The city is alive, gesticulating toward its own identity. In 2026, we find ourselves at a moment of cultural possibility, asking what kind of place Calgary might become if we allowed ourselves to imagine beyond the inherited boundaries of the present. How else can we grow? How else might we architect the idea of this city: generative, strange, with artists who are unapologetically ambitious? This is how we began the year. It is the questions that carried us from Beltline Urban Mural Projects (BUMP) into the BUMP Festival Arts Society, a charitable organization dedicated to building a city through public art, artistic exchange, and cultural experimentation. We believe Calgary is worth investing in, worth challenging, worth expanding, and worth imagining otherwise.
Guided by our brilliant guest curators, Ken Lum, Marigold Santos and Said Donkins, this year’s programming explores Of Simmering, and the Surge: how ideas gather beneath the surface before entering public life and reshaping the world around them. Public art, public space, and public imagination are where these forces become visible. Walls hold overlooked histories, rooms give difficult conversations momentum, and parks and sidewalks create encounters that change how we understand one another and the city we share. As both a festival and an arts society, we are interested in far more than reflecting culture – we hope to be architects of it too.
Selected from more than 1,000 applications, this year’s artists include local innovators, nationally celebrated practitioners, and international voices working across murals, sculpture, installation, sound, performance, and research. Their practices challenge convention and transform the city into a place of curiosity and possibility.
Throughout August and beyond, the festival unfolds across Calgary through new murals, our inaugural Public Sculpture Program, and free mural tours that invite audiences into the stories behind the city’s evolving visual landscape. At the heart of the festival is the BUMP Urban Art Conference, our ideas hub, bringing together more than 40 cultural thinkers from across Canada and around the world to explore the future of public art and civic life. We close with CALDERA, a free outdoor rave featuring national and international DJs making their Western Canadian debuts, transforming the city one final time through sound, light, and collective celebration.
Since 2017, BUMP has commissioned 400+ public artworks, helping transform Calgary into one of Canada’s leading cities for contemporary public art. Ten years in, our belief remains unchanged: BUMP is for the people. Public art belongs in everyday life. Public space belongs to everyone. And the future of this city is something we build together.
