1 October 2026 |
Paris is about to become the meeting point for some of the worlds that increasingly define contemporary culture. From 22nd to 25th October, Reference Festival will bring artists, musicians, designers, curators and cultural figures together across the city for its 2026 edition, “FREIE KUNST”.
The festival arrives during Art Basel Paris, when the French capital becomes particularly concentrated with the international art world. But Reference is interested in something broader than the traditional art fair circuit. Its programme moves between exhibitions, installations, performances, screenings, conversations and workshops, bringing different creative disciplines into the same space.
At the centre of the Paris programme is the Cité de la Mode et du Design, where FVTVR, the latest project from Silencio founder Arnaud Frisch, will host experiential events, installations and live discussions. Elsewhere, a private Left Bank salon will provide a more intimate setting for presentations and think-tank-style workshops.
The Paris edition has already had an introduction in Berlin. During Berlin Art Week earlier this month, Reference Studios marked the opening of Maurizio Cattelan’s exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie with an event at Watergate, where Parisian cultural institution Silencio presented its temporary Berlin pop-up. The project offered an early meeting between two cities that have become increasingly connected through Reference’s network.
Now, the focus shifts to Paris.
“FREIE KUNST”, German for “free art”, is deliberately open-ended. The term traditionally distinguishes fine art from the applied arts, but Reference Studios is expanding the idea into a broader question: what does creative freedom look like when the boundaries between disciplines are no longer so clear?
It is a natural territory for Reference Festival. Founded by Mumi Haiati in Berlin in 2019, the platform has developed around the spaces where fashion, art, music, design and technology overlap. Its programmes have consistently treated culture less as a collection of separate categories and more as an interconnected ecosystem.
That approach is reflected in the Paris line-up. Artists Donna Huanca, Julian Charrière, Dozie Kanu, Bjarne Melgaard and Kolya Nemoi will appear alongside designer Shayne Oliver, Canadian design studio Bocci, curator and museum director Klaus Biesenbach, Bettina Milz of the forthcoming Pina Bausch Centre, and Hans Ulrich Obrist and the Brutally Early Club. Music forms another part of the picture, with Eartheater, Richie Hawtin and Bill Kouligas among the participants.
The result is a programme that feels less like a conventional festival schedule than a series of encounters. Large-scale installations and performances sit alongside conversations and smaller gatherings, creating space for different forms of cultural production to meet.
For Haiati, that exchange is at the heart of the project. “This is what our studio has been about since day one,” he says, describing FREIE KUNST as a meeting point for what he calls a “radical and unhinged exchange of ideas”.
After its first appearance during Berlin Art Week, the 2026 edition now continues in Paris. If Berlin provided the introduction, the French capital will provide the wider stage, bringing Reference’s increasingly international cultural network together at one of the most concentrated moments of the European art calendar.
