THE 12th JIMEI × ARLES INTERNATIONAL PHOTO FESTIVAL
The 2026 Jimei × Arles International Photo Festival will open in Xiamen on November 20 and run until January 3, 2027, with Jimei Art Centre and Three Shadows Xiamen Photography Art Centre serving as its main venues. Early-bird tickets are on sale now!
The Jimei × Arles International Photo Festival is a major annual event for photography and moving image in Asia and the only international platform for exchange in these fields in China to maintain a long-term partnership with Les Rencontres d'Arles in France. Since its founding in Jimei District, Xiamen, in 2015, the festival has sustained this partnership for eleven years, bringing selected exhibitions from each year's Les Rencontres d'Arles to China while offering international audiences an important window onto contemporary Chinese photography and moving-image practices. Over these eleven years, Jimei × Arles has placed professional curatorial practice and international exchange at its core, presenting the diversity and evolving directions of image-making worldwide. It has also championed the practices and research of artists of Chinese heritage, creating further opportunities for their participation in the global art ecosystem through international collaboration. To date, Jimei × Arles has presented more than 330 exhibitions featuring works by nearly 800 artists, hosted over 850 public events, and welcomed approximately 600,000 visits.
Jimei × Arles is presented and produced by Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, with Xiamen Tianxia Jimei Media Co., Ltd. as co-producer, and co-presented by Les Rencontres d'Arles.
Now in its twelfth edition, Jimei × Arles will present more than 30 exhibitions, bringing together almost 2,000 works from countries and regions including China, France, Switzerland, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, and Norway, spanning photography, moving image, installation, and multimedia. The programme encompasses Exhibitions from Arles, the Jimei × Arles Discovery Award, Curatorial Programme for Photography and Moving Image: Showcase, China Pulse, Greetings from Asia, Collector's Tale, Crossover Photography, Luminous Motion, Spotlight and Isles Project. This year, the festival highlights moving image through the Luminous Motion section and, in collaboration with SmallRig, introduces the inaugural New Motion Award to support creative practice in this field. Special exhibitions will include the Ricoh GR “Year-Round Without Pause” Special Exhibition; Deep Currents: Norwegian Narratives from Deep Space to the Deep Ocean, presented as part of Nordic Express; and SHANG CHENG SHI: Rooted in the East. The festival will also launch a new section, the Art Fair. Together, these sections approach contemporary photography and moving image through international artistic practices, the work of emerging artists, photography collecting, moving image, cross-media practices, and local culture, exploring how image-based art continues to move beyond the boundaries of its media and expand its forms of expression.
As one of the festival's signature initiatives, the Jimei × Arles Discovery Award has been dedicated since its inception to discovering and promoting artists of Chinese heritage working with photography and moving image. Through its sustained attention to emerging voices in contemporary photography, the award has become an important window onto the development of contemporary Chinese photography. Each year's winning artist is invited to present a solo exhibition at Les Rencontres d'Arles in France the following year, creating an ongoing pathway to the international stage for artists of Chinese heritage.
Returning for its third edition just ahead of the opening week, the Jimei × Arles "Curatorial Seminar for Photography and Moving Image" is the core pillar of the "Curatorial Program for Photography and Moving Image", supported by CHANEL. This non-profit curatorial course engages with the multifaceted and cutting-edge photographic works showcased during the festival, gathering interdisciplinary experts to empower the ongoing development of emerging curators and researchers. Additionally, following a year-long process of incubation and in-depth development, one of the projects from the 2025/26 "Curatorial Program" will be realised at this year's festival.
Furthermore, the global visual culture series “SmallRig Onsite” will delve into Jimei × Arles, capturing live highlights and in-depth content for a wider audience.
During the Opening Week, from November 20 to 22, Jimei × Arles will present a rich programme of events, including the opening ceremony, talks and discussions, guided tours, portfolio reviews, performances, and parties. The winners of the “Jimei × Arles Discovery Award” and the “SmallRig New Motion Award” will also be announced. Artists, curators, researchers, media representatives, and art enthusiasts from diverse cultural backgrounds will gather in Jimei, Xiamen, to celebrate the opening of this year's festival. Stay tuned for more updates!