Experience

Open call for artists and performers for Antwerp Queer Arts Festival 2026 in August

Posted by Timothy on

The Antwerp Queer Arts Festival (AQAF) returns in August 2026, simultaneously with Antwerp Pride, for a month of queer arts and performances in Antwerp. Sometimes you can take a name at face value. Exact dates aren’t published yet.

Antwerp Queer Arts Festival has launched its Open Call for the 2026 edition of its summer festival, inviting artists, performers and activists to submit bold and imaginative proposals for August 2026. 

With this open call, the festival once again positions itself as a platform for queer voices that challenge norms, build community and reimagine public space through art and activism.

Deadline is 7 February 2026

The festival will take place in August 2026, with selected projects scheduled on dates determined in mutual agreement between the artists and the festival team. The deadline for submissions is 7 February 2026, and applications can be made by completing the online open call form. 

For selected participants, Antwerp Queer Arts Festival will cover a participation fee as well as travel and accommodation costs, ensuring that artists can take part without financial barriers.

A wide range of artistic forms and format

Antwerp Queer Arts Festival is open to a wide range of artistic forms and formats. Proposals may take the shape of dance, performance, workshops, lectures, music, film, visual arts or hybrid practices that defy categorisation. 

What matters most is not the discipline, but the voice behind it. The festival is looking for work that is bold and intimate, political and playful, grounded in personal experience while resonating with broader queer realities. Artists are encouraged to bring their own stories, perspectives and flavours to the table.

Community building and solidarity

For the 2026 edition, the open call places a strong emphasis on community building and solidarity. The festival welcomes initiatives that strengthen connections across differences in gender, sexual orientation and practice, age, migration background and ability, while actively countering gatekeeping within queer spaces. 

Practices of care, mutual aid and intergenerational exchange are particularly valued, especially where they foster resilience, shared responsibility and a sense of belonging.

The art of failure

Another key focus is the queer art of failure. Antwerp Queer Arts Festival invites artistic and theoretical explorations that treat failure not as something to hide, but as a powerful form of critique. Proposals may celebrate misfits, unfinished works and nonconformity, or challenge respectability politics and the persistent idea that there is a ‘right’ or acceptable way to be queer.

Reclaiming public space

The festival is also keen to support projects that reclaim public space. Artists and activists are encouraged to imagine interventions that transform streets, squares, riverfronts and port areas into queer commons. 

Such work might question how government policy, urban design, policing and zoning influence who belongs in public space and who is excluded, and how queerness can interrupt, reshape or reclaim these environments.

Making heteronormativity visible and discussable is another central theme of the open call. 

Antwerp Queer Arts Festival is interested in works that expose the normative scripts embedded in public space, signage and cultural narratives, as well as dialogical formats that invite audiences into conversation about how heteronormativity operates in everyday life. Projects that open up space for debate, reflection and collective questioning are particularly encouraged.

 Antwerp’s identity as a river city and port

Finally, the open call highlights Antwerp’s identity as a river city and port. Proposals may engage with the historical development of queer communities in Antwerp, map lost or transformed queer spaces such as bars and cruising sites, or analyse the impact of policy on queer life in the city. The festival also welcomes narratives that connect queerness, migration and port geographies, situating Antwerp within wider histories of movement, exchange and encounter.

With this open call, Antwerp Queer Arts Festival continues its commitment to nurturing queer artistic and activist practices that are rooted in lived experience and engaged with the social, political and spatial realities of the city. 

Artists and collectives interested in contributing to the 2026 summer festival are invited to submit their proposals before 7 February 2026 via the open call form.

The form. 

Antwerp Queer Arts Festival 2026

Antwerp Pride 2025

Beyond Darklands 2025-2026

Leave a Reply