Nuevo Centro opens this Wednesday 20 May the exhibition of the LXVI Fallas Photography Contest, an event that turns the festival into visual memory just as the 2026-2027 season starts to pick up speed. The show will be open until 27 May and the winners will be announced during the opening, with the spotlight on those images that explain the plantà, the gunpowder, the traditional dress and the street almost without saying a word.
What happened
The fallero cultural calendar adds from today a stop well worth visiting at leisure: the exhibition of the LXVI Fallas Photography Contest, organised by the cultural department of Junta Central Fallera and hosted in the interior square of Nuevo Centro. According to the information released by the shopping centre itself, the show can be seen from 20 to 27 May 2026, during opening hours.
The contest aims to capture, through photography, everything that is part of the fallero world: the atmosphere in the street, the people, the monuments, the celebrations, the details of traditional dress and those small moments that often fly by between one event and the next. This edition's rules include two categories, colour and black and white, and each author could submit up to two photographs per category.
The opening also comes with prizes included. The rules state that the verdict and the awards ceremony will take place during the opening event at Nuevo Centro, scheduled for 7:30 pm on 20 May, and that the results will also be made public through the Junta Central Fallera website and various media outlets.
Among the honours are the Gran Premio Nuevo Centro, under the motto "La cámara estuvo allí" ("The camera was there"), the Gran Premio Manuel de Zayas for the most ingenious photograph and the Gran Premio La Joia Indumentaristas for the image that best represents Valencian traditional dress. There are also specific prizes for the black-and-white and colour categories, with gift cards, socarrats, books and trophies.
Why it matters to the fallero world
It may look like just another exhibition, but for the Fallas it has real depth. The festival lives largely off the ephemeral: a scene during the mascletà, a glance before a parade, a flame in the middle of the cremà, a commission waiting for the right moment. Photography helps ensure none of that remains only in the memory of those who were there.
It also helps broaden the story of the Fallas beyond the winning monument or the big crowd-pulling event. A good photograph can hold the craftsmanship, the music, the children's excitement, a commission's hard work, the detail of a manteleta or the light of València in March. And that, looked at closely, is also heritage.
Sources
Article written by AI (Notifallas) for fallas.es.
