Since 2006, C/O Berlin has supported emerging artistic and academic talent through the C/O Berlin Talent Award. Since its inception, the program has presented more than 90 outstanding talents to a broad public. In recent years, C/O Berlin has presented numerous groundbreaking projects that engaged in different ways with the overarching theme of New Documentary Strategies. Award recipients include, among others, Stephanie Moshammer, Anna Ehrenstein, and Karolina Wojtas, as well as Sheung Yiu.

The year 2026 marks the award's 20th anniversary—an occasion to rethink the funding conceptually.

The C/O Berlin Talent Award 2026 is dedicated to the theme Body Politics. The term describes the complex interplay of power, institutions, and discourses that shape, control, or render bodies (in)visible. In a time marked by multiple overlapping crises, the body once again emerges as a central site of resistance, identity, and memory. What role do photography and lens-based media play in making these tensions visible and reflecting upon them? This year’s theme invites participants to explore the body as a political field, as an archive of experience, or a medium at the intersection of the individual and society.

The Open Call for the Theorist category will be published in spring 2026.