Photoworks Festival: Un/Stable: Lands, Anxieties, Dreams

Photoworks Festival returns to Brighton on 2 October 2026, with this edition running through to 1 November. It's a biennial platform for international contemporary photography run by the charity Photoworks, and this year's theme is Un/Stable: Lands, Anxieties, Dreams.

That title sets the tone for the whole thing. It looks at the geographical, psychological and metaphysical currents of life, culture and the environment, and the fragile states where personal and collective geographies tremble. It asks what becomes of those territories when they shift, and opens up speculative spaces of care, resistance and reimagining. The festival isn't just one thing, either: it brings together exhibitions, artist talks, tours, portfolio reviews, publications and workshops, staged in partnership with Brighton Museums, Photo Fringe, Marlborough Productions, Dreamy Place, Spectrum Photographic, POST, the Italian Cultural Institute and Arts Council England.

One of the biggest parts of the programme is the conference on 2 October, co-produced with the Photography Research Group at the University of Brighton. It pushes the theme further, framing photography alongside ecological entanglements, cosmotechnics and geological and technological anxieties. The speaker list is a long one: Holly Birtles, Annebella Pollen, Duncan Wooldridge, Aindreas Scholz, Zoe Childerley, Diane Smyth, Feiyi Wen, Eugénie Shinkle, Tsz Wai Pun, Coşkun Güçlü, Nieves Mingueza, Rachel Gillies, Mireia Ludevid, Jermaine Francis, Deborah Ireland, Jane Robb, Fergus Heron, Aliki Braine, Julia Winckler and Stephen Bull.

If you're heading to the conference, it's a full day at the University of Brighton, School of Art and Media, running 9.30am to 6pm. The morning is at 154 Edward Street, BN2 0JG, and the afternoon moves to 58-67 Grand Parade, BN2 0JY. Tickets are £15 standard, £10 concession, and £25 for supporters, and it's free for Photoworks Friends. The rest of the festival continues across the city until 1 November.