The UK’s largest annual festival of visual art is set to return to Edinburgh from 14—30 August, presenting alternative perspectives across the breadth of the city.
Our 2026 edition invites you to gather around alternative queer images in Edinburgh, Japanese fetish prints, community-held stories, living, breathing sound collections, string performances from Golan Heights, reimagined relics overlooking the city, and late-night parties in a sculpture park. Bringing together galleries and community spaces from across Edinburgh with a programme of genre-pushing commissions, the festival creates a unique moment in time for artist-driven work like no other.
Explore the line-up, and be the first to book tickets to our biggest live events — and watch for the full online launch on 28 May.
EAF REVEAL 2026 PROGRAMME ACROSS THE CITY
EAF are pleased to announce the 2026 programme for the city wide festival taking place from Friday 14 — Sunday 30 August.
“Our 2026 edition invites you into a programme gathering around alternative archives, queer histories, community-held stories, and living sound collections, and the urgency of what we are witnessing at this time. Across the city, dance and experimental performance unfold as sites of
release, where bodies become vessels for expression, resistance, and connection. From intimate gestures to large-scale interventions, the programme offers moments of reflection alongside collective energy.” says Kim McAleese, EAF Director
A new home for EAF in and around Edinburgh’s Shore will show a set of new exhibitions curated by EAF. At EAF’s new permanent space at 92 Constitution Street, Love Bites Back is an exhibition of work by Del LaGrace Volcano drawn from the Queer Archive of Resistance, focusing on photographs made in the UK, including Edinburgh, between 1982 and 1995. The title nods to Volcano’s first monograph, Love Bites, published by Gay Men’s Press in 1991 to considerable controversy. Emerging from lived involvement in queer identity, leather dyke culture, and embodied politics, these images challenge normative ideas of gender, desire, and power. A sister show at Auto Italia in London, Sensual & Mutual, returns to the early 1980s and to the queer subcultural spaces that both sheltered and shaped Volcano’s Practice.
At Custom Lane, Carnal Desires is a rare exhibition of work by Sadao Hasegawa, revealing the under-recognised and largely unseen work of one of post-war Japan’s most influential gay fetish artists. Celebrated for his depiction of hypermasculine forms, Hasegawa’s paintings blend eroticism with pan-Asian folklore, science fiction, and popular culture, imagining a universe where chiseled men encounter mythic creatures, hybrid animals, and divine bodies unbound by earthly limits. While his illustrations were originally published in gay magazines across the US, UK, and Australia, much of his work has remained virtually inaccessible outside Japan. Also at Custom Lane, for the first time, Ellis Jackson Kroese of Trans Masc Studies presents History is a Home, a research collection that shares a hoard of alternative trans artefacts, a curated selection of publications and a dedicated workspace for visitors’ own use, situating queer history as a place of belonging and connection.
Overlooking the city, EAF presents a newly installed commission by sculptor Emii Alrai, whose colossal, fragmented relics explore the cultural power and contested political histories of archeological ruins. For the first new iteration of PLATFORM early-career artist award, selected artists Moira Salt and Olivia Priya Foster share their work developed as part of the residency through an in-conversation event, in advance of their exhibition in EAF27. The EAF Welcome Space at Brown’s of Leith will also offer a place to arrive, pause, and begin exploring the 2026 programme. Also on The Shore, Bard will present The Archive, an immersive installation with Simon Foxton, menswear stylist turned AI hallucinator, exploring the boundaries of AI as a tool in the context of craft and storytelling.
A focus on archives and photography runs through this year’s festival elsewhere too with the largest ever presentation of photography by Sandra George at City Art Centre. Start from the Level includes over 200 photographs, showcasing George’s powerful and empowering archive and the largest presentation of work by Sandra George to date. She devoted her life to working with communities, documenting and developing vital social-action projects in Edinburgh for over thirty years, from the 1980s onwards. An extensive programme of events at the City Art Centre celebrating her photography including sharing events with family, friends and colleagues, and new responses to her archive of work will also take place. In partnership with Craigmillar Now, there will also be archive deep dive events in Wester Hailes with the Community Wellbeing Collective, where she lived and worked. Craigmillar Now also presents A Magic Lantern, a powerful and sensitive photography exhibition from Niddrie photographer and former community worker Lee McCormack. Lee’s personal, joyful images capture pioneering art and community projects across Scotland between the late 1970s to the early 2000s.
