BUMP Festival 2025 has come to a close and with it, the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.
What started nine years ago as a mural festival has grown into a city-wide movement that reshaped how Calgary engages with public space, memory, and collective imagination. In August 2025, the city once again became a living site of artistic intervention, where walls spoke, streets gathered, and public space was activated as a place of culture, care, and resistance. BUMP has always believed that public art is not neutral, and this year reaffirmed that conviction in powerful ways.
In December 2025, BUMP officially became a registered charity. With this transition, we move forward as the BUMP Festival Arts Society, a shift that allows us to deepen our public impact, strengthen long-term support for artists, and build a more sustainable future for public art in Calgary and beyond. This milestone gives us the capacity to think bigger, work longer, and invest more meaningfully in the cultural life of the city.
As we look ahead, BUMP is expanding beyond murals into a broader public art ecosystem. Beginning in 2026, our programming will grow to include large-scale public sculpture, site-responsive installations, exhibitions, interdisciplinary projects, and new forms of public gathering and exchange. Murals remain part of our foundation, but they are no longer the boundary of what BUMP can be.
Artist calls for new 2026 programs will open in January 2026, inviting bold, curious, and ambitious practices into the public realm. We are entering a new era of public art, one rooted in longevity, experimentation, and care where the city itself becomes a living archive shaped by the people who move through it.
Welcome to the BUMP Festival Arts Society.
