The PhotoVogue Festival 2026 travels to Seoul as part of Vogue Korea’s Leaders Event

As part of the 10th anniversary of the PhotoVogue Festival, Vogue Korea joins forces with PhotoVogue to present “Women by Women” in Seoul.

By 황혜원 (Hyewon Hwang)

The third annual Vogue Korea Leaders event runs March 27–29 at Layer Studio 20 on Wonhyo-ro in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Held each March in support of women’s voices, the event has evolved from “Woman Now” in 2024, which emphasized female solidarity, through “Women and Work” in 2025, which documented working women, to its 2026 theme: Agency.

The March issue of Vogue Korea sets the stage with editorial spreads and interviews featuring 17 women from across Korean society—among them the country’s first fashion designer Nora Noh, film directors, actresses, K-pop musicians, and models—each reflecting on the choices and sacrifices it took to stand in their own name. Their stories appear both at the venue and in Vogue Koreas’s print and digital editions. On the 28th and 29th, eight women leaders will share their experiences and reflections in talk sessions. As part of the program, PhotoVogue’s Women by Women exhibition, together with an archival photography show, invites visitors to reflect on what agency means for women today.

This year’s event reaches beyond Korea. The 2026 PhotoVogue exhibition Women by Women, developed by Vogue editions around the world to discover and nurture emerging photographers, will make its Seoul debut through Vogue Leaders.

Last March, PhotoVogue launched a large-scale open call under the theme of “Women by Women”—the gaze of women looking at women. The initiative itself was a response to a global climate in which the very process of stepping away from others’ expectations, shaping one’s own narrative, and defining one’s own vision is once again being suppressed. Crucially, the call asked for women to depict themselves directly through photography and video, on the conviction that owning space through the female perspective is more important than ever. As Global Head of PhotoVogue and Director, PhotoVogue Festival, Alessia Glaviano explains: “expression is never neutral, and who makes the image still matters,” making it clear that photography and video have long been arenas of power, not merely of aesthetic expression.