federico Estol, Anton Corbijn, Sari Shibata, Fatma Hassona, Lebohang Kganye, Pieter Hugo, and Ernest Cole. Beyond the main exhibitions, the festival once again takes over Kyoto with a citywide program of talks, workshops, and events that invite discovery and dialogue.

Discover more at Kyotographie's website.

Non Technological Devices by Chloé Azzopardi at Centre De La Photographie Genève

Geneva, Switzerland / 1 April - 15 May

In the exhibition curated by Aline Bovard Rudaz and Danaé Panchaud, Azzopardi's work is a speculative fiction in which the artist explores other forms of cohabitation with living beings and opens up avenues for reflection on what could be an iconography of ecological self-defence.

The ‘non-technological devices’ are composite tools made from natural elements gathered and assembled to mimic the technological objects that populate our daily lives. Between rudimentary productions and science fiction creations, these artefacts are as much extensions of the body as they are hindrances.

Find out more at the Centre de la photographie Genève's website.

Photobooks Switzerland 2026

Geneva, Switzerland / 24 April - 26 April

With a new partnership with Bibliothèque de Genève, the sixth edition of Photobooks Switzerland invites anyone curious about photography and publishing, presenting a rich programme of workshops, the photobook fair, an exhibition, talks, portfolio reviews, and a Dummy Clinic.

The event aims to make the photobook and its Swiss and European independent publishers better known to a broad audience, in particular those whose publications are not always easy to find in Swiss bookshops.

Further information is available on the Photobooks Switzerland website.

Bolol by Eva Diallo at Photoforum Pasquart

Biel/Bienne, Switzerland / 20 February - 26 April

Bolol is an exhibition by artist Eva Diallo and curator Julie Bonzon that explores the overlooked realities of migration by focusing on the physical journey – its vast distances and fragile traces – rather than the spectacle of arrival. Eschewing the rapid circulation of topical imagery, Diallo uses photography, video, and installation to weave together archival fragments and poetic narratives into a space of material reflection. Supported by Pro Helvetia, the project highlights Diallo’s sensitive, multi-layered visual storytelling and Bonzon’s expertise in decolonial lens-based practices.

Read more on Photoforum Pasquart's website.

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Also open this month:

Budapest Photo Festival 2026 / Budapest, Hungary / 27 March - 15 May

The 10th edition of the Budapest Photo Festival was hosted in Hungary’s capital. The festival is an annual city-wide event that brings together contemporary and historical photography through exhibitions, public programmes, and professional events. It aims to position Budapest as a “city of photography” by connecting local and international artists, galleries, museums, and cultural institutes. Each edition features a major international opening exhibition and a survey of contemporary Hungarian photography, alongside numerous shows, talks, workshops, portfolio reviews, and educational programmes held across the city.

Across The Water by Michelle Piergoelam at Foto Arsenal Wien / Vienna, Austria /
31 January - 10 May

Across The Water focuses on the largely invisible history of the Surinamese diaspora in the Netherlands to which her family belongs. Piergoelam interweaves myths, dreams, and memories to create new visual narratives. She examines songs that were sung, knowledge about plants that was passed on from generation to generation, and the bonds within African Surinamese culture. In densely atmospheric photographs that oscillate between reality and fiction, documentary approaches meet narrative imagery. Piergolam’s artistic language is just as complex as her topics. The exhibition at Foto Arsenal Wien, curated by Marit Lena Herrmann, allows visitors to experience this complex narrative style in a spatial way.

Familial at Centre For Contemporary Photography / Hawthorn, Australia / 11 February - 26 April

The exhibition brings together artists Taysir Batniji, EJ Hassan, Nur Aishah Kenton, Mariela Sancari, Abigail Varney, and Annie Wang, who reflect on the complexities of connection across time, presence, and loss, in a meditation on love, longing, and the enduring imprints our closest relationships leave behind. Familial reveals sons and daughters photographing parents, and parents photographing children – sometimes slowly over decades, sometimes with urgency. This exhibition shows us that to photograph another person is to know them differently, to see them afresh; and that to see the images made by a parent or an offspring is to see the world anew.