Photoworks Festival 2026 opens across Brighton & Hove on Friday 2 October and runs until 1 November. It’s one of the UK’s biggest photography festivals, and if you’re anywhere in the south of England it’s well worth a day trip, or a few.
This year’s theme is Un/Stable: Lands, Anxieties, Dreams. Photoworks describes it as exploring “the precarity and possibility of this moment, alongside our collective futures.” That’s a broad brief. From what we’ve seen of the programme, it covers everything from landscape and environmental work to archives, identity and war.
The exhibitions
There are 14 exhibitions spread across the city, from major museums to small independent spaces. The ones we’d put at the top of the list are:
- Tessa Boffin: Where We Touch The Archive, Draft 3 at Phoenix Art Space (2–18 October). This revisits the work of Tessa Boffin, a key figure in queer British photography in the late 1980s and early 1990s. A full-day symposium on 9 October goes with it.
- Playing With Your Eyes at Hove Museum of Creativity (2 October–18 January 2027)
- And So I Watch You From Afar and The Most Beautiful Anthropocene at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery (2 October–18 January 2027)
- The Weight of the Earth and Dark Matters and Other Geographies at the University of Brighton’s First Floor Gallery (2 October–1 November)
- Ukraine: Life Un/Broken at POST (16–18 October only)
For photobook fans there’s also Photobook Table: Un/Stable Pages at Whistleblower Gallery (2–25 October). The Hove and Brighton Museum shows run well into January, so you can still catch those if you miss the festival month itself. The full list is on the Photoworks Festival exhibitions page.
Talks, reviews and workshops
The opening day is the busiest. A one-day conference, also called Un/Stable: Lands, Anxieties, Dreams, runs at the University of Brighton’s School of Art and Media from 9.30am to 6pm. It’s followed by free exhibition openings across the city from 6pm to 8pm.
Photographers looking for feedback should note the Open Portfolios session at POST on Saturday 3 October, from 5pm to 6.30pm. Later in the month there’s an artist talk with Holly Birtles at POST on 6 October, and a Photobook Club with Amin Yousefi on 20 October. A run of workshops from 24 to 31 October includes digital photography and pinhole processes, which is good news for anyone who, like us, still likes to get their hands wet.
There’s also a Mini Photographers family day on 3 October for anyone bringing younger shooters.
Our take
Festivals like this are where you see photography doing more than selling kit. The theme is timely. Many of the shows sit in free public spaces, like Jubilee Library and the university galleries, which makes it an easy festival to dip into. If you only have a day, we’d pick the opening Friday or the Saturday for portfolio reviews. Then head back later in the month for the pinhole workshops.
Dates, venues and tickets
Photoworks Festival 2026 runs from 2 October to 1 November 2026 at venues across Brighton & Hove. The exhibition openings on 2 October are free. Prices for the conference, talks and workshops are listed on the individual event pages at photoworks.org.uk/festival2026/events. Full festival details are on the official Photoworks Festival 2026 website.
