FOTO ARSENAL WIEN is Austria’s new center for photography and lens-based media. Since 2023 it has been responsible for the FOTO WIEN festival, and starting in 2025 it will be responsible for the Festival Vienna Digital Cultures with the Kunsthalle Wien.

Initiated as a media literacy center by the city of Vienna in fall 2022, FOTO ARSENAL WIEN explores all facets of photography. As a hub for photography and lens-based media in Austria, the institution brings together historical and international topics at the interface between analog and digital worlds as well as between static and moving pictures.

The institution was located at a temporary venue at the Museums Quartier in the seventh district of Vienna from June 2023 to June 2024. Since early 2025 FOTO ARSENAL WIEN has occupied a building on the grounds of the Arsenal in the third district of Vienna.

FOTO ARSENAL WIEN presents the full spectrum of the medium of photography in up to twelve exhibitions held annually in a one-thousand-square-meter exhibition space—a combination of young talents, still-to-be-discovered photographers, and internationally known artists.

Our own activity department, which offers a rich variety of educational programs including workshops for children, young people, and adults, is the second focus of FOTO ARSENAL WIEN. The department is equipped with its own seminar rooms and an analog darkroom.