The OVNI festival makes its big return to Nice in November 2026

After a year of absence, the “OVNI, the biennial of moving images” festival is back in the Alpes-Maritimes for an 11^th edition. From November 13 to 29, numerous exhibitions, artistic performances and screenings will be programmed around Nice, sure to spark the curiosity of both young and old around contemporary art.

Well-known to art enthusiasts, the OVNI festival (Nice Video Objective) is returning next month. After a decade at an annual pace, the event is becoming a biennial. It will now return every two years.

This year, the festival’s theme is “Performancia”. The objective is therefore to explore the place of the body in moving images around the notion of performance, with works that question the relationship to life, identity and interaction with the public.

From November 13 to 29, 28 locations in the Alpes-Maritimes will be involved in the festival. From Nice to Monaco, passing through Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat or Mandelieu-la-Napoule, 160 works will be presented, for a total of 140 artists involved in the event.

For Nathalie Amae, artistic director of the festival, performance has always been at the heart of art: “performance is part of art and even of life in general. With this theme, I wanted to return to the beginning of video art, we find many sub-themes like relationships between individuals, the relationship to oneself too, it’s very interesting.”

The festival will take root on November 13, at 109 – Contemporary Cultures Hub, in Nice, with its central exhibition So Many Bodies Growing Within Us. In a space of 1,200 square meters, 15 artists collaborated in a collective exhibition that questions bodies. “There is a red thread that connects each exhibition and each location. An entire narrative system runs through this biennial, and all of this happened naturally. Each work is potentially in resonance with the others, and yet they are all very different”, Nathalie Amae clarified during the press conference.

Between contemporary art and local heritage

The particularity of OVNI, is that it invests existing places to transform them into artistic spaces. Castles, hotels, there is a real desire to blend the beauty of local heritage with the works of artists. This year for example, the Château de la Napoule, in Mandelieu-la-Napoule, participates for the first time in the OVNI festival, with a work by Jacinthe Loranger at the Napoule Art Foundation.

The greatest whimsy of the OVNI festival remains its connection with hotels. On Saturday, November 28 and Sunday, November 29, the festival temporarily transforms hotel rooms into video art exhibition spaces.

Concretely, hotel rooms become artistic spaces, in which an artist installs a video work with a particular scenography. The public can move from one hotel to another during the weekend and discover a true artistic journey in Nice. A good way too to discover new artists.

This year, Filipe Vilas-Boas is the artist associated with the biennial. His work Re:public, a hemisphere-shaped sculpture invites participants to seek a common balance so that the structure holds. Standing on the hemisphere, you will have to cooperate to overcome instability. The work will be presented at 109 – Contemporary Cultures Hub in Nice.

So, young and old alike, alone or with family, the OVNI festival allows you to discover Nice and its surroundings differently. For Odile Redolfi, founder and director of OVNI, it is very important to clarify that children are also welcome: “in a world saturated with images, it is crucial that children learn to look differently. We place considerable importance on these children who will be our audience of tomorrow.”