the queer photo award 2026

GAZE is an activist cultural project with a nationwide presence in Germany and an international reach, created by and for the LGBTQIA+ community. Through an annual open call, GAZE invites participants to use photography to give visibility to queer realities, preserve stories, and create spaces for dialogue and intergenerational exchange. Photography is conceived as part of a practice of resistance and as a tool for self-empowerment. Under the title HOW TO / GATHER — Queer Communities in Photography, GAZE 2026 is seeking photographic works that explore queer spaces, forms of community, care and so-called chosen families. With HOW TO / GATHER, this year we will be focusing on queer spaces as places of gathering where identities can unfold freely and develop in all their facets. We are exploring relationships that exist outside heteronormative-patriarchal structures: what do friendship, romantic love or family mean beyond these norms? What happens when queer communities are under threat, when access to queer spaces is denied and the free expression of one’s own identity is not possible? We invite LGBTQIA+ lens based artists to engage with this year’s theme in their own individual way.