Eleven days, more than a hundred titles, one official competition — the Festival Internacional de Cine de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria turns 25 this year with an unusually dense line-up. The opening gala takes place on 23 April at the Auditorio Alfredo Kraus, hosted by actor Asier Etxeandia. Advance ticket sales for screenings at Cine Yelmo Las Arenas start today, 20 April.

To mark the anniversary, the organisers have added a symbolic gesture: anyone aged 25 or turning 25 this year — in other words, born in 2000 or 2001 — gets in free to all screenings. Other ticket prices range from 4.50 euros for a single seat to 12 euros for a four-film pass.

Ten features, one theme: meeting yourself in the mirror

The official feature competition, curated by festival director Luis Miranda, has a thematic bracket this year. The films deal, in different registers, with identity, family, belonging and the search for community. The catalogue text calls it an encounter "as in a mirror".

The ten features in competition:

  • Songs of the Forgotten Trees by Anuparna Roy (India, 2025)
  • Lucky Lu by Lloyd Lee Choi (USA / Canada, 2025)
  • Remake by Ross McElwee (USA, 2026)
  • How to Divorce During the War by Andrius Blaževičius (Lithuania / Czech Republic, 2026)
  • Lo demás es ruido by Nicolás Pereda (Mexico / Germany / Canada, 2026)
  • Bosque arriba en la montaña by Sofía Bordenave (Argentina, 2026)
  • Trial of Hein by Kai Stänicke (Germany, 2026)
  • 17 by Kosara Mitić (North Macedonia / Serbia, 2026)
  • Nina Roza by Geneviève Dulude-De Celles (Canada, 2025)
  • If I Go Will They Miss Me by Walter Thompson-Hernández (USA, 2026)

Five of these titles arrive in Las Palmas direct from the Berlinale, two from Sundance, two from Venice and one from Cannes — a respectable calibre for a city of around 380,000 inhabitants.

Fifteen shorts, all Spanish premieres

The short-film competition brings together fifteen works that have not been screened in Spain before: 13 Spanish premieres, one European premiere and one absolute world premiere. Among them is Chuuraa by Evgenia Arbugaeva (United Kingdom, 2026, 18 minutes) — the British filmmaker was previously Oscar-nominated for her first short, Haulout. Other shorts circle around ghost figures (Gone People), a dictatorship-style surveillance system (Citizen-Inmate), the quiet conversations before a pregnancy (Heartbeat), the pressure dynamics of a school group (Hyena, this year's Locarno winner), or what artificial intelligence is doing to human relationships (We Were Here).

Two side notes

First: the daily Canarias7 headlined its 15 April coverage with "14 shorts" — but its own running text lists 15 titles. The official count from the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the festival itself is 15, and that is what we're going with.

Second: a new feature in this edition is that the Panorama España section will be judged by a Young Jury — students in training who receive an introduction to festival programming and film evaluation and are then asked to make a real decision. A small but smart innovation; emerging talent assessing emerging talent.

Why the trip to Las Palmas is worth it

For residents of the south: if you don't want to drive up every evening, you can catch several titles over a weekend using the four-film pass. For readers holidaying in Gran Canaria in late April or early May: the festival is one of the very few international showcases the Spanish island archipelago has. Having both Berlinale and Cannes titles on a single programme — before the festival has even opened — already makes this edition stand out from the regional norm.

The full programme and screening times are available at lpafilmfestival.com. Free passes for the opening gala on 23 April and for the Jornadas del Oficio Cinematográfico (with Oliver Laxe, Javier Cámara, Laia Costa, Asier Etxeandia, Alberto Rodríguez and Albert Serra) are released today through the Fundación Auditorio y Teatro platform.

Programme data: official press release by the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 14 April 2026, together with reporting in Canarias7 (15 April 2026) and Audiovisual451. Ticket prices and age rules per festival organisers, as of 20 April 2026.