The Biel\/Bienne Festival of Photography has been celebrating contemporary photography for more than 25 years. As the only annual festival of new photography in Switzerland, it has been able to position itself on the national cultural scene, while also building its international presence and networks. Each year during the month of May, venues both familiar and new in the city of Biel\/Bienne are taken over by works and projects by some twenty Swiss and international photographers, which can be experienced in the form of a photographic walking tour. As well, thanks to our many partners, the exhibitions are complemented by a rich programme of events, including professional meetings, guided tours, talks and performances. Held in a bilingual city in the centre of Switzerland, the festival also develops each year projects that go out across Switzerland and abroad.<\/p>\n
The 2026 edition of the festival places vulnerability at its core \u2014 not as an individual weakness, but as a shared social and political condition: a common good. In a world shaped by multiple crises, the Biel\/Bienne Festival of Photography brings together photographic practices that do more than document reality. These works create connections, revealoften unseen or marginalised experiences, and open spaces of attention, care, and sensitivity.<\/p>\n
The programme unfolds across four main thematic axes:
\n\u2013 feminisms and body politics,
\n\u2013 affective ecologies and relationships with the living world,
\n\u2013 narratives of migration and hospitality,
\n\u2013 reparative artistic gestures, in which images become spaces of care, memory, resistance, and visual justice.<\/p>\n