The 2026 edition of the Glasgow International Festival presents a strong cultural picture despite the blows the city's art ecosystem has faced this year. The festival emphasizes the connection between Glasgow’s local communities and the global art scene, highlighting the city’s resilience.
The permanent closure of Glasgow CCA earlier this year, the high rent pressures faced by Trongate 103, and shrinking budgets for art venues managed by Glasgow Life have all challenged the local art environment. A fire affecting the Union Corner building near Central Station added to these difficulties, making this year’s festival an even more meaningful gathering.
Festival director Helen Nesbit describes the program’s aim as making what already exists in Glasgow visible. This approach transforms the event from merely an international exhibition schedule into a framework that connects with working-class neighborhoods and community-based production in the city.
Within this scope, the project Fire Stories, developed with Platform, includes workshops with local residents in the Easterhouse area. The project will culminate in two community performances on June 19 and 20. These performances are inspired by the legendary Craigallian Fire, maintained by communists, radicals, and socialists throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Another community-focused part of the festival is a three-day public program prepared by Govan-based Rumpus Room. The program, which includes play, talks, food, and events, combines art and social activism work with children and young people.
Artist Kiera McLean notes that such projects expand an art map that has long excluded some parts of the city. According to McLean, avoiding these neighborhoods results in an incomplete picture of Glasgow’s art scene.
GI 2026 does not have a single theme or headline this year. However, the program encourages visitors to make their own connections between works, creating a shared intensity across the exhibitions.
One of the standout exhibitions at the festival is dedicated to American artist, writer, and activist David Wojnarowicz. Wojnarowicz, who died at 37 from an AIDS-related illness, is featured in his first solo exhibition in Scotland, held at The Modern Institute’s new venue on the banks of the River Clyde.
Set on a collapsing Georgian terrace, the exhibition includes photographs, paintings, and moving image works. The curation also recalls Wojnarowicz’s relationships with figures like Peter Hujar, Kiki Smith, Mike Bidlo, and Marion Schemma, creating an atmosphere that reflects the spirit of New York’s underground art scene.
The installation Plantation by Rehana Zaman at Kelvin Hall focuses on the experiences of migrant seasonal farm workers, sharecroppers, tenants, and day laborers. Two films shot in Angus and Punjab question the exploitative nature of modern industrial agriculture and the extractive systems inherited from the colonial era.
Zaman’s work makes visible how production processes affect not only land and workers but the entire food consumption system. Showing the work at Kelvin Hall, historically linked to British Empire trade, further amplifies its impact.
Jasmine Togo-Brisby’s work at Glasgow Art and the Gallery of Modern Art addresses the legacy of displacement, forced labor, and enslavement. Installations made from crow feathers reference the blackbirding practice of forcibly recruiting Pacific Islanders for Australian sugar plantations.
A wooden hut replica based on a small family archive photo is central to the exhibition. This structure reconstructs a shelter belonging to the artist’s displaced Ni-Vanuatu ancestors while strongly responding to GoMA’s history, built by William Cunninghame whose wealth was tied to the transatlantic slave trade.
Naeem Mohaiemen’s film Through a Mirror, Darkly is screened at The Hunterian. Shown on three screens, the film combines archival footage and contemporary interviews to explore state violence during student protests at Kent State University in Ohio and Jackson State College in Mississippi in 1970.
The film questions the overshadowing of the two Black students killed by police at Jackson State compared to the widely remembered four deaths at Kent State. While related to the Vietnam War era in the U.S., the work also speaks directly to today’s global atmosphere of campus repression and rising political tensions.
Glasgow International 2026 brings together works that may seem scattered but unite around shared memories, labor, displacement, and marginalized communities. The festival demonstrates that even in difficult times, the city’s artistic strength continues not only in central venues but also in neighborhoods and public encounters.
