Welcome to Hauntopolis – OMVF's 2026 Theme Announced

Oulu Music Video Festival returns for its 33rd edition on August 27–30, unveiling Hauntopolis as this year's theme.

The programme approaches the city as both a hauntological and embodied space. Rather than a static monument, the city emerges as a living, ever-evolving organism—one shaped by the traces each generation leaves behind. The utopian dreams of modernism, the euphoria of club culture, the defiance of subcultures, and the cold logic of digital algorithms all converge and intertwine within it.

The concept of hauntology, first introduced by Jacques Derrida and later popularised by cultural theorist Mark Fisher, suggests that reality is shaped not only by what is present, but also by what is absent: unrealised futures that linger and return like ghosts.

Popular culture has long been filled with visions of alternative futures. In the late 20th century, music often functioned as a laboratory for imagining what lay ahead. Today, however, contemporary culture increasingly recycles and reinterprets the past. Music videos capture the aesthetics of their moment while simultaneously echoing earlier visual languages and conventions. The new emerges from within the old. Hauntological aesthetics are often marked by distortion, decay, and the material traces of obsolete media—such as cassette tapes and VHS recordings.

"In a culture saturated with artificial intelligence and digital kitsch, analogue formats and the embrace of imperfection feel newly relevant. It's time to descend from last year's hyperreality back to ground level," says the festival's artistic director, Joel Karppanen.

Hauntopolis transforms Oulu into a temporary city of music videos and cinema, where eras, cultures, and aesthetic forms intersect. Through music, the city becomes a shared, communal space. At its core is queer culture, whose self-determined practices have historically given rise to temporary zones of autonomy—spaces where new ways of living and being together can be imagined and enacted. Within this audiovisual flow, glimpses of lost futures flicker—futures still waiting to materialise.

"We invite our audience to look more closely at these ghosts. Perhaps one of them can still be realised—a better present, a better future," Karppanen reflects.

The festival's visual identity, along with the Pumpeli Awards for the best music videos, have been designed by Toivo Heinimäki. Heinimäki (b. 1995) is a Finnish photographer, graphic designer, and publisher. In his personal projects, he frequently explores themes of the built environment and urbanisation.

The first programme announcements will be released in May. Submissions are currently open for both the national and European music video competitions at filmfreeway.com/omvf.