Among People at Stills is a major survey of internationally renowned documentary and portrait photographer Jillian Edelstein. Born in South Africa and now based in London, Edelstein has spent more than forty years documenting people, communities across the world, and defining moments of contemporary history. Wendy McMurdo: The Digital Mirror at National Galleries Scotland: Portrait charts 20 years of McMurdo’s photographic reflections on childhood, the digital world, learning and make-believe. The National Galleries of Scotland is also hosting the first major museum exhibition of Catherine Opie’s work to be shown in Scotland. Taking place at the Royal Scottish Academy, Catherine Opie: To Be Seen showcases nearly 80 photographic portraits by Opie alongside a selection of portraits from Scotland’s national art collection, prompting questions around the who, why and how of portraits. Come face to face with Opie’s mentors and collaborators, queer communities, children, surfers, high school footballers and political crowds that she makes visible through her work, as well as self-portraits of Opie herself. Join Opie and EAF26 artist Del La Grace Volcano for an exclusive conversation on Saturday 15 August.
After working together for a number of years, EAF has partnered more officially with Falastin Film Festival for their final weekend (27–30 August), bringing a dedicated focus on Palestinian and Lebanese artists and filmmakers. The programme foregrounds cultural production as a vital act of witness and solidarity with four days of screenings at the Filmhouse, plus in-conversations and events creating space for reflection, connection, and solidarity. Majazz Project / Palestinian Sound Archive, led by artist Mo’min Swaitat, brings its celebration of music, spoken word and album artwork from historic Palestine to a festival-long installation at the Palestine Museum. The installation and accompanying listening parties will give audiences a chance to experience Swaitat’s extensive archive of records from Palestine and beyond, spanning everything from field recordings of Bedouin weddings to revolutionary albums from the First and Second Intifadas, instrumental tracks, poetry, soul, folk songs and jazz.
EAF will also curate a series of performances across the city. Opening the festival at the Biscuit Factory, Caught Hold of Nothing offers a glimpse into a performance work in progress by Magnus Westwell. In this intimate duet, performed with Océane Robin, Westwell plays live violin to exhaustion, building layered environments in which the body moves through emotional states toward catharsis. The performance will be followed by a DJed launch party, hosted in collaboration with Cardion Arts, kicking off the festival with rapper and poet Mykki Blanco. Closing out the festival, Lawrence Abu Hamdan is an artist and sound investigator whose work probes the hidden politics of listening, exploring how sound shapes memory, testimony, and justice. Zifzafa, presented as a performance in Leith, transforms the act of listening into an encounter: whispers, echoes, and sonic traces fill the space, tracing the intimate and the political, the personal and the systemic. The performance will be presented in partnership with The Common Guild in Glasgow, who will present the Exhibition iteration of Zifzafa and which coincides with the festival.
EAF continues again to support locally based artists and writers as well as those across the country. Writers in Scotland can apply to The Skinny emerging writer scheme to respond to the festival across the city. EAF and Art Monthly are again joining up to offer one writer to join us in Edinburgh to respond to the festival and have their work featured in this well known art periodical as well as have their writing seen by leading editors. For its second iteration, Wysing Art Centre’s Donna Lynas Residency also partners with EAF for the first time, along with John Hansard Gallery and New Contemporaries to support an artist across three years, from 2027, with a fee and materials to support their practice at a pivotal point in their career.
To the West of the City, a Festival within a Festival – Jupiter Rising – is set to unfold. Jupiter Artland will present In Pride, In Piety, In Vigilance, a solo exhibition of new work by Glasgow-based Irish artist and performer Sgàire Wood. With origins in drag, fashion photography and multi-artform nightlife scenes, Wood’s practice is concerned with the layers of meaning behind everyday images, visual performances of identity, pop-cultural symbolism, authenticity and artifice. Jupiter Rising favourite Wood is set to curate the mini festival with a line-up of performance, poetry, late night stage, and more.
