Open calls for performance artists — where live work gets funded · OpenCall Radar
Guide
Open calls for performance artists — where live work gets funded
A working performance artist's guide to the 2026 open-call landscape — festivals, residencies, and grants that genuinely support live and time-based work, with notes on what each actually pays for.
Performance art lives in a different open-call ecosystem than object-based visual arts. The institutions that present and fund live work are partly traditional museums and galleries, partly performance festivals, partly dance and theater organizations, and partly experimental art spaces that hybridize all of these. Aggregator lists that treat "performance" as a single discipline often miss the actual opportunities because the funding flows through several parallel funding streams.
This guide names the recurring open calls and programs — for what is open right now, see the [live performance list](/open-calls/discipline/performance) — most worth a serious performance artist's application time. The shortlist favors programs that actually pay performance artists (rather than offering "exposure"), that have established commitment to experimental live work, and that have hosted artists doing the kind of work you might be doing. Programs that treat performance as a secondary discipline behind painting or installation are excluded; this is a list of programs where live work is the headline.
Section 1
PS122 / Performance Space New York open calls
Performance Space New York (PS122) runs annual commissioning, residency, and presentation open calls for performance artists across the experimental performance spectrum — durational, conceptual, dance-adjacent, queer performance, sound-based, and hybrid forms. The organization is one of the most established experimental performance presenters in the US, with a long history of commissioning early-career and mid-career artists.
Funding levels vary by program track. Commissioning grants typically provide $5,000–$25,000 plus presentation in the PS122 season, which is substantial for performance work where production budgets often outstrip artist fees. Residency tracks are shorter and provide rehearsal space, technical support, and a smaller stipend.
Application materials emphasize the work itself — video documentation of recent performances, a concept document for the proposed work, and an artist statement situating the practice in contemporary performance discourse. Selection panels include working performance artists and curators; the standards are high but the panel is genuinely engaged with the experimental work that performance art encompasses, which is different from how more traditional arts institutions evaluate the same applications.
Section 2
MAP Fund (Multi-Arts Production Fund) project grants
MAP Fund is one of the most important funders of performance, dance, music, and theater projects in the US. The annual grant cycle supports new project development from $10,000 to $45,000 across performance disciplines, with explicit openness to experimental and cross-disciplinary work.
MAP applications are project-specific — the artist proposes a defined new work with a specified timeline, collaborators, and budget. Selection emphasizes the project's artistic ambition, the artist's capacity to deliver, and the project's contribution to contemporary performance discourse. Cross-disciplinary projects (sound + dance, performance + film, performance + installation) are explicitly welcomed.
MAP Fund grants are renewable across multiple projects over a career, and many established US performance artists have multiple MAP awards on their CVs. For early- and mid-career performance artists, a single MAP grant can be career-defining — both for the project funding and for the credential's recognition value with subsequent presenters and funders.
Section 3
Performance art's open-call ecosystem is dispersed across several funding streams that don't always announce themselves clearly. The eight programs above span US (MacDowell-tier and field-specific) and European (national agency and discipline-specific) funders that have established commitment to live and experimental work.
For a working performance artist's application year, the right structure is to apply seriously to 4–6 of these programs that match your specific practice and career stage, while building visibility through festival presentations and critical writing about the work. Browse the OpenCall Radar performance discipline filter for live deadlines, and follow the major performance festivals' programming year-over-year to track curator and presenter relationships that produce the invitations that don't appear in open-call aggregators.
Ready to apply? Browse the catalog of current open calls and residencies.
Foundation for Contemporary Arts (FCA) grants
FCA's grants for performance artists are unsolicited and unrestricted — artists don't apply directly; they are nominated by peers and selected by an FCA committee. Grants typically run $25,000–$45,000 and are awarded to performance artists working at the edge of the discipline. Nominations open in specific cycles each year.
The path to an FCA grant is therefore indirect — the artist builds visibility through serious work over years until peers nominate them. There is no application strategy that produces FCA recognition directly. But understanding the FCA pipeline helps performance artists target the kind of work and recognition that produces nominations: serious commissioned projects, presentations at major experimental venues, critical writing about the work, and visibility within the experimental performance community.
For early-career performance artists, FCA is not yet on the immediate horizon, but the funders who feed into FCA recognition (MAP, PS122, NEA Fellowships, certain national-arts-council grants in Europe) are the right targets, and acceptance at those programs is the path that eventually produces FCA visibility.
