Fashion and music have always gone hand in hand at Flow Festival. They draw from the same cultural phenomena, creativity and self-expression, together building the festival’s unique atmosphere and visual identity. The 2026 Art Program intensifies this connection by embracing fashion as part of the artistic disposition and proposing new ways to experience the interfaces between music, visuality, and performing arts. At Front Yard, a multisensory fashion performance by Minttu Vesala aka MASTERMINTTU combines fashion design, a live soundscape, and immersive light design. Further, the festival area will be filled with a variety of light, street and video art.

MASTERMINTTU aka Minttu Vesala is an interdisciplinary artist working at the intersection of fashion, art, and commerce. They explore fashion as performance – combining diverse aesthetics, styles, and multisensory experiences to expand personal aesthetic space and challenge normative, binary thinking. Over the past decade, they have shaped and sustained the northern fashion scene – through their own work, support of emerging talent, and promotion of cultural dialogue.

To Flow’s Front Yard, MASTERMINTTU will create a multisensory fashion performance. The presentation combines designs by emerging talent kboy, a live soundscape by APEAK, and immersive light design by AUSGANG studio. kboy exists between the physical and the digital world. Born from club culture, post-humanism and grit, the clothing become a language, and play becomes the method. Known for his icy yet intimate sound, Paavo Piekkari aka APEAK has been shaping a distinct musical language, drawing freely from techno, ambient, contemporary pop, noise and the outer fringes of experimental music. The light design by the German art studio AUSGANG integrates into Front Yard and can be experienced throughout the festival.

The Make Your Mark gallery, located within the festival area, will present an exhibition by Berlin-based Kadir “Amigo” Memiş. Memiş began his artistic journey in the vibrant hip-hop and breakdance culture of the late 1980’s. Over the course of more than three decades, his work as a choreographer has combined urban movement culture with traditional forms, establishing his position as a pioneer of the German hip-hop scene. Alongside his dance career, Memiş has developed an independent drawing practice and created calligraphic works on paper for more than 30 years. The exhibition features the artist’s original works and screen prints.

On view at The Other Sound venue, Merle Karp’s Fluvial Time is a video sculpture of a weightless waterfall suspended in the air. It presents the majesty, danger, and force of motion of natural phenomena through a light material immateriality. The work explores themes of time and perception through slow motion — a “magnifying glass of time”. Amid the bustle of the festival, it creates a calm space to pause and reflect on shifts in perception.

Flow’s long-time visual designer Lauratimantti, aka Laura Lehtinen, is creating new works for the area. Lehtinen will create her Suvilahti DIY 4 Ever tribute mural on the side of Suvilahti’s beloved skatepark, which is set to be demolished. The work pays homage to the skatepark, where Lehtinen created its first large-scale paintings during Flow Festival in 2015. Near the main entrance, a vibrant installation incorporating repurposed elements from a work previously exhibited at Amos Rex will welcome visitors. The festival area will also feature a striking textile mural made from recycled fabrics, as well as the iconic Flow letters located near the main stage.

The Urban Art program will once again spread across the festival site, with works by 19 artists appearing throughout Suvilahti. In addition, Flow will once again feature a diverse and impressive area lighting concept, created by the festival’s long-time lighting partner Sun Effects. Their 2026 work, Linear Gradient, will place particular emphasis on the area around the old coal power plant, spectacularly integrating it into the iconic festival milieu. The area lighting highlights the festival site’s historic structures and landmarks, such as the steel gas holder, creating Flow’s distinctive and unforgettable atmosphere in Suvilahti.

Explore art program here.
Flow Festival takes place in Helsinki, Finland, 14–16 August 2026.