Sardines 2026 competition

The invitation is open to artists, designers, illustrators and creatives of all ages and nationalities, and consists of reinterpreting one of the city's greatest icons: the sardine. Participants are challenged to create unique and surprising sardines, using all artistic techniques - from drawing and painting to collage, photography, illustration, digital, three-dimensional or any other form of visual expression.

Rather than revisiting the past, this year's competition invites us to reinvent ourselves: what stories do we want to tell about the present? What achievements are we building? What future do we imagine? Each sardine could be a manifesto, a memory, a celebration or an artistic provocation. Because each sardine tells a story. And in 2026, the question is simple: what is yours?

The five winning proposals that will be part of the official Sardines 2026 collection will be awarded a prize of 1500 euros (one thousand five hundred euros).

The sardine has its own story, which began at the auction in 2003, when Silva Designers rescued it for a scanner and made it an iconic image of the city of Lisbon. This was the start of a long and successful journey that led to a competition in 2011, stimulating creativity in the country and around the world. And so the lives of the sardine that has been almost everything have multiplied: reporter, artist, migrant, activist, feminist, environmentalist, religious, parishioner, sportsperson, tourist..