6th Barcelona International Photography Festival on Human Rights and Global Justice

Overview

The VI BCN-DH International Photo Festival on Human Rights and Global Justice invites photography submissions organized by Más Retina in collaboration with Associació Catalana per la Pau and International Action Peace, with support from Barcelona City Council and the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya. Using photography as a tool for social justice, the festival aims to shed light on global problems and their root causes, creating spaces for reflection and critical engagement. Ten selected projects will be exhibited as large-format street displays across Barcelona's ten districts and included in the 2026 festival catalogue and magazine.

Theme & Categories

Projects must engage with Human Rights and Global Justice under one of four thematic categories: Social Justice, Environmental/Climate Justice, Gender Justice, or Economic Justice. Themes should connect to the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Agenda 2030), the global development model, interdependence between actors and countries, and root causes of inequality. Sub-themes include migration and displacement, climate crisis and extractivism, gender-based violence and feminist movements, and labor exploitation.

Eligibility

• Open to professional and amateur photographers
• Must be 18+ (legal age)
• Open regardless of nationality
• Más Retina staff/personnel are not eligible
• Each participant may submit more than one project, provided each is assigned to its own category
• Each project must be assigned to exactly one of the four contest categories

Awards & Benefits

• Grand Prize: €3,000 cash award for the best of the ten selected projects, chosen from among the category winners
• Three category prizes: €400 each for the best project in each of the three remaining categories
• Inclusion of the ten selected projects in large-format street exhibitions across Barcelona's ten districts
• Inclusion in the 2026 festival catalogue and festival magazine
• Prize payments subject to applicable taxes according to winning authors' nationality

Application & Fees

Online applications are submitted via the Picter platform. The application fee is €5 per project, charged at the moment photographs are uploaded. Since multiple projects may be submitted, the fee applies per project submitted, not as a flat one-time cost.

Key Dates

• Application Deadline: 9 October 2026
• Jury Decision: 30 October 2026
• Festival Presentation: 1 December 2026
• Winner Announcement: 10 December 2026
• Festival/Exhibition Run: December 1, 2026 – January 10, 2027

Jury & Selection

The jury is composed of photography professionals specializing in human rights and people connected to the world of cooperation and human rights; decisions are adopted by simple majority and are final/non-appealable. The two best projects from each of the four categories are automatically selected (8 projects total); the remaining 2 finalist slots go to the two highest-scoring third-place projects across all categories, ensuring every category has at least two representative projects.

Rights & Usage

Participants retain full copyright and intellectual property ownership of their work. They grant Más Retina a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to reproduce, distribute, publicly communicate, and technically adapt submitted works solely for festival-related promotion, documentation, and archival purposes. Organizers may use winning images for festival promotion (catalogue, traditional channels, social media, newsletters) while crediting authorship. Participants must guarantee they hold all rights to their images, including explicit consent from any identifiable individuals depicted (or from a parent/guardian if a minor), and indemnify Más Retina against related claims.