Sculptures made by leading artists such as Anne Hardy and Eva Rothschild will be on display at the Talbot Rice Gallery and Fruitmarket. British sculptor Anne Hardy transforms Talbot Rice Gallery’s Georgian Gallery into an immersive space, with sculptures made from cast elements, found materials and earth drawings. In this large-scale installation, Hardy explores landscapes that are both human and post-human by animating the gallery with light, sound, data, and scenography. The Void Presses The Wall is a major exhibition by London-based, Irish artist Eva Rothschild that will inhabit all Fruitmarket’s spaces, enabling the artist – and Fruitmarket’s audiences – to take stock of both recent bodies of work and major new sculptures. Hers are sculptures born of the city and redolent of the urban landscape. Meanwhile, an ambitious new commission by Katie Paterson, co-commissioned with Folkestone Triennial, arrives at Collective. It comprises nearly 200 amulets, each created with materials sourced from endangered landscapes and fragile ecosystems, exploring themes of deep time, geology, and the environment. Memorials to Sausage Politics is a new exhibition by Jamie Fitzpatrick that explores the divisive debate around post-colonial public statuary. Developed through recent residencies at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and Edinburgh Printmakers, the exhibition at Edinburgh Printmakers, features newly commissioned prints and printed sculptures. Esther Castle’s Abundant Parts at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop is a newly commissioned installation and other-worldly garden, where Castle draws a symbolic connection between the non-normative body and weeds: often considered an undesirable presence and removed by gardeners. Also at ESW, Ukrainian duo Kristina Yarosh and Anna Khodkova, working as etchingroom1, present a mural, What a Wonderful Day in a Wonderful World, that gives a message of hope against the background of terrible events. Over at Edinburgh Printmakers, etchingroom1 presents Unexpected Trip, an exhibition of prints, drawings, embroidery and ceramics that reflect the difficult and exhilarating moments of life, underscored by the reminder that “this too shall pass.”
Further presentations include Songs of Innocence & Experience, part II, an exhibition at Ingleby dedicated to celebrating the Caribbean artist Frank Walter through the work of 20 artists who have either responded directly to his paintings, or whose own work has something to say in conversation with his (including Alvaro Barrington, Andrew Cranston, Tal R and Rose Wylie, to name a few). Gwen John: Strange Beauties is the first major retrospective in over forty years dedicated to one of Wales’ most accomplished artists at National Galleries Scotland: Modern Two. At the City Art Centre, Jean F. Watson: An Artistic Legacy explores the legacy of an Edinburgh resident who had a significant impact on the city’s cultural heritage, showing historic and contemporary Scottish artworks acquired over the last 65 years through the Jean F. Watson Bequest Fund. Stephen Bird: Circular Thoughts at The Scottish Gallery explores the entanglements between environment, place, and human experience through layered narratives, dualities, and paradoxes. Developed through recent travels in Scotland and Europe, the work engages with cultural exchange, political histories, and artistic traditions, from Dundee’s connections with Palestine, to encounters with historic collections in Rome. Kate Downie: Grasslands in the same gallery is a major exhibition combining drawing, experimental printmaking, painting, and film, inspired by close observation of Scotland’s diverse grassland environments.
Further exploring environmental matters is a major group show, Earth Matters at The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. 30 artists delve into soil to reveal its brilliance, beauty, and fragility, celebrating the 300th birthday of ‘the father of modern geology’, James Hutton. Featuring work from artists Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Joan Eardley, Sekai Machache, Alberta Whittle, and more, the exhibition draws on illustrations by Hutton’s collaborator John Clerk of Eldin and earth itself, revealing the soil’s hidden depths, its past, and its future. At National Galleries Scotland: Modern One, visitors can experience artworks from Scotland’s national art collection, including works by Michael Armitage, Salvador Dalí, Peter Doig, Inka Essenhigh, Jasleen Kaur, Roy Lichtenstein, Everlyn Nicodemus, Dorothea Tanning and many more. Visitors will also encounter the radical and subversive in Surrealism: Picturing the Strange.
