Swab Barcelona 2025

Coinciding with the year of the snake, the event marks a turning point reflected in its direction: Carolina Díez-Cascón takes over from Joaquín Díez-Cascón with a renewed outlook, faithful to the founding spirit of a platform for emergence and discovery.

The programme embraces independent and collaborative formats that understand art as a common good and a tool for transformation. The central programme, Polar and Tropic, brings together thirteen Nordic and Southeast Asian spaces to explore community practices that engage with the climate and social crisis. It is joined by a calendar of talks, workshops, video and radio, curated by Tenthaus, Jatiwangi art Factory and Bunga Siagian, as well as performative collaborations with Club9.

Vortex expands the already established Emerging LATAM towards a horizontal exchange between Latin American and local galleries, while SOLO proposes a European network of independent projects through the solo-show format, with the support of Fundació Vila Casas.

The fair also incorporates MyFAF and a unified Programa General, reflecting an ecosystem in which the boundaries between the emerging and the established become blurred. With IN/OUT, Swab expands beyond the venue to engage with the city through exhibitions, performances and collaborations with Art Barcelona and Art Nou.

In this 18th edition, Swab reaffirms itself as a plural and community space, more attentive than ever to the urgencies of the present and to art’s capacity to imagine shared futures.