Bego Antón, de la serie Everybody Loves to ChaChaCha, 2015. ©Bego Antón
July in Madrid has its own rhythm: long days, intense heat, and a desire to find plans that allow you to enjoy the city with a bit more calm. In this context, PHotoESPAÑA 2026 presents itself as one of the most attractive cultural routes of the summer for those who want to delve into contemporary photography and, at the same time, escape the heat.
This year's edition, which runs from May 13 to September 13, 2026, revolves around "Reimagining": an invitation to rethink the image through experimentation, creativity, and the current limits of photography.
Below, we've gathered a selection of exhibitions in Madrid to visit during July. This guide avoids massive lists to focus on a carefully curated selection; an itinerary designed to be enjoyed unhurriedly, to pause in the city, and to be accompanied by art.
Bego Antón: Everybody Loves to ChaChaCha
Bego Antón, Laurie and Timber, from the series Everybody Loves to ChaChaCha, 2015. ©Bego Antón.
Where: Casa de América
Dates: June 10 — September 30, 2026
Bego Antón (Bilbao, 1993) presents a project focused on the world of Musical Canine Freestyle, a discipline where women and dogs form dance pairs and move in coordination to the rhythm of music. The photographer portrays these women in different states across the United States, getting close to their daily lives and the peculiarities of such a unique and fascinating practice.
Rafał Milach: Refusal. Second Fracture
Rafal Milach, 'The Winners' series 2010–2013. ©Rafal Milach. Image extracted from PHotoESPAÑA.
Where: Círculo de Bellas Artes
Dates: June 5 — September 27, 2026
Curated by: Katarzyna Sagatowska
Rafal Milach (Gliwice, Poland, 1978) presents an exhibition that investigates the mechanisms of construction of official narratives in Eastern Europe, as well as their cracks and contradictions. A leading figure in the reflection on systems of power in contemporary Europe, the photographer highlights here the force of collective practices as tools capable of challenging the established political order.
Talia Chetrit: Bunny
Talia Chetrit, TBD ©Talia Chetrit. Image extracted from Loewe.
Where: Museo Lázaro Galdiano
Dates: June 5 — August 30, 2026
Curated by: Stella Bottai
Talia Chetrit's (Washington D. C., USA, 1982) first solo exhibition in Spain, supported by Fundación LOEWE, brings together a selection of works that move between portraiture, staged photography, and still life. Through a dialogue between images from the past and present, the artist explores the boundaries between truth and fiction, time and space, with photographs that address family ties, parenthood, and eroticism from shifting and often ambiguous perspectives.
Laia Abril: Endometriosis. Silenced pain 1860–2026
Laia Abril, Endometriosis, 2026. ©Laia Abril. Image extracted from PHotoESPAÑA.
Where: Museo del Romanticismo
Dates: June 2 — September 13, 2026
Laia Abril (Barcelona, 1986), the youngest artist to date to receive the National Photography Award, addresses endometriosis from a visual, historical, and critical perspective. The exhibition stems from a reality often minimized: chronic pain, lack of medical attention, and scarce research surrounding a disease that affects millions of women and people with uteruses worldwide. From this silenced bodily experience, the work establishes a continuity between the pathologization of female bodies and the delegitimization of pain, pointing out how medicine has often operated, in the field of sexual and reproductive health, more as a mechanism of control than of care.
Óscar Rivilla, Daniela Merlo and Rebekah Rhodes: Red Shoes
Oscar Rivilla. Kitchen from the Red Shoes series ©Oscar Rivilla. Image extracted from PHotoESPAÑA.
Where: Est_ArtSpace
Dates: May 13 — July 25, 2026
Curated by: Maite Sánchez Urueña
Artistic direction: Óscar Rivilla, Daniela Merlo and Rebekah Rhodes
Red Shoes, a photography, video, and dance project by Óscar Rivilla and Daniela Merlo, revisits Hans Christian Andersen's tale from a contemporary perspective. In this version, Karen does not submit to punishment or renounce her difference; instead, she learns to live with a body condemned to movement. The work imagines her as an adult, permeated by a constant dance that becomes a metaphor for resistance, identity, and self-fidelity.
Isabel Coixet: Collages
Isabel Coixet. A girl, 2025, From the NY Collages 2025 series. ©Isabel Coixet. Image extracted from Max Estrella
Where: Galería Max Estrella
Dates: May 28 — July 29, 2026
Isabel Coixet presents a series of collages that reveal a lesser-known facet of her creative universe. Although her name is linked to cinema, here the narrative emerges from the manual act of cutting, reassembling, and re-signifying found images. Created in Rome, New York, and Montolieu, these pieces bring together fragments, papers, photographs, and visual remnants that speak of memory, identity, and intimate disorder, with the same narrative sensibility that permeates her cinematographic work.
Sebastián Díaz Morales: The shadow out of time
Sebastián Díaz Morales, #4 The falling sky, FROZEN-DESERT, film still, 2025. ©Sebastián Díaz Morales. Image extracted from PHotoESPAÑA.
Where: Carlier | Gebauer
Dates: May 13 — September 13, 2026
Sebastián Díaz Morales draws on the imaginary world of H. P. Lovecraft to explore the shadow not as a threat, but as the trace of something that is no longer there. Through videos, light boxes, installations, and sound, the exhibition builds an atmosphere suspended between memory and disappearance, where objects do not narrate specific events, but rather the signs left behind in their wake. An unsettling reflection on absence, lost time, and the possibility that this future may also belong to us.
Cristina Stolhe
Cristina Stolhe, 28, Madrid, 2021. © Cristina Stolhe. Image extracted from El Chico Gallery.
Where: El Chico Gallery
Dates: June 11 — July 24, 2026
Cristina Stolhe proposes an installation where the domestic transforms the viewer's gaze and destabilizes photography as a closed object. From an intimate and almost voyeuristic approach, her work delves into memory, personal experience, and the emotional presence of bodies, objects, and spaces, constructing images that question conventional notions of beauty.
A Possible Route for July
To avoid being overwhelmed, it's advisable to think of PHotoESPAÑA 2026 in Madrid as a layered journey. The key isn't to see everything, but to choose intentionally. In the middle of summer, an exhibition can also be a way to pause, look more closely, and leave the street with a different mental temperature.
That same selective gaze defines contemporary art collecting. If visiting these exhibitions has sparked your interest in incorporating exclusive pieces into your space, or if you're looking to take the first steps to invest in art with solidity and technical criteria, the ArteGlobaL team is at your disposal to guide you.
Shall we talk about art this summer? Request a free advisory session with our experts.
