Artown Now – One Hundred Artists at the Annual Urban Art Festival in Ploiești

The fifth edition of the Artown Now urban art festival in Ploiești will bring together, from September 18 to October 4, more than 100 local and international artists, who will create 25 murals and sculptures, as well as 50 other street art installations throughout the city.

The annual event features murals, sculptures, urban installations, and events that will transform Ploiești, and the community is invited to attend workshops and exhibitions at the UZUC Factory. From August 24 to September 12, the UZUC Factory will become a temporary museum, with artists from all corners of the world transforming the industrial site into an artistic workspace open to the public.

Over the course of four editions, the event has brought more than 400 artists from 40 countries across six continents to Ploiești, and last year alone it attracted 15,000 visitors.
With 100 murals completed so far, two renovated parks, more than 350 public art projects, and 11,000 square meters of painted surfaces, Ploiești is becoming the unofficial capital of urban art in Romania. The mural map can be explored at artown-now.ro/map.

The Grammar of Freedom

This year’s edition explores the theme “The Grammar of Freedom.” In a fragmented world, where freedom is often reduced to personal comfort or isolation, the event takes on a necessary role: to question what freedom means today, where it begins, and where its boundaries lie.
Through murals, sculptures, installations, street art, and exhibitions, the city becomes a space for encounter and reflection on freedom—understood as an experience built through our relationships with others, with the community, and with the environment.
Each project invites the public to be present, engage in dialogue, and participate.

This year’s theme completes a curatorial arc: after previous editions invited the city to feel, to speak, to imagine, and to belong, the anniversary edition is embodied by the verb that encompasses them all—to be.

In a context where democracies are vulnerable, Artown Now 2026 aims to visually represent—together with artists, curators, the community, the private sector, and public administrations—a possible grammar of freedom, and at the end of the edition, an open manual will be created—a set of questions, gestures, and practices that can be carried forward in the city, in the community, and in civic life.

“Five years after the first edition, Ploiești has become the place where street art is gaining legitimacy, one gesture at a time. We don’t stop at decorating the city; we want to work together with artists and the community to build a space where freedom is practiced, not just discussed,” says Livia Florea, founder and curator of Artown Now.

UZUC Factory, (CONtra)TEMPORARY Museum

The UZUC factory, with a history spanning over 120 years and covering 100,000 square meters, is the only industrial site in Romania to have been transformed through art on this scale.

Between August 24 and September 12, the artists are working on the platform, transforming the halls into an open-air art site. Unlike a traditional exhibition, however, here the process itself is the exhibition and can be followed in real time: the public has access during the production period, and the completed works will be on display starting September 18.

The Urban Zone of Unconventional Culture project, co-funded by the National Cultural Fund Administration, aims to transform the factory into a (CONtra)TEMPORARY Museum—a museum where art is created in the presence of the community.

This edition extends beyond UZUC—Democracy Park is getting new sculptural installations inspired by Constantin Brâncuși, and Ploiești’s South Station, the only one in Romania to have been revitalized through art, is receiving new artistic installations.

A 10-year-old co-curator

This year’s edition welcomes 10-year-old Matei Nițulescu to the curatorial team. He is passionate about culture and already has experience in theater and performance, as well as in producing an arts program featuring interviews with artists.

He is the ideal co-curator to explore the theme of freedom at this age. At the festival, he will lead guided tours and serve as the host for community events.

Highlights of the 2026 Edition

• Continuous Studio—artist Dumitru Gorzo is moving his studio into a hall at the UZUC Factory for a month and a half, opening up the artistic process to the public with weekly events, discussions, and workshops;
• murals, sculptures, and public art installations created by artists from Romania and abroad throughout the city;
• guided tours, workshops, music, concerts, recitals, DJ sets, panel discussions, theater, performance art, listening sessions, and short film screenings;
• a public program running from Thursday through Sunday, with each Sunday dedicated to the community;
• The Grammar of Freedom, the edition’s manifesto-style publication.

Admission to all events in this edition is free. The full program for this edition will be announced on Artown Now’s official channels.