On Friday 21 August, EMMA celebrates the opening of the 2026 Outsider Art Festival. The opening event at EMMA will include the presentation of the OAF Award and honorary mentions, as well as the Vimma Award granted by Kynnys ry and the Tukilinja Foundation. The Laserlevyraati by VHS-klubi will feature screenings of vintage karaoke videos from laserdiscs accompanied by live piano sing-alongs. The evening concludes with a Kazakh vocal improvisation performance by Aizhan Sultan. The entire opening event takes place during EMMA’s weekly Friday Free Evening, making participation free of charge. 

The following week, on Tuesday 25 August, a two-day international seminar on film and visual art opens at EMMA before continuing at Cinema Orion the next day. The seminar is part of Espoo Ciné’s Cinéstesia programme, which explores connections between cinema and moving–image-based visual art. At EMMA, visitors will hear artist talks by Cinéstesia’s featured guests Ben Rivers and Nour Ouayda, among others. The seminar fee is €8 per day, and registration takes place via the Espoo Ciné website. From the film programme, be sure to mark Isaac Julien’s early works screening at Kino Regina on Friday 28 August in your calendars. Julien’s later work will be featured in the exhibition Alien in Me, opening at EMMA in October. 

The largest electronic art festival in the Nordic countries, Pixelache, visits EMMA in mid-September. Taking place in EMMA’s Luova space on Wednesday 16 September, the screening programme is linked to the exhibition WHO GOES HUNTING DOES NOT COUGH at the Museum of Technology, curated for Pixelache Helsinki by Kisito Assangni. The programme at EMMA presents works from the Saastamoinen Foundation Art Collection that explore narratives connected to identity, technology and social change. The screening is free of charge, but advance registration is required. 

Later in the month, EMMA will host a day of Positioning A Symposium on Curatorial Learning in the Nordic-Baltic Region & Beyond. The symposium is organised by PUBLICS and co-organised by nine art institutions across the Nordic region over ten days in the autumn of 2026. The symposium at EMMA will take place on Friday 25 September and will be held in the Aitio space. Positioning invites participants to collectively reflect on the relationship between learning, curatorial thinking, exhibitionary practices, and discourses of the curatorial. Attendance is free of charge, but registration is required. Read more.