Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art 2026

Over the course of the festival’s 18-day run, Glasgow International celebrates the city’s identity as a vibrant and distinctive centre for artistic production and cultural organising, and for experiencing contemporary art.

The 2026 Glasgow International programme presents works with a broad range of perspectives, activating civic, municipal, off-site and cultural venues across the city. The programme supports experimentation, critical discourse, congregation and discussion. Projects and ideas are developed with tenderness, care and empathy exploring personal and ancestral memory, impermanence, solidarity, kinship, loss, poetry and joy. Alongside the festival projects, Glasgow International will host the second iteration of Gatherings, a series of free events that take inspiration from programmatic ideas. Gatherings piloted in 2024 is a public programme of artists, artworks, research, discussion and congregation. Acting as the “brain” of the festival, Gatherings 2026 will provide a platform for collating and discussing ideas and strands from the programme, and from a network of local and international collaborators. The visual identity for Glasgow International 2026 is a continuation of the collaborative work between artist Matthew Arthur Williams and designer Maeve Redmond. It is developed through a series of examinations, observing the artefact as object. Using material that is tethered to the social and material histories of Glasgow’s environment and architecture, the two have produced a still life tableau of the city, which again reflects the works in progress currently being created for the festival itself.

What to expect:
Installation, Digital, Performance / Live Art, Multi-disciplinary