Visa pour l’Image Perpignan (mostly referred to as simply ‘Perpignan’) is a yearly festival dedicated to photojournalism.

Apart from a program of exhibitions, open air screenings, symposiums and conferences scattered throughout Perpignan’s medieval buildings, this festival is the perfect opportunity to meet with photographers, agencies and manufacturers of equipment. The World Press Photo exhibition is part of the program too.
The open air evening shows will cover the main events of the past year, from September 2009 to August 2010. Every evening, from Monday to Saturday, the program will begin with a chronological review of these news stories, two months at a time. This is followed by reports and features on social issues and wars: stories that have made the news and others that haven’t, plus coverage on the state of the world today. Visa pour l’Image also presents retrospectives on major historical events and figures.

The festival lasts two weeks, which includes one week with a program especially for professionals to meet with each other. You can register online for a badge to get access to this program. The festival website offers an overview of the professionals present in Perpignan during the festival.
Photographers wishing to participate through an exhibition can send in a portfolio by mail. Guidelines and the correct address can be found here . Proposals can be send in from January through March.

Each year the festival awards several prizes: the [[Visa d’Or, an important prize for photojournalism and documentary photography, and seven other categories.
Picture editors from international magazines select a shortlist from all reports over the past year (both published and unpublished), choosing four nominees per category. A second jury meets in Perpignan to choose the winners for each Visa d’or award (categories News, Feature and Daily Press). Submitting your work is only possible for a number of these awards; the other winners are chosen form existing publications.