Luminale – Biennial for Light Art and Urban Design

The Luminale has been held in Frankfurt and Offenbach at two-yearly intervals since 2002. Originally established by Messe Frankfurt as an accompanying event to Light + Building, the world’s leading trade fair for lighting and building technology, the Biennial is now one of the largest cultural events in the City of Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region with around 250,000 visitors and 150 projects.

As Biennial for Light Art and Urban Design, since 2018, the Luminale has pursued the goal of creating a popular and high-quality program in terms of both art and content, as well as making a sustainable contribution to urban design. Thus, the city is not only a stage, but a major component of the festival itself. Projects that contend with urban visions of the future at the interfaces between light, architecture, technology, ecology and social interaction in the city, accompanied by transdisciplinary dialogue on the related issues turn this into a tangible experience.

The Luminale is presenting its program in five categories: selected positions of thematic light art in CURATED; lectures and talks with renowned experts in TALK; projects from universities and other educational institutions in STUDY; as well as projects that, with unique spirit, deal freely and experimentally with light and city outside the curated area in COMMUNITY.

Finally, the BETTER CITY section is dedicated to all projects that will be permanently preserved in the city and thus contribute to the sustainability of the Luminale.

The heart of the Luminale in the urban space is the Light Walk, which combine interesting places into a walking tour of the city and a public gallery of light art. These locations tell the history of the city, proclaim the visions and desires of its inhabitants, create identity and shape the urban atmosphere. In such dynamically-changing cities as Frankfurt and Offenbach, new places emerge, squares disappear, fall into oblivion or become »un-places«. These witnesses of change, monuments and landmarks, will become venues and themes of light-art projects on the Light Walk.

Note: Luminale 2022 is suspended due to the energy crisis; the next edition will take place in 2024.