Locarno Film Festival - Piazza Grande

Overview

Piazza Grande is the open-air screening section of the Locarno Film Festival, one of the three oldest A-list festivals in the world alongside Cannes and Venice. Each evening during Locarno's 11-day run in August, up to 8,000 spectators fill the town's central square to watch films on a 26-by-14-meter outdoor screen - one of the largest in Europe. The 79th edition runs August 5-15, 2026, with 14 films programmed in Piazza Grande, including multiple world premieres.

Piazza Grande is not a competition section. It is a curated program of films that combine artistic quality with broad audience appeal. The programming team selects titles that can hold the attention of an 8,000-person outdoor crowd - a very different proposition from a 200-seat indoor theater. Films that work in Piazza Grande tend to have strong emotional hooks, visual scale, or narrative momentum. The section also includes "second screenings" of restored classics: the 2026 edition screened Wild at Heart (1990), Dances with Wolves (1990), and Taxi Driver (1976) as companion pieces to new premieres.

The audience award for Piazza Grande is the Prix du Public UBS, voted by festival attendees. Films eligible for the prize are those screened in the Piazza Grande section during the festival.

Key Sections

• Piazza Grande Premieres - new international and world premieres selected for the open-air screen. The 2026 lineup included world premieres of Les Yeux Verts (The Green Eyes) by Fanny Liatard and Jeremy Trouilh, Armony by Dario Albertini, Ich Ist ein Anderer (I Is Another) by Felix Randau, Down the Arm of God by Peter Brunner, Il Cileno (The Chilean) by Sergio Castro-San Martin, and Demain Je Tombe Amoureux (Love Lessons) by Martin Provost.
• Second Screenings - restored classics paired with new premieres. The 2026 edition featured Wild at Heart, Dances with Wolves, and Taxi Driver.
• Pardo alla Carriera - the career achievement tribute, presented in the Piazza Grande setting.

What Filmmakers Should Know

Piazza Grande does not accept open submissions. The Locarno programming team selects films through curatorial relationships with distributors, sales agents, and producers. There is no FilmFreeway portal for Piazza Grande. If your film is being handled by a sales agent or international distributor, they should contact the Locarno programming office directly. If you are an independent filmmaker without representation, your path to Piazza Grande is through Locarno's competition sections (International Competition or Filmmakers of the Present), which do accept submissions via the Locarno Film Festival official website.

The festival received a record 7,759 submissions for its 79th edition in 2026, up nearly 22% from 2025. The full festival program includes 223 films with 103 world premieres across all sections, originating from up to 69 countries of production and co-production.

A Piazza Grande slot gives a film one of the most spectacular screening platforms on the festival circuit. The 8,000-person audience generates immediate social media coverage and press attention. Films that play well in Piazza Grande can attract distribution interest from buyers attending Locarno's Industry Days, particularly for European territories. However, the outdoor environment is unforgiving: films that are slow-paced, dialogue-heavy in unsubtitled languages, or visually dark can lose an outdoor crowd quickly. The programming team knows this and selects accordingly.

Major Awards

• Prix du Public UBS - the audience award for the best film in Piazza Grande, voted by festival attendees
• Pardo alla Carriera - career achievement award presented in the open-air setting

Note: The Pardo d'Oro (Golden Leopard) and the main competition awards are presented in the International Competition and Filmmakers of the Present sections, not in Piazza Grande. See the Locarno Film Festival entry for the full awards breakdown.

Festival History

The Locarno Film Festival was founded in 1946, the same year as Cannes. Piazza Grande screenings have been part of the festival since its early years, but the large-scale outdoor screen format was established in the 1970s. The current 26-by-14-meter screen specification has evolved with projection technology, moving from 35mm projection to digital cinema projection.

The Piazza Grande section has hosted world premieres of films by directors including those who went on to major international careers. The section's identity as a bridge between art cinema and audience cinema was solidified under the artistic directorship of Carlo Chatrian (2012-2018) and has continued under Giona A. Nazzaro (from 2021). The section's programming philosophy is distinct from the main competition: where the International Competition favors formal innovation and artistic risk, Piazza Grande favors films that can connect with a mass audience while maintaining festival-level quality.

Industry Context

Locarno's Industry Days run concurrently with the festival and include market screenings, co-production meetings, and professional programming. The Open Doors program, which rotates its geographic focus annually, supports filmmakers from developing regions with pitch sessions, development grants, and access to European co-producers. While Piazza Grande films are typically already financed and completed, the Industry Days platform can connect filmmakers whose work screens in Piazza Grande with sales agents and distributors for future projects.

Locarno is a FIAPF-competitive festival, one of only 15 festivals worldwide with this accreditation. This status gives the Pardo d'Oro significant weight in the international festival ecosystem, and the festival's overall programming - including Piazza Grande - benefits from the access and prestige that FIAPF accreditation provides.

See Also

For the full Locarno Film Festival including competition sections and Open Doors, see Locarno Film Festival. For festival circuit planning and submission strategy, see Film Festival Strategy. For international co-production opportunities, see International Film Markets. Use the Festival ROI Calculator to evaluate the cost-benefit of targeting A-list festivals like Locarno.