Hidden Door 2026 will take place from Wednesday 3rd to Sunday 7th June 2026 at The Paper Factory in Edinburgh. As always, we will be seeking artists, creators and performers to be part of the festival.
Hidden Door opens up forgotten urban spaces for the public to explore and discover incredible music, art, theatre, film, dance, spoken word and more. Through our Open Calls, we invite creatives to be part of this immersive, multi-art-form festival that celebrates new, emerging and breakthrough talent in Scotland.
Visual Art – closed in January
Dance – deadline 23 March
Music – deadline 25 March
Spoken Word – deadline 25 March
Tinderbox Room To Play – deadline 27 March
We’re now inviting submissions for works where dance or movement is the main art form.
This open call seeks proposals for two existing dance works to be presented during Hidden Door Festival 2026, performed each night of the festival for the five-night run.
Deadline: midnight on Monday 23 March 2026.
We are delighted to once again invite musicians of all kinds to apply to be part of Hidden Door Festival in Edinburgh. This year we have reserved 10 slots, to be selected in partnership with Creative Edinburgh and the National Centre for Music, who are also offering a creative mentoring scheme as part of the opportunity.
Deadline: midnight on Wednesday 25 March 2026.
We’re inviting applications from: Spoken word artists, poets, and performers at all stages of their careers; individuals or duos for stripped-back performances lasting 20–30 minutes, or artists proposing alternative formats or group projects.
Deadline: midnight on Wednesday 25 March 2026.
We’re partnering with the wonderful Tinderbox Collective again this year to bring Room To Play back to Hidden Door, and they’re now looking for emerging artists who want to dive into interactive sound, art and performance with a curious, playful spirit.
This year, they’re teaming up again with immersive design studio Ray Interactive to dream up a brand new collaborative installation for Hidden Door. They’ll be experimenting with electronics and sensors, microcontrollers, code, and responsive visuals – all the bits of creative tech that spark ideas and open doors.
Deadline: midnight on Friday 27 March 2026
For Hidden Door 2026, we’re not just building an exhibition, we’re building a myth – a shared architecture shaped by the work we will showcase.
Returning to the iconic Paper Factory in west Edinburgh, the world we create there will be constructed from these works, the festival space treated like a portable building — formed from memory, residue, tools and imagined industry.
The works we will present will be less like exhibits and more like fragments of a world — things that feel found, remembered, reused or ritualised, drawing on the following themes:
These themes do not set a single narrative. They create a shared architecture which will be shaped by the works selected.