Discover the program for the summer of 2026 at Villa Medici in Rome!
The Villa Medici – The French Academy in Rome is a prestigious museum and cultural institution located near Villa Borghese. Like every summer, this year it is ready to host numerous events, with a rich program that includes art exhibitions, landscape architecture interventions, and film festivals. With its 18 hectares of gardens, fountains, and sculptures, Villa Medici remains an oasis of artistic expression that evokes the French countryside, despite being situated in one of the most central areas of Rome.
Let’s take a look at the artistic programming of Villa Medici from May to September 2026
Festival des Cabanes di Villa Medici | 20 June – 28 September 2026
The Festival des Cabanes at Villa Medici was created to offer architects, artists, and researchers the opportunity to “take over” the site’s historic gardens, designed by Ferdinando de’ Medici at the end of the 16th century. For the fifth consecutive year, six original “cabin” creations will be showcased throughout the summer in the heart of the Villa Medici gardens. These cabins are specially designed for the festival by international groups of architects, builders, and students: Bento Architecture, ECAL, the University of Art and Design Lausanne, Foundation Huttopia, NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, PRÌA and VELIA, and Salazarsequeromedina. All summer long, the cabins will host various educational workshops, readings, and yoga classes.
Opening times:
Monday to Sunday (closed on Tuesday) from 10:00am to 7:00pm (last entry at 6:30pm)
Tickets:
Full €10
Read more about the Festival des Cabanes
Oracle beyond the sea | 19 June – 7 September 2026
From June 19 to September 7, 2026, Villa Medici presents Oracles Beyond the Sea, the collective exhibition marking the end of the sixteen fellows’ year-long residency at the French Academy in Rome. Curated by Roberto Pontecorvo and Imma Tralli of Marea Art Project, with Camille Coschieri as associate curator, the show takes its title from Oracles from the Sea (1998) by Palestinian artist Vera Tamari.
The exhibition brings together works spanning visual and performing arts, music, literature, architecture, curating, and art theory. Created in the privacy of the studios, the projects now move into the historic spaces of Villa Medici to meet the public. Some appear as finished pieces, others as ongoing processes, held in a constant tension between the poetic and the political.
Opening times:
Monday to Sunday (closed on Tuesday) from 10:00am to 7:00pm (last entry at 6:30pm)
Tickets:
Full €10
villamedici.it/en/programme/oracles-beyond-the-seas
Villa Medici Film Festival | 16-20 September 2026
Created in 2021, the Villa Medici Film Festival offers an international selection of films that explore the connections between cinema and contemporary art. For the sixth consecutive year, the festival aims to present pioneering works with diverse profiles that challenge, disrupt, transform, or re-enchant our relationship with images.
The Villa Medici Film Festival is divided into three sections: the International Competition, consisting of fourteen recent films of various genres and formats, the parallel program Focus, featuring non-competitive films by artists, masterclasses, and exceptional encounters, and the Piazzale screenings, which gather the audience for outdoor screenings of new films, including premieres and restored classics.
This year’s festival is dedicated to the memory of Lili Hinstin (1977–2026), a woman of the cinema, festival programmer and artistic director, who began her career at Villa Medici as a film programmer from 2005 to 2010, before helping to create the Film Festival, serving as a member of its Selection and Organizing Committee until her passing.
Villa Medici
Viale della Trinità dei Monti, 1
