Our twelfth biennial, open-platform photography festival runs during October 2026 with over a hundred exhibitions and events online and in venues across our home city of Brighton & Hove and along the south coast from Portsmouth to Newhaven.

This year, Photo Fringe returns with a refreshed focus on the grassroots values that have shaped the festival since 2003: artist-led participation, experimentation, community connection and self-curated exhibitions.

Each edition, Photo Fringe invites artists to respond to a shared theme in ways that reflect their own practice.

Our 2026 theme, Feedback Loop, explores how ideas, images and relationships are shaped through exchange. Photography doesn’t happen in isolation; it evolves through constant conversation, collaboration and circulation. 

This year’s festival celebrates the creative potential of working collectively.

Producer Ricardo Reverón Blanco says:

“Photo Fringe is built on connection. With this edition, we’re putting artists, communities and collective thinking at the heart of the 2026 festival, opening up new collaborations and conversations about where Photo Fringe goes next.”

The festival will feature over 30 self-curated exhibitions across Brighton and Hove, Newhaven and Portsmouth as well as online.

Our Collectives’ Hub will return to Phoenix Art Space, continuing its focus on collective practice and collaboration. This exhibition will respond to Phoenix’s 2026 theme, Future Histories, which encourages us to explore the ways in which the past continues to inform, configure, and sometimes overshadow the present, and compels us to consider how our actions today will shape the history of tomorrow.

Photo Fringe will also partner with Marine Workshop, Newhaven, to present solo or group exhibitions selected through open call. Building on existing partnerships, the festival will work again with Aspex Portsmouth and Pompey Darkroom, developing artist-led activity that strengthens creative exchange between photographic communities.

OPEN ECO will run again on Brighton seafront and our OPEN Young Photographers (14-18) will be presented at Marine Workshops in Newhaven as well as a weekender at Playland in Portsmouth. 

Photo Fringe runs alongside the Photoworks Festival across Brighton & Hove (2-4 October)