Section 4
CalArts Center for Integrated Media residencies
CalArts runs structured residency programs through several centers, with the Center for Integrated Media (CIM) being particularly relevant for performance artists working with technology, sound, video, and hybrid forms. Residencies provide studio space, technical support, and access to the institution's substantial cross-disciplinary community.
The CalArts model is partly academic — residents engage with graduate students and faculty during the residency — but the artistic peer community in Valencia and broader LA is strong. Performance artists who benefit from technical experimentation (motion-capture, real-time video processing, complex sound systems) find the technical infrastructure at CalArts uniquely valuable.
Selection emphasizes the artist's existing work and the proposed engagement with the center's technical resources. Performance artists whose work is more low-tech and embodied may find CalArts less of a fit; those whose work is moving toward technological experimentation often find the residency career-defining.
Section 5
NEA Fellowships for Theater Artists (and similar discipline fellowships)
The National Endowment for the Arts runs fellowship programs for individual artists in several discipline categories. Performance artists often fall under Theater (or Dance, depending on the work's emphasis), with biennial open competitions for unrestricted artist fellowships. Awards are typically $25,000–$50,000.
NEA fellowships require US citizenship or permanent residency. Application materials emphasize the body of work, a clear sense of practice trajectory, and recommendations from established peers. The selection panel rotates and includes leading working artists in the discipline.
The application is administratively demanding but the prestige is real and the funding is unrestricted (the artist decides how to use it). For US-based performance artists, NEA fellowships are one of the most career-defining grants accessible through open application.
International equivalents in Europe include national arts agency individual-artist fellowships — Arts Council England has theater and dance fellowship tracks; Pro Helvetia funds Swiss performance artists; Mondriaan Fund supports Dutch performance artists. The discipline-specific national arts agency in your home country is typically the first major individual-artist fellowship to target.
Section 6
Mondriaan Fund Performance Art Project Investment
Mondriaan Fund (Netherlands) runs project-investment grants explicitly open to performance artists, with funding typically $10,000–$50,000 for new project development. Eligibility requires the applicant to have worked in the Netherlands for at least four years, which makes this primarily a Dutch performance-artist grant.
For Dutch and Netherlands-resident performance artists, Mondriaan project investments are one of the most accessible substantial funding sources for new work. The application emphasizes project clarity, budget realism, and the artist's prior body of work. Selection panels are composed of working performance artists and curators familiar with experimental work, which means the standards are appropriate to the discipline rather than imported from traditional theater or dance funding logics.
International artists working in the Netherlands through other residencies (Rijksakademie, Mondriaan-supported residencies) can sometimes access Mondriaan project funding for work developed during or after the residency, which makes the Dutch performance ecosystem one of the most accessible internationally.
Section 7
Festival of Live Art (FOLA) and adjacent festival open calls
Several international performance festivals run open-call commissioning and presentation programs. FOLA in Melbourne; Performa in New York (biennial); Performance Studies international (PSi); Steirischer Herbst in Graz; Spielart Festival in Munich; and many others present new performance work through curated invitations and occasional open calls.
The funding model varies — some festivals pay artist fees plus production support, others provide presentation venue and technical support but expect the artist to bring funding from other sources. Performance artists building a career typically engage with multiple festivals across years; presentation at one festival often opens invitations to others.
Open-call mechanisms at festivals are inconsistent and not always advertised through general aggregators. The practical approach is to follow festival programming year-over-year and track when each festival announces commissioning or open-call cycles. Many festivals invite by curator selection rather than open application, which means visibility at smaller venues and through critical writing builds the path to festival invitations over time.
Section 8
University-affiliated performance residencies
Several universities run residency programs that genuinely fund performance artists — typically tied to graduate teaching or community-engagement programs but with stipends and presentation opportunities for performance artists from outside the institution. The specific programs change year over year but several patterns are stable.
NYU Tisch, Columbia, UCLA, CalArts, Bard, and similar institutions periodically run performance-artist residencies with visiting-artist appointments that provide stipends, accommodation, and engagement with graduate students. The application is sometimes through open call, sometimes through invitation; established performance artists tend to receive invitations while early-career artists find these through open-call cycles.
European university residencies follow a similar pattern. The Royal Holloway University, Goldsmiths, and several Dutch and German universities run performance-art-focused residencies with serious funding. These programs tend to attract artists who value academic engagement; performance artists whose work is more market-oriented or commercial-festival oriented sometimes find the academic context constraining, while those whose practice has scholarly or research dimensions find it productive.