Open Call
Nine Elephants Vol. 3
For the third consecutive year, Nine Elephants – a festival for art in urban environments – invites artists, curators, researchers, urban planners and interdisciplinary practitioners to contribute projects to this year’s edition of the festival, which will take place between 9 and 19 July 2026 in Sofia and its periphery.
For the new edition, we follow the festival’s original impulse to develop and present artistic and interdisciplinary practices in a decentralized way across different locations in the city—within neighborhoods, along streets, in parks, and in informal or liminal spaces—mapping new ways of coexistence, perception, and storytelling of the city. At the same time, inspired by the mass protests at the end of the past year, in 2026 Nine Elephants will focus on the city as a living, changing body – ecological, emotional, remembering and collective. Тhe recent protests have shown us the takeover of streets and squares that were until recently unrecognized as places of free expression, and the return of people to public space. These moments are perceived not only politically, but also as spatial, bodily and emotional phenomena.
Through this open call, we welcome proposals for projects and practices that expand the imagination for individual and collective life in the city – through storytelling, listening, corporeality, memory, ecology and speculation. What is that fantastic collective body of the city that periodically comes together, disintegrates, and reemerges – most clearly in moments of political and social intensity that will mark 2026?
Topics
Themes embedded in the curatorial concept, to which project proposals may relate, though they are not mandatory:
- Circulation and metabolism – to think of the city as a flow of bodies, information, waste, energy and emotions; moments of overflow, interruption or stasis.
- Proximity, solidarity and exchange – exploring how we meet, exchange, coexist and help each other in the city – outside formal institutions and market logics. To look for the micro-movements that keep the city alive.
- The collective body – public gatherings, formal or informal, protests, assemblies, occupation of space; democracy as bodily and spatial practice.
- Emotionality and affect in the city – urban atmospheres and emotional infrastructures following fear, care, anger, joy, fatigue, solidarity.
- Misinformation, silence and political apathy – competing narratives, erasure and distortion; practices of listening, stalling and spontaneous conversation in public space.
- Memory, traces and urban storytelling – how cities remember and forget; the post-socialist city; personal and collective histories; material and immaterial traces; narrative as a form of urban knowledge.
- Wild urbanism – nature between the wild and the controlled; informal ecologies; spontaneous vegetation; ecological poetics.
- Care and maintenance – spatial and social attention to infrastructure, green spaces, inter-block areas, buildings and communities, as well as the rituals, efforts and practices that make the city livable, sustainable and compassionate.
Important dates
- Open Call : 13 January 2026
- Deadline: 9 February 2026, but we recommend contacting us earlier, if possible, regarding additional funding, partnerships, grants, mobility programs, etc.
- Dates for the presentation of the projects within the framework of the festival: 9–19 July 2026.
What we are looking for
- artistic and research projects
- participatory or community-engaged practices
- urban storytelling, audio/visual walks, workshops
- gatherings, situated practices
- performative, audio and spatial interventions
- speculative, poetic or process-oriented approaches
- etc.
Nine Elephants is also perceived as a research platform, so projects can be both finished and open, temporary, quiet or in development. We expect all projects to engage both critically and creatively with urban space.
The call is also open to proposals that are still open for partnerships – artistic, institutional, etc. We work in partnership with municipalities, community centers, cultural organizations and experts and are ready to assist in finding spaces, permits, etc.
All selected projects will be supported curatorially and expertly, and will be developed collaboratively with the other participants in the third edition of the festival, in order to exchange and share knowledge and experience of working in an urban environment.
Location and accessibility
- Projects must provide for implementation в Sofia or periphery.
- Locations may be in the public realm and include public, semi-public, semi-private, or private spaces, such as squares, parks, streets, spaces between residential blocks, green areas, unused plots, green sites, basements, arcades, community centers (chitalishta), cultural centers, shops, hair salons, and others, provided that the project aligns with the overall concept of the festival.
- At the application level, proposals may not include a specific location, but we expect a clear basic idea and a realistic direction, to be finalized with the curatorial team.
Eligibility
- Applications can be submitted by individuals, collectives or organisations.
- Proposals can be submitted in Bulgarian or English.
Fee and production
- The fees for the projects are negotiated individually after the selection. Please note that the festival is geared towards micro individual or collective projects, and we welcome first attempts at working in an urban environment.
- As part of the application process, we invite you to submit a preliminary budget that will help us assess whether the project can be implemented within the financial capacity of the festival.
- Additional public funds will be sought to cover mobility costs (travel, accommodation, and per diem).
- If the proposed funding is beyond the festival’s means, applicants can propose options for co-financing – either through external sources that they organise themselves, or through co-production with another institution or festival.
- Marketing, communication and photo documentation of the projects is carried out by the festival.
What to send
Applicants are invited to submit:
- Brief description of the project
- Proposed format and way of engaging with urban space
- Initial idea of location (neighbourhood, space type or urban condition)
- Short biography
- Any relevant links or documentation (optional)
Application link
Contact
You can apply for the open call via the following link:
If you have an upcoming deadline for possible co-funding of the project (including mobility), please also inform us by email when submitting your application.
For questions and comments: