Blink — the free art and light festival — has arrived in Cincinnati for 2026. It's drawn hundreds of thousands
of people since it first began in 2017.
ArtsWave's Ryan Strand says the four-day event is about bringing people to the arts, and art to the people.
“We’ve seen just a huge increase in national attention because of Blink,” Strand tells WVXU. “This is the largest event in this region. Every time it happens, it breaks its own record. To have that happen around the arts, I think, shows that Cincinnati — and the entire region really — is an arts region, outsized for its size.”
This year's event reaches from Findlay Market, through Cincinnati’s business district, and across the river to Covington.
Strand says Blink helped Cincinnati win recognition for arts vibrancy from the National Center for Arts Research.
This year's festival features 92 artists from 20 countries. Scott Pennington of Baltimore says his sculpture in Washington Park is called Blinkatorium, though the name is a coincidence.
“In 2023, when we first did the Blinkatorium and I was asked to come up with a title for the installation, I wanted something that was fun but also explained what was happening,” Pennington says. “It’s a contained space that has all these lights blinking in it, kind of like a Blinkatorium, and I thought the word had a little bit of humor but also was technical-sounding enough that it just worked really well, and I’ve just stuck with it.”
Pennington says the Blinkatorium is four separate pieces that draw from images of small town carnivals or arcades. This is only the third time it's been presented. The first two were in a Baltimore art festival.
“When I first started working like this, there were people who would always say ‘my kids would love this.’ Sometimes artists can be sensitive to that because they want their work to appeal to a mature audience,” Pennington says. “At a certain point I started to embrace that because you clearly can’t make bright colored objects with graphic patterns and blinking lights and expect young people not to respond to that.”
Ryan Strand says Blink offers a sense of wonder, and seeing the lights and interacting with displays puts people in a good mood.
“That is one of the big reasons why this event is safe: it’s fun. People of different world views can come together around it,” he says. “It’s one of the few things in our culture today that is providing that type of engagement and, I think, it’s telling that it’s art related.”
There are projection mapping scenes, drone shows, light-based sculptures, live performances and other events this year from Findlay Market in the north to Covington's 8th Street in the south. Blink wraps up Sunday night.
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