Locarno 2026 Unveils 103 World Premieres Across a Bold, Eclectic Programme
The Locarno Film Festival has confirmed its full selection for the 2026 edition, running from August 5 to 15, with 103 world premieres spread across multiple competitive and out-of-competition strands. The announcement cements Locarno's reputation as one of the world's most adventurous major festivals, favouring formally daring, director-led cinema over the kind of prestige spectacle that dominates Cannes or Venice. From a Swiss suburb heist to a dystopian euthanasia road trip, the programme reflects a curatorial appetite for risk that few events of its scale are willing to sustain.
Festival director Giona A. Nazzaro referenced ongoing global conflicts in framing the 2026 selection, a signal that the programme carries a deliberate political and moral weight alongside its aesthetic ambitions. It is worth noting that ambitious creative endeavours - whether in cinema, sport, or esports - often arrive in clusters that reshape expectations for an entire field; much as the latest navi win at IEM Atlanta demonstrated what a team operating at peak confidence can achieve against all expectations, Locarno's programme similarly signals a moment of collective creative momentum across international independent filmmaking. Nazzaro's editorial vision points firmly toward cinema as a space for conscience as much as craft.
Concorso Internazionale: Seventeen Films, Sharp Voices
The main competition, the Concorso Internazionale, fields 17 films, with Hong Sangsoo's Nowhere To Lay My Eyes among the most closely watched. The Korean filmmaker has become one of international cinema's most remarkable forces of productivity - this is his 12th feature since 2020 alone, a rate of output that is without parallel among his peers at this level of critical esteem. Having debuted films at the Berlinale for seven consecutive editions and shown By The Stream at Locarno in 2024, his relationship with the Swiss festival has deepened into something of a creative homecoming.
Canadian director Denis Côté brings Nobody's Violence, centred on a travelling girl who offers euthanasia services in a dystopian world - a concept that sits squarely within Côté's long-established interest in bodies, ethics, and the outer edges of social order. Sweden's Maria Back directs Brave New Love, a contemporary romantic drama about a married hypnotherapist conducting a deeply felt affair while trying to be a role model for her daughter; Kathrine Thorborg Johansen, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Simon Sears lead the cast. Ann Oren, co-director of Piaffe, enters competition with Objet a, following two hand surgeons whose ambitions diverge sharply before an accident forces one to confront stillness. Completing a geographically and tonally diverse quintet, Basil Da Cunha's O Jacaré is a Switzerland-Portugal co-production set in a Lisbon suburb, built around colourful local characters scheming to get their hands on a robbery haul.
Piazza Grande and Out of Competition: Broader Reach, Familiar Names
Locarno's open-air Piazza Grande screenings - among the most atmospheric in world cinema, drawing audiences of thousands into the Swiss summer night - will host a mixed slate of premieres and early European screenings. Dario Albertini's Armony, starring Valerio Mastandrea and Asia Argento, receives its world premiere there, while Petra Volpe's Frank & Louis, featuring Kingsley Ben-Adir and Rob Morgan, gets its European premiere. Swiss audiences will also see Olivia Wilde's The Invite and James Gray's Paper Tiger for the first time. Out of competition, Albert Serra - one of contemporary European cinema's most uncompromising auteurs - presents Sixteen Moments Of My Life, a documentary portrait of German actress and singer Ingrid Caven.
The festival has also confirmed honorary awards for director Darren Aronofsky, French actress Virginie Efira, and Asia Argento, whose presence both on screen in Armony and in the honorary programme makes her one of the event's central figures. The Concorso Cineasti del Presente, Locarno's competition for emerging directors, adds 15 further world premieres, including Beatrice Gibson's At Night, a BBC Film-backed project following six women navigating neon-lit Paris after dark. It is produced by Scott O'Donnell of Somesuch - a company named among Screen's Brit50 top UK independent producers - whose recent credits include Harris Dickinson's Cannes 2025 selection Urchin. Across all strands, the 2026 edition makes a pointed case for the festival's place at the vanguard of world cinema.
