PARIS PHOTO

Paris Photo is the fair for photography and image-based art held each November under the glass roof of the Grand Palais, in the eighth arrondissement of Paris: a vernissage by invitation on the Wednesday, then four days, Thursday to Sunday, of more than two hundred galleries and publishers from thirty countries and more, with talks, signings and the PhotoBook Awards around them. It calls itself “the leading international fair dedicated to photography and image-based art”, and is run by RX, the exhibitions company that bought it in the early 2000s.

When it came to the Grand Palais in 2011, the light through the glass roof obliged the galleries to shade their vintage prints.

From the Louvre to the Grand Palais

Rik Gadella, an art publisher, founded Paris Photo in 1997, meaning it to be one of the principal meetings of historical and contemporary photography. The first edition was held at the Carrousel du Louvre, and the fair stayed there until 2010. Gadella directed it until 2004.

In 2011 it moved to the Grand Palais, from 10 to 13 November, with African photography as its theme, and its visitors rose by thirty per cent, to fifty thousand. The palace was built from 1897 for the Universal Exposition and opened on 1 May 1900; its nave is roofed with about fourteen thousand square metres of glass, one of the last great transparent structures to follow London’s Crystal Palace. In 2012 the minister of culture opened the sixteenth edition, with a hundred and twenty-eight galleries and 54,157 visitors.

The buyers have changed. A gallerist, Jérôme de Noirmont, remembered that when he first came, thirteen years before, the public had wanted classical photography, modern and vintage prints, and said that now “on y trouve aussi les collectionneurs d’art contemporain”: the collectors of contemporary art come too.

From 2021 to 2023 the fair was held in the Grand Palais Éphémère, near the Eiffel Tower, while the palace was restored, at a cost of €466 million, glass roof and all. It came back to the nave in 2024, and drew more than eighty thousand people that year. An edition in Los Angeles, on the Paramount Pictures lot, ran from 2013 to 2015.

The Fair

The vernissage on the Wednesday is by invitation. The fair opens to the public from one in the afternoon to eight in the evening, and to seven on the Sunday; holders of the VIP passes are let in from half past ten, two and a half hours before the doors open.

In 2026 the stands are arranged in sectors: the Main Sector and Prismes, Voices, Digital, Emergence, and Book, where the photobook publishers show. There are conversations, book talks and signings through the four days, and the PhotoBook Awards, given with the Aperture Foundation since 2012, with $10,000 for the winner of the First PhotoBook prize. Elles x Paris Photo, a programme for women artists given with the French Ministry of Culture, is curated in 2026 by Aldeide Delgado.

The premium passes carry a VIP entrance, the cloakroom, a concierge and the VIP lounge with its Ruinart champagne bar. In 2025, the twenty-eighth edition, there were 222 exhibitors, 179 galleries and 43 publishers, from thirty-three countries.

The twenty-ninth edition runs from 12 to 15 November 2026, with the vernissage on 11 November. “In 2026, the 29th edition of Paris Photo takes place at a historic moment: the Bicentennial of Photography.” The guest exhibition, Revealing, comes from the photography collection of the Centre Pompidou: about a hundred works by nearly thirty artists, in three themes, Making the Image, To Infinity, and Identities.

What to Know

It runs from a Thursday to a Sunday in mid-November, with the vernissage on the Wednesday; in 2026, from 11 to 15 November. The 2027 dates have not been announced.

A weekday ticket costs €36 and a weekend ticket €41; an evening ticket, from five to eight, €26. The Advantage Pass, €89, gives one day with the early opening; the Vernissage Pass costs €155, and the Premium Pass, €255, opens the fair every day from half past ten.

A lounge suit. The fair publishes no code.

The Grand Palais is on the Avenue Winston-Churchill, by the Métro at Champs-Élysées Clemenceau and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the RER at Invalides. The Eurostar comes from London in two hours and a quarter. The fair’s partner hotels in 2026 include Le Meurice, the Shangri-La, the Mandarin Oriental and the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendôme; the Hôtel Nuage is four minutes’ walk from the door.

The mistake is to arrive at one o’clock with the public. The VIP passes open the nave at half past ten, two and a half hours before the crowd.

The Court

Paris Photo is not the Court’s own. Vernissage and Premium passes are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay near the Champs-Élysées or the Place Vendôme, and the table afterward. The Court is in Burgundy the same weekend for the Hospices de Beaune.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.