Colouring a Decade: Lodhi Art Festival 2026 Marks Ten Years of India’s First Public Art District
1–28 February
If you have ever walked through Lodhi Colony and looked up, you know this already: the walls here do not sit quietly. They speak. They remember. They evolve.
As the Lodhi Art Festival returns from 1–28 February 2026, it does so with the quiet confidence of something that has grown patiently over time. What began in 2015 with three murals has, over a decade, become India’s first public art district — a living, breathing neighbourhood canvas shaped by St+art India Foundation in collaboration with Asian Paints.
To mark ten years, the 2026 edition is anchored in a compelling idea: Dilate All Art Spaces. Not as a slogan, but as an invitation — to stretch how we define art, where we encounter it, and who it belongs to.
A Neighbourhood That Became a Canvas
Tucked between Khanna Market and Meherchand Market in New Delhi, Lodhi Colony was never designed as a cultural landmark. Built in the 1940s and ’50s as a non-gated residential neighbourhood, it carried the rhythms of ordinary urban life — children cycling through lanes, morning vegetable vendors, conversations drifting from balconies.
In 2015, those rhythms met colour.
What followed was not an overnight transformation but a gradual reimagining of public space. Between 2016 and 2019, more than 100 Indian and international artists were invited to create murals and performative interventions. Residencies, community dialogue, institutional support — all of it unfolded steadily, without spectacle. Today, Lodhi Art District houses over 65 murals and functions as an open-air public collection that belongs as much to its residents as it does to visiting photographers, art students, and global travellers.
Over the years, even international dignitaries — including Brigitte Macron, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, and Tim Cook — have walked these streets. Yet what defines Lodhi is not who visits, but who lives with the art every day.
Rooted in the ethos of #ArtForAll, the Lodhi model has inspired six art districts across India — in Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa, and Coimbatore — extending the idea that art need not be confined to galleries to hold value.
Dilate All Art Spaces
The 2026 festival edition expands the very idea of what an art space can be. It is not a walled venue, nor a ticketed event. It is movement, memory, routine, pause. It is the corner tea stall beside a mural. It is the sound of a workshop drifting through a lane. It is colour entering daily life without announcement.
Supported by Asian Paints — whose long-standing engagement with colour in public life continues to shape this partnership — the festival unfolds through:
- Six new murals
- Performative and participatory interventions
- Interdisciplinary collaborations
- Public tours and community outreach
- Digital activations
Together, these elements position Lodhi as a site of international exchange while remaining deeply grounded in neighbourhood life.
As Amit Syngle, MD & CEO, Asian Paints Ltd., reflects, Lodhi represents what happens when art is allowed to grow patiently within a city — when colour does more than beautify walls and instead becomes a language of connection.
The founders of St+art India Foundation echo this sentiment, recalling that in 2015 the experiment was simple yet radical: could a wall in a living neighbourhood hold more than an image? Could public art stay long enough to become part of a city’s everyday intelligence?
Ten years later, the answer stands in plain sight.
Six New Murals
This year introduces six new murals by a dynamic mix of Indian and international artists:
- JuMu (Germany)
- Pener (Poland)
- Raissa Pardini (United Kingdom) with the late Hanif Kureshi (India)
- Elian Chali (Argentina)
- Svabhu Kohli alongside Ram Sangchoju (India)
- A collaborative mural by Suso33 (Spain), Tarini Sethi (India), and Ishaan Bharat (India)
Each mural engages Lodhi as a shared public canvas — not merely adding to its visual vocabulary, but extending conversations around collaboration, identity, and cross-cultural exchange.
Beyond the Walls
For its ten-year milestone, the festival moves — quite literally — beyond static surfaces.
The Cycle Rickshaw Project transforms ten active cycle rickshaws into mobile artworks. Designed in pairs by five of Lodhi’s most recognised artists from the past decade, these moving canvases carry the district’s visual language through the city’s everyday traffic.
An inflatable installation by Nicolas Barrome Forgues imagines a blooming garden of surreal, humanised flowers. Inspired by the Asian Paints Colour of the Year, it appears temporarily across sites, turning each location into a fleeting landscape of colour and pause — here for a moment, then gone.
The festival opens on 1 February 2026 with ELEVATION, a site-responsive French performance presented in collaboration with the French Institute in India and the Alliance Française network. Featuring works by Yoann Bourgeois and Lucas Struna, the performance explores balance, suspension, and gravity — the body negotiating space, much like the murals negotiate architecture.
Conversations That Continue
Throughout February, weekends will host panel discussions, guided walkthroughs, and hands-on workshops. Themes range from street art practices and accessibility to ecology, disability, colour theory, and the evolving language of public art. These sessions offer entry points beyond observation — inviting participation, questioning, and shared learning.
The continued cooperation of the Ministry of Urban Development, Central Public Works Department, New Delhi Municipal Council, and Swachh Bharat Mission has enabled Lodhi Art District to remain open, accessible, and sustained over time.
Ten years on, Lodhi Art District is not simply a milestone in Indian public art. It is proof that when art is embedded into daily life — when it is allowed to stay, weather, and be lived with — it becomes part of how a city understands itself.
