11th Maribor Photography Festival

The year 2026 is a special one for Fotoklub Maribor, as it marks the club’s 90th anniversary. To celebrate this milestone, we decided that the 11th Maribor Photography Festival, taking place from 12 to 30 September 2026, would bring to the forefront the creative legacy of a group of club members who made a significant impact on Slovenian photography in the early 1970s and later became known as the Maribor Circle.

The Maribor Circle did not leave photographers a recipe for how to take photographs, but rather the courage to find their own way of seeing. Creative freedom and fidelity to one’s own vision remain its most important messages. They also form the basis of this year’s theme – Black Photography. This does not refer to a uniform style or merely to dark tones, but to photography that does not conform to expectations and does not shy away from what we would often prefer not to see.

For this year’s festival, we have invited established photographers who have developed distinctive bodies of work: Osman Demiri, Dražen Tirić, Simon Chang, Matej Peljhan and Zoran Kolarič. Their photographs differ in approach and expression, but they are united by an independent view of people and the world in which we live. Each artist contributes to the broader context of Black Photography in their own way, without repeating the legacy of the Maribor Circle.

In addition to the solo exhibitions, the programme includes an exhibition dedicated to the Maribor Circle, a selection of works from the Black Photography open call, and a group exhibition of young artists at the Media Nox Gallery. The exhibitions will be accompanied by a round-table discussion, lectures and photography workshops.

The 11th Maribor Photography Festival brings together the artists who changed the understanding of photography in Slovenia fifty-five years ago and authors who continue to pursue an independent photographic vision of their own today.