Les Rencontres d'Arles
Les Rencontres de la Photographie
Arles · Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur · France
Founded in 1970 by the photographer Lucien Clergue and others, the Rencontres install some thirty to forty exhibitions in Arles's disused ecclesiastical and industrial buildings — a deconsecrated chapel, the former railway workshops, a seventeenth-century hôtel — and run them through the summer. The LUMA complex in the old rail yard has added a permanent contemporary-art anchor nearby.
The organiser estimated around 175,000 visitors across the 2025 season.
The distinction that matters for planning is between the season and the opening week. The exhibitions are open until late September, when Arles is quiet and the viewing is unhurried. The opening week in early July is the professional gathering — portfolio reviews, night projections in the Roman theatre, the whole photographic trade in one small town — and accommodation then is both scarce and expensive.
PlanningExhibitions run to late September, but the opening week in July is the professional event.