Ars Electronica and SIGGRAPH’s Art Gallery tend to dominate international coverage of art-and-technology festivals, but FILE — the Electronic Language International Festival, based in São Paulo — has quietly been running for 26 years as a non-profit cultural organization built specifically around the same territory: creation, research, and experimentation where art meets technology. This year’s edition, FILE 2026, runs August 18 through October 11 at the FIESP Cultural Center, with possible parallel activities in other Brazilian states.
What actually gets shown
FILE’s stated curatorial thesis is deliberately broad: work in which the aesthetic experience emerges from the encounter between interfaces, data, space, and body. In practice that’s meant welcoming proposals across a wide range of languages and formats, for both indoor and outdoor presentation, seeking projects that propose new forms of perception, interaction, and critical or poetic reflection on how contemporary technology reshapes aesthetics, culture, and sensory experience. The festival’s programming isn’t limited to exhibited artworks either — its call also covers lectures, workshops, and training activities, positioning FILE as much as an educational gathering as a showcase.
Why a festival like this matters outside its own country
Brazil’s creative-technology scene doesn’t get the same steady international press that Austria’s or the US’s does, and a 26-year-running festival built around exactly the same themes as Ars Electronica or SIGGRAPH’s Art Gallery — but running independently of either — is worth tracking specifically because it surfaces work and artists that the more frequently covered festivals miss. For anyone building a mental map of where serious interface, data, and body-focused art gets shown globally, FILE has simply been doing it longer than most of the venues that get discussed more often.
The practical note
This cycle’s submission window closed February 19, 2026, so FILE 2026 itself is now a festival to plan a visit around rather than submit to — worth noting for anyone working in this space internationally, since the next call will likely open in a similar window in early 2027.