Photography fair photokina is calling it quits

Photography fair photokina, which took place every two years in the German city of Cologne, is ending. The 2020 edition was canceled due to the outbreak of the corona pandemic and now the stock market is not returning at all.

Photokina 1950
First photokina, 1950
The organization has announced that the fair will end ‘until further notice’. The 2022 edition has been canceled and there are no plans for a later edition. “An event in 2022 could not live up to the expectations of the entire photography community, while we do before. That is why we are unfortunately taking this inevitable step,” said the organizing Koelnmesse and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie.

The organization of the fair in Cologne says that the photography market has been declining for a while and therefore the fair too. The last fair, scheduled for May this year, had already been postponed once; it should actually have taken place in 2019 .

Photokina was the largest and best-known photography fair in the world. The intention was to make it an annual fair. Photokina 2018, in September, attracted approximately 180,000 visitors from 127 countries. The fair has existed for almost seventy years; the first edition took place in 1950.