BABELL literary festival | Porto 2026

BABELL is a literary and cultural festival created by Fundação Livraria Lello, in co-production with Porto City Hall, marking the 120th anniversary of the Lello bookshop. Its first edition took place from June 24 to 29, 2026, and turned Porto into a book city, with sessions, concerts, exhibitions and poetry interventions spread across streets, squares, monasteries and historic venues.

The festival brought together writers, musicians and artists from around the world, including some of the biggest names in contemporary literature: Salman Rushdie, Margaret Atwood and the Nobel laureates Olga Tokarczuk and László Krasznahorkai, along with Julian Barnes, Javier Cercas, Héctor Abad Faciolince, Conceição Evaristo, Milton Hatoum, Pilar del Río, Lídia Jorge, Gonçalo M. Tavares, Luís Osório and Valter Hugo Mãe. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han opened the festival and the photographer Daniel Mordzinski presented an exhibition at the Centro Português de Fotografia. On stage there was music by GNR, Pedro Abrunhosa, Rui Veloso, Carminho and Bárbara Bandeira, and a performance by Cai Guo-Qiang with 600 drones over the Douro river.

With Igor Martins, I was one of the official photographers of the festival, working for Fundação Livraria Lello throughout the six days of the event. These are some of the photographs I made during BABELL, from the author sessions to the streets of Porto.