FESTIVAL 2027

With the next edition in 2027, the festival becomes biennial and more clearly defines its position: a space for encounters between artistic practices and the territory, where photography becomes a tool for observation, relation, and cultural impulse. This shift to a biennial format arises from the need to consolidate this path, allowing more time for curatorial research, the development of meaningful collaborations, and the creation of projects capable of engaging in a deeper dialogue with the Verzasca Valley.

Within this framework, the launch of the open call is introduced as a free-entry initiative designed as a tool for openness and discovery. The open call expands the festival’s field of research, bringing in emerging practices and diverse perspectives, and helps identify projects aligned with the themes, values, and territorial dimension that define Verzasca Foto Festival. It is an invitation to participate, but also a way to gradually build a broader network of artists and interlocutors.

Our open call officially closed on 10 June. Thank you so much for your participation and for sharing your work with us. Selected artists will be contacted by the end of the month.

OPEN CALL 2027

We are looking for photographic projects developed over time through a direct relationship with peripheral, rural, and marginal places, regardless of the background of those who make them.

We are interested in perspectives capable of revealing living, rooted, and often invisible practices: everyday gestures that sustain landscapes, economies, languages, and relationships. This is not about representing marginality as a condition, but about entering into dialogue with realities often far from dominant centres, without idealisation or simplification.

We are interested in perspectives capable of inhabiting the contradictions of these territories: between isolation and connection, fragility and autonomy, loss and reinvention.

We are looking for photographic stories in which the creative act emerges from marginal geographies, or through the artist’s prolonged presence within them, generating autonomous forms of cultural and social activation, and opening concrete possibilities for reading the present and imagining possible futures.

Information and conditions:

• Open call submissions are free of charge and open to everyone.

• You may submit a photo series taken anytime and anywhere (keeping in mind the exhibition concept).

• Verzasca Foto Festival covers the production costs of the exhibitions.

• A participation fee will be granted to selected artists.

• With your submission, you may also include a slide/video for projection. This is optional and will not affect the selection process.

• Selected artists will be contacted by email at the end of June 2026.

  *Important note: participation in the open call is free of charge. For reasons of organisational sustainability, feedback will not be provided on all submitted projects; only selected artists will be contacted by email.

DEADLINE: 10 JUNE 2026