Beautiful Country: Italy as told by Cortona 16/7 - 01/11 2026

From 16 July to 1 November 2026, Cortona hosts the sixteenth edition of Cortona On The Move, the international festival dedicated to contemporary photography. Year after year, this event confirms the Tuscan town as one of the most interesting places in Italy for those who love images, visual storytelling and new forms of narrative.

The 2026 edition marks a new artistic direction under Renata Ferri, with a programme focused on photography’s ability to move, question the present and open new perspectives on the way we look at the world.

This year’s theme is Beautiful Country, a curatorial project that invites visitors to observe Italy over recent decades through images, memories, landscapes and identities. The festival thus becomes a true visual atlas: a journey through the country, between wonder and disillusionment, poetic storytelling and contemporary investigation.

The programme includes more than thirty exhibitions, featuring solo shows, group exhibitions, new projects and special commissions. Among them is Peninsula, created in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo and Gallerie d’Italia, involving ten artists invited to explore the physical and symbolic territories of the contemporary landscape.

Great attention is also given to education with the relaunch of OTM Academy, the project dedicated to photography schools. Selected students will have the opportunity to exhibit their work during the opening of the festival and to meet artists, curators, photo editors and professionals from the sector. Among the new initiatives is also the Peninsula – New Italian Authors scholarship, which includes an artist residency in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris.

For those visiting Cortona in summer or autumn, Cortona On The Move is a valuable opportunity to experience the town from a different perspective: not only as a historic and scenic destination, but also as a place where culture, photography and contemporary creativity meet.