José Manuel Ballester (PHotoESPAÑA 2026)

José Manuel Ballester, winner of the National Photography Prize, captures the transformation of the new Bernabéu Stadium as an icon of Madrid. The exhibition is part of PHotoESPAÑA 2026 and will run from 1 September to 31 December at the Bernabéu Stadium itself. For six years, photographer José Manuel Ballester (Madrid, 1960) has documented, with almost architectural precision, the profound transformation of the Bernabéu Stadium through a camera that has captured the beating heart of a construction project capable of redefining an urban icon, whose new metallic cladding has now become an essential feature of Madrid’s skyline. In fact, the resulting images form a visual narrative of tremendous artistic power that captures the scale, technical complexity and symbolic significance of one of the great contemporary architectural transformations in Europe. Through this exhibition, the artistic sensibility of Ballester – winner of the 2010 National Photography Prize and one of the most prominent figures on the Spanish art scene – is brought to the fore, revealing the intimate epic of the stadium’s construction and presenting the Bernabéu as a landscape, a sculpture and a cultural emblem – transformed into a renewed symbol of an ever-changing city. Image credits: © José Manuel Ballester