Curve Photo Contest 2026

ABOUT

The annual Curve Photo Contest is inspired by Curve magazine's 35-year legacy of depicting lesbian life. We invite community members who self-identify as lesbian, bi, trans, and queer women and nonbinary people, to participate in submitting their photographs that depict queer lives/ queer identity to be considered for the contest. The original Curve Lesbian Life photo contests ran from 1995-2006 and received thousands of mailed-in photographs. Today, we ask applicants to submit through this web portal at Archive.Curvemag.com/photo-contest-2026

DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 28, 2026, at 11:59pm Pacific Time

HOW TO SUBMIT: Please follow instructions below. Fill out the form and upload your entry through this page.

Winners will be chosen by The Curve Foundation team based on Creativity, Self-Expression, and Representation. Winners will receive an email notifying of their status in early March 2026. Winners will be required to respond and accept the award.

PRIZE: Three (3) Winning Entries will have the opportunity to be displayed in-person at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA), during a one-day event with The Curve Foundation on April 24, 2026, as part of Lesbian Visibility Week this year. The Curve Foundation will cover the cost of printing works for display, but not cover travel nor mailing the works back (you may choose to donate the print to The Curve Foundation).

The Winning Entries and Honorable Mentions will also be featured in an article on Curve Quarterly, published in April 2026.

All submissions will be proudly displayed in a digital exhibit on the Curve Archive website, adding to Curve's long legacy of archiving and displaying lesbian and queer life.

CRITERIA:

Images must not be older than 5 years
You must own the right to the image you submit
You must self-identify as lesbian, bi, queer, trans, or nonbinary
Your image must be representing, expressing, or depicting queerness or queer life/identity
We do not tolerate any content that is discriminatory, hateful, or exclusionary and anti-LGBTQ

Curve Photo Contest 2026 Submission Form

Your Name

Your Pronouns

Your Email

Instagram handle, if any

Where are you located? (City, State, Country)

Work Title

Work Year (We are not accepting images older than 5 years)

[Image Rights] Do you confirm that you hold the rights to this image?

[Eligibility] The Curve Photo Contest proudly centers and uplifts people who identify as lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer women and nonbinary people. Please share how you self-identify, using language that feels most accurate to you. Feel free to include all intersections of your identity. (Examples: lesbian, trans person of color, Latinx queer woman, radical faery, butch, etc.)

UPLOAD PHOTO HERE. *REQUIRED: Upload a single image in its highest resolution. The image must be at least 2000 px on its longest side and saved as a JPEG or PNG. Do not upload screenshots. Images that do not meet these requirements may not be displayed or considered for the contest. [Eligibility] You may only submit images created in the past 5 years. You are allowed to submit a MAXIMUM of 3 images. To submit another photo, please complete this form again. If multiple images from the same project are submitted, only one may be considered for the contest and selected for display.

[Artist Statement] Tell us more about your photo by sharing a brief artist statement OR answering this prompt: "This is what being ______ means to me..." (Max. 100 words)

[Visual Description] Describe your photo so we can provide alt-text. Example: "Two women holding hands and smiling as they walk in a pride parade, surrounded by rainbow flags."

[Agreement] In the event that you win the 2026 Curve Photo Contest, do you consent to having your photograph printed for the sole purpose of displaying at The Curve Foundation's one-day event at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco, CA) during Lesbian Visibility Week? The Curve Foundation will cover printing costs, but will not cover costs for mailing the print after the event ends.

[Agreement] Do you consent to The Curve Foundation storing, sharing, and using this image and its description as we deem appropriate, including disseminating on our social media, website, and Curve Archive and Curve Quarterly?

[Agreement] By checking 'I understand' below, I acknowledge that this contest upholds values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I confirm that my submission does not contain anti-LGBTQ+ or other discriminatory, hateful, or exclusionary content.

Email me my submission

I accept the Terms of Service

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