Diriyah Art Futures announces an open call for the third Emerging New Media Artists Programme 2026-2027.
5 May 2026
Diriyah Art Futures (DAF) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, has opened applications for its Emerging New Media Artists Programme 2026–2027, a one-year, fully supported programme dedicated to creative production at the intersection of art, science, and technology.
Diriyah Art Futures invites participation from artists and scholars through upcoming public activities, educational programming, artistic and research residencies and grant opportunities. It aims to establish Saudi Arabia as a global centre for New Media and Digital Art, while amplifying the voices of the region in its engagement with art, science, and technology.
Set in the UNESCO World Heritage site of Diriyah, DAF reflects the Ministry of Culture’s commitment to preserving the country’s unique heritage while playing a pioneering role in developing and leading new art practices that will shape the future of art and humanity.
Emerging New Media Artists Programme
The Emerging New Media Artists Programme is a supported one-year programme of creative production training.
Developed by DAF in collaboration with Le Fresnoy – Studio National des Arts Contemporains in France, it provides emerging artists with access to cutting-edge professional equipment and a production budget, as well as a wide range of multidisciplinary learning opportunities.
The programme includes theoretical, conceptual and technical learning seminars, as well as personal mentorship by prominent international digital artists.
Applicants can also expect an accessible space with exhibitions, screenings and dedicated technical labs for professional creation and innovative digital development. Throughout the year, the centre will host prestigious artists and international institutions engaging in new media and technology arts.
Important Dates:
The 2026 – 2027 Programme (not including Dec / Jan break
Application Deadline: May 31, 2026
The term will begin in October 2026
Thematic Exploration, Pre-Production & Testing: October – December 2026
Track, Tools, Mentorship & Validation Jury: November 2026 – January 2027
Production, Mentorship, Scenography & Curation: February – August 2027
Exhibition & Jury: September – October 2027
Diriyah Art Futures Campus © Schiattarella Associates. Photo credits Hassan Ali Al-Shatti
Who is the programme for?
The Emerging New Media Artists programme has been developed with emerging creative practitioners from all over the world in mind, with a particular focus on those from the Middle East and North Africa. Applicants should be 35 years or younger, at the stage of completing a graduate or postgraduate degree, and have experience in developing and creating New Media and Digital Art.
Successful applicants will be provided an accessible space with exhibitions, screenings, and dedicated technical labs for professional creation and innovative digital development. Throughout the year, the Diriyah Art Futures hub will host prestigious artists and international institutions engaged in New Media and Digital Art forms.
The One-Year Emerging New Media Artists Programme
Phase 1: Thematic Exploration (Three Months)
The first three months of the academic year will be a series of thematic and conceptual explorations offered by artists and theorists through seminars, lectures, screenings and workshops. Thematic topics will include:
TECHNOLOGY, DIGITALLY AND MATERIALITY
Making art in a technological era puts us in a position that not only allows us to engage with digital technologies but also advances science and technology through material experimentation and our social and cultural understanding of them. New Media Art making has the opportunity to respond to the crisis by addressing the consequences we are observing today, both from an environmental and a techno-material perspective. A deeper investigation of what material engagements offer us not only in making but also in further critiques of engaging science and its impact on our cultures and societies.
INTERNET, DATA AND POST INTERNET
Addressing the Internet and data collection as a cultural phenomenon that has not only impacted the way we live but also opened avenues for critically questioning big tech’s motives. We further address “Post-Internet” movement is distinct from the “Net Art” movement, which appeared during the 1990’s. “Post-Internet” art sometimes takes its inspiration from this movement but goes beyond it, questioning notions of the network, immateriality, and materiality. It questions the increase in connectivity, information overload, and so-called concepts of community. Indeed, the volume of digital data produced, combined with exponential increases in storage capacity and real-time analysis tools, now offers more possibilities for exploring, exploiting, and visualising information than ever before.
THE BODY & TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATIONS
Effects of digital technologies on corporality and bodily representations. Understanding the self, others, or the environment with or through technology. Studies and experiments around the metamorphosis of the body –the “featured “, transformed or masked body (avatar, filter, mask), the “calculated” body (tracker), the “augmented” body, the “dispersed” or “displaced” body (connected objects, video).
NATURE, CLIMATE, ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATION
What role does art, particularly digital art, play in all of the current transitions in energy, society, climate, and ecology? Artists are exploring new territories as diverse as town planning and biology by taking a creative look at science and technology. They get involved as social actors in public spaces, sometimes as collectives. New representations and imagery are explored, both utopian and dystopian.
HUMAN, NATURE, NON-HUMAN
In light of the upheavals affecting our environment, the separation that society has wrought between the non-human world and humanity is being called into question: the idea that there is nature on the one hand, humanity on the other, as separate entities. Artists are called to question the nature of both technology and our world, and question the resonance between them.
MAPPING MEMORY IN THE ARAB WORLD
The use or creation of archives by artists (especially artists from the Arab world) has intensified thanks to the potential of new digital tools. This trend is particularly relevant in work which questions memory and cultural heritage, with a view to transmission to future generations.
Phase 2: Production & Mentorship (Six Months)
Over the next six months, emerging artists will receive personalised mentorship from prominent artists while producing their artwork using the technologies offered by the Diriyah Art Futures labs. Artists will have access to cutting-edge technologies, including advanced audio-visual techniques, immersive reality, coding, sensing, machine learning, and spatial audio-visual environments. The artwork produced will be exhibited with Diriyah at Futures as a final curated and juried outcome of the one-year programme.
Artists are invited to explore a range of contemporary fields in New Media Arts, including:
REALITY AND ARTIFICIAL REALITY
An invitation to explore the intersection between the physical and virtual worlds, within a range of technical engagements from immersive worlds to bio or synthetic material. Questions in this track include how virtual spaces embed themselves in the corporal or how they engage non-visual sensory experiences. Lastly, the topic explores how artists can subvert this reality using technologies that currently impact human engagement
SOUND, CINEMA AND IMMERSIVE CREATION
An invitation to examine the ways in which artists push the boundaries of cinema, archive and documentary. A key question is how artists can expand the cinematic and spatial sound experience through digital means, installation or new cinematic immersive experiences. Additionally, the topic explores how artists envision an expansive and narrative-led digital encounter.
HUMANS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE An invitation to examine the intersection of humans and machines, with a particular emphasis on the role of artists within this framework. This track focuses on computational creativity, code, machine learning and AI (image, text, speech), robotics, code art, interactivity, and living in data. A key question that arises within this topic is what role artists can play in offering unique perspectives on the social and technical events reshaping our era, and on the different perspectives on the issue of new intelligences.
For more details and to apply, click here.