Craft, design, and textiles weave through the programme. At Dovecot, Elizabeth Blackadder: A Life in Colour is over 30 tapestries and hand-tufted rugs, translating her distinctive visual language into richly textured forms. Also at Dovecot, Costume Couture celebrates the legendary costume house Cosprop. From A Room with a View to Pride and Prejudice, Meryl Streep to Maggie Smith, Cosprop has become synonymous with dressing iconic characters in award-winning films and television. Christine Borland + Dovecot Studios: The Edinburgh Seven Tapestry commemorates the first women to matriculate at any British university and is now a permanent installation at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, its organic shapes are based on cellular structure in motion. Popping up across the city will be Travelling Gallery at Portobello Town Hall and Coburg Studios in Leith. User Interface: Coded Craft is a group exhibition bringing together a number of contemporary craft artists and makers whose work sits at the interface between digital technology and traditional handcraft. The exhibition features work by Jeni Allison, Naomi McIntosh, Lynne MacLachlan, Liu Qiwei, Aymeric Renoud, Soorin Shin, Sanne Visser, Silvia Weidenbach, Sandra Wilson. Also drawing on technology is Morphological Murmurations at InSpace at Edinburgh College of Art; a multisensory installation from Theodore Koterwas engaging audiences kinaesthetically with language, embodied communication, neurodivergence, artificial intelligence (AI) and models of animal behaviour.
Glamour and costume of another sort can be seen at The King’s Gallery with The Edwardians: Age of Elegance explores the opulence and glamour of the Edwardian age through the lives and tastes of two of Britain’s most fashionable royal couples: King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, and King George V and Queen Mary. At the National Museum of Scotland, design-forward exhibition Giants brings prehistoric creatures to life with an immersive show of large scale sculptural installations, showcasing the enormous but often overlooked creatures that roamed the Earth after the extinction of the dinosaurs..
Elsewhere in the centre, early career artists are in the spotlight. At Collective is a new solo commission by Richard Maguire, and the first exhibition in the gallery’s Time + Space early-career artist programme. Primarily working in drawing and sculpture, Maguire’s practice considers power relations through histories and representations of race and sexuality between Britain and South Asia. Rachel McBrinn + Jonathan Webb present Study for North Bridge at City Art Centre; a new moving image commission which responds to Edinburgh’s North Bridge. In Blackie House’s Off the Charts, four emerging artists respond to a selection of maps, globes and books held in the Blackie House Library and Museum that chart Scotland’s land and seascapes. They will tell their stories individually and collectively in the unique space of a 250-year-old garage — BHLM’s Meadows-side satellite venue for exhibitions and events.
“This year, we’re leaning into the festival as a political space. Responsive, grounded, and open to change. From our new home in Leith, the programme moves across the city in new ways, shaped by collaborators and venues who are pushing at its edges. The programme introduces a selection of truly boundary-pushing artists, contemporary and historic, whose work feels urgent, generous, and full of intent.” adds Eleanor Taylor, Curator, EAF
Emma Nicolson, Head of Visual Arts at Creative Scotland said: “Edinburgh Art Festival continues to be a vital moment in Scotland’s cultural calendar, bringing world leading artists into dialogue with extraordinary talent here at home. This year’s programme demonstrates the ambition, imagination and internationalism that define Scotland’s visual arts sector. We’re proud to support a festival that not only animates the city in new and unexpected ways, but also deepens the connections between artists, communities and the stories that shape our shared future.”
Rebecca Edser, Head of EventScotland, said: “The Edinburgh Art Festival brings together an exciting range of visual art from local, national and international artists, celebrating creativity in all its forms across the city. We’re proud to support the festival as part of our diverse portfolio of sporting and cultural events that reinforce our reputation as a world‑leading tourism and events destination. This year’s programme offers another exciting and ambitious line‑up for audiences to enjoy across Edinburgh’s unique spaces. Cultural events are an important part of Scotland’s appeal. They not only provide authentic and immersive experiences for people across Scotland and from around the world, but also play a vital role in strengthening our international profile and supporting the visitor economy.”