EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography

With its guiding theme Common Ground. Letters from Europe, EMOP Berlin launches preparations for its 12th festival edition, which will take place from March 4 to April 4, 2027.

For a festival that already carries the European dimension in its title, this places the question of commonality and its prerequisites at the very center: Where does living together become tangible, where does it come under pressure, and how can photographic images open up new ways of imagining it? Common Ground. Letters from Europe explores what we share, what we lose, what we assert, and what we must continuously renegotiate. The focus is on photographic works that explore shared spaces of experience, social practices, and fragile forms of belonging. The common is not presented as a stable identity, but as an ongoing, polyphonic process. Thus, each festival exhibition participating under this guiding theme can be understood as a visual missive—a contribution to the question of how we can conceive and shape a shared European space today.  

The key players in Germany’s central biennial festival of photographic images are Berlin’s museums, exhibition venues, collections, archives, libraries, cultural institutes, universities, art colleges, academies, and other educational institutions in the field of photography, municipal and private galleries, and the many independent project spaces and initiatives—together with the exhibiting artists.

In 2027, as in previous years, the photography festival will be framed by a program curation that will organize talks and panels to discuss, in terms of the exhibition leitmotif, the themes of the EMOP Opening Days—and once again offer a wide range of EMOP Specials: The photo book fair Photos in Books as part of the EMOP Opening Days; the Emerging Scene exhibition bringing together Berlin’s photography students; the Artists and Archive Talks, which enable visitors to experience the history and present of the medium in a tangible way; the Photo Lab Days, which will invite participants to experiment with photographic techniques; and an extensive program of guided tours and educational activities that will accompany visitors to the city’s exhibitions throughout the entire month-long festival. 

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