An important notice: the event has been postponed. We will share the new date once confirmed.
On 27 March 2026, the doors of the historic Al Qasimiyah School in the Al Manakh district will open to participants and guests of March Meeting 2026, the annual conference of the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF), which for more than fifteen years has remained one of the key intellectual platforms for contemporary art in the Middle East and beyond. The theme of this year’s programme is “Between Us, the World”, simultaneously affirming and questioning the very possibility of connection between people.
March Meeting is a ritual in which artists, writers, researchers, curators, and community organisers from around the world gather in Sharjah to discuss pressing issues in contemporary art and culture. The event creates a space for interdisciplinary dialogue: the quality of intellectual exchange that cannot be replicated within traditional academic institutions. Over more than a decade, March Meeting has established itself as an event that sets the tone for discussions in the global art community, alongside forums such as documenta symposia or the educational programmes of the Venice Biennale.
Sharjah: Cultural Capital of the Arab World
To understand the significance of the March Meeting, one must appreciate Sharjah’s role in the region’s cultural landscape. In 1998, UNESCO designated Sharjah as the Cultural Capital of the Arab World, which reflected the emirate’s commitment to the preservation and development of cultural heritage. Sharjah boasts more than twenty museums and art galleries, including the Museum of Islamic Civilisation and the Sharjah Art Museum.
Yet Sharjah’s true flourishing as an international centre for contemporary art is linked to the activities of the SAF and to the figure of Hoor Al Qasimi, the daughter of the ruler of Sharjah. She is a curator, visionary, and organiser who founded the SAF in 2009 as an independent public arts organisation. Since 2003, she has directed the Sharjah Biennial, one of the most significant and largest contemporary art events in the world.
Al Qasimi’s philosophy is built on the principle of adaptive reuse of existing buildings: she acquires and restores abandoned structures, transforming them into cultural centres. Thus, in 2013, the Al-Mureijah Art Spaces were created, designed by architects Mona El-Mousfy and Sharmeen Azam Inayat, now the Foundation’s headquarters. Among the repurposed buildings are the former Al Jubail fruit and vegetable market from the 1980s, a former slaughterhouse, and the “Flying Saucer”, an extravagant 1978 building that has become an art space.
Al Qasimiyah School: An Architecture of Memory
The choice of venue for the March Meeting 2026 is no accident. Al Qasimiyah School is one of the twenty schools in Sharjah designed by the architectural firm Khatib & Alami. This modernist building, embodying the emirate’s architectural ambitions during the modernisation of the mid-twentieth century, now serves as a venue for the SAF’s cultural events. The building’s architecture reflects a moment in history when Sharjah was entering the era of modernity without losing its connection to tradition.
The presence of conference participants within the walls of a former school lends the discussions an additional layer of meaning. A building once intended for the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation becomes a place of learning once again. Al Qasimiyah School embodies the continuity of knowledge that the March Meeting 2026 seeks to conceptualise.
Concept: The Fragility of Connections and Forms of Transmission
The theme “Between Us, the World” is deliberately polysemous. The English title permits a dual reading: the world may be what divides us, a space of differences and distances, but it is also what unites us, the common ground that we create and sustain together. This duality sets the tone for the entire programme.
It asks: how can kinship, memory, and humour sustain connections even when shared histories fragment or fade? What forms of transmission (oral, visual, sonic, literary, archival) are capable of tracing the movement of knowledge and experience between people and places? These questions unfold against the backdrop of interwoven historical, social, linguistic, economic, and geographic connections that shape our present.
The attention to oral forms of knowledge transmission is particularly significant in the region where they have historically played a central role in preserving cultural memory. Arabic poetry, Sufi parables, and storytelling practices — all are forms of knowledge existing at the intersection of the intimate and the public, the personal and the collective. March Meeting 2026 examines these practices as active instruments for preserving memory and cultural continuity.
The attention to humour as a form of connection is another noteworthy aspect of the programme. In academic and critical discourse, humour occupies a marginal position. Yet in difficult circumstances, humour often becomes the only available instrument for maintaining human dignity and community.
Performance, Sound, Dialogue: The Programme Format
The programme of the March Meeting 2026 includes panel discussions, lectures by leading thinkers and practitioners of contemporary art, performances, and conversations in various formats. Special attention is given to sonic and embodied forms of knowledge transmission: performance and live presence. The three-day format (27–29 March) allows for the construction of a multi-layered structure in which individual sessions enter into dialogue with one another, creating a unified intellectual field.
All March Meeting events are free and open to the public. It is a fundamental position of the SAF, which advocates for the accessibility of contemporary art. At a time when many of the world’s major art institutions are commercialising their programmes, the SAF model remains an exception and a model of cultural policy that places the public interest above commercial gain.
Against the backdrop of the current global situation, the programme of the March Meeting 2026 appears maximally relevant, offering art a role as a space for reflection and dialogue.
March Meeting in the Context of SAF’s Spring Programme
March Meeting 2026 opens at the height of the SAF’s rich spring programme. During the same days, the Foundation’s spaces at Al Mureijah Square host the monumental retrospective of Jorge Tacla, Time the destroyer is time the preserver, presenting for the first time on this scale the work of the Chilean artist of Palestinian and Syrian descent. On 28 March, a major exhibition of the Algerian artist Rachid Koraïchi opens, spanning more than five decades of his practice. The exhibition Image Keepers continues at the Photography Gallery, and Sunkissed by Jeddah-based artist Ahaad Alamoudi is also on view.
To learn more about the March Meeting 2026, please visit the the exhibition’s official web page.
Additionally, you may be interested in exploring Of Land and Water: Works from SAF Collection and reading our article about art and cultural events in UAE which will take place this year.
