About Call

An Open Call for Fotofestiwal Open Program gives you an opportunity to present your works to the audience of the International Festival of Photography held in June 2026 in Łódź (Poland). We are looking for artists with exceptional personalities and projects which present bold visions. The call for entries is open – with no thematic or age limits. We invite 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 Fotofestiwal, will be presented in the form of an exhibition.

From the submitted projects, we also nominate 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, one will be selected to receive another award - 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.

What selected authors receive

• Exhibition during FOTOFESTIWAL in Łódź (over 20.000 viewers) for 6 artists
• Artistic fee 1000 euro
• Accommodation for the main opening weekend of the festival
• Reimbursement of travel costs up to 300 euro
• Exhibition production or transportation budget up to 500 euro

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, projections, 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 we organize thematic exhibitions in various post-industrial spaces, which Łódź is well known for, we put stress on networking parties, but also every year we try to develop new ways of talking about photography: via events such as Photo-Match: Completely Different Portfolio Review, during which we 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 we work as a collective, with no board of directors, developing a new way of cultural institution management.

Edition 2026 will take place in Łódź in June.