200 Years of Photography Under One Glass Roof: Paris Photo 2026
The oldest surviving photograph taken with a camera shows the view from a window of a country house in France in the 1820s. The exposure is said to have taken days.
Two hundred years on, the photography world is celebrating the medium’s bicentenary. Paris Photo sits right at the centre of it.
From 12 to 15 November, 197 galleries and 47 publishers from 38 countries open their stands beneath the glass roof of the Grand Palais in Paris. It is the 29th Paris Photo.
I used to wonder why photography needs its own art fair when there are so many photo exhibitions. The answer is simple: here you can look, buy, and take the work home as a book.
The Biggest Market for Photography
Paris Photo began in 1997. Held every November in Paris, it is regarded as the largest art fair in the world devoted solely to photography and image-based work. Around 75,000 people visit each year.
This year nearly 80 participants are new, with more galleries and publishers from cities rarely seen before, such as Manila, Mexico City and Wrocław.
Thomas Ruff at the Entrance
Step into the Grand Palais and the first thing you meet is a monumental installation by the German photographer Thomas Ruff, known for his large, expressionless portraits that look like passport photos.
The nave is laid out as a walk through two centuries of photography. The Centre Pompidou’s photography collection gets its own hang, and the Prix Pictet, the award for photography and sustainability, is presented in the Grand Palais nave for the first time.
Among the gallery stands are photographs Stanley Kubrick took around 1950, when he was still a magazine photojournalist and not yet a film director.
From Analogue to Digital
The fair is divided into sectors. Alongside the Main sector for international galleries, Voices introduces new perspectives and Digital deals with digital images.
Analogue prints, large formats, installations, photobooks and digital experiments share one space. The publishers’ stands are where you end up staying longer than planned. For the price of a book, you can take an artist’s whole body of work home.
Paris Photo 2026
- Dates: 12–15 November 2026 (invitation-only preview on 11 November)
- Venue: Grand Palais, Paris 8e (Métro line 1, Champs-Élysées – Clemenceau)
- Scale: 244 exhibitors from 38 countries (197 galleries, 47 publishers)
- Hours & tickets: 1–8pm (Sunday until 7pm); online only, €36 weekdays, €41 weekends
Sources: Paris Photo press release, Arts & Collections, Photography Now, Pixidia
Photos: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Public domain / Frédéric BISSON from Rouen, France, CC BY 2.0 / Hernán Piñera from Marbella, CC BY-SA 2.0 / Angel L Gonzalez, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)