Summary: “The Alhambra City Arts and Cultural Events Commission (C.A.C.E.) extends an invitation to individuals and groups, with priority given to Alhambra residents, to be considered for a month long exhibition in the Alhambra City Hall Lobby Art Gallery. Approved artists will receive notification from staff and assigned an exhibition month.”

Deadline: Ongoing

Location: Alhambra City Hall

Mediums: All hangable artworks

Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “Curated by A. Laura Brody and Lisa Tomczeszyn. This is a call for wearable art, dipping into the world of fantasy, costume design, and fashion ideas that merge and float between art, fashion, and craftsmanship.”

Deadline: 2/15/26

Location: Los Angeles Makery, Los Angeles

Exhibition Dates: 4/2/26 - 5/26/26

Mediums: Wearable art

Entry Fee: $20

Summary: “We are excited to curate this exhibition highlighting water— the memory it holds, all the life it sustains, and most importantly, our collective responsibility to protect it. We invite you to share your art that speaks to all aspects of our relationship to water from daily life in our homes and neighborhoods, to encounters with bodies of water, to the ways water is protected and by who. Your pieces can speak to the past and present or can also reflect a vision you have for future water conditions. Through your stories and art, we hope to honor the labor and love poured into defending water here on Tongva territory (so-called Los Angeles), on Turtle Island and by communities around the globe.”
Deadline: 2/16/26
Location: Art Space HP, Huntington Park, CA
Exhibition Dates: 3/5/26 - 4/2/26
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “We’re excited to feature a wide range of work at City Hall! While we always love seeing paintings and photography, we’re now also accepting 3D mixed-media pieces (up to 30 lbs per piece) for display. We encourage artists of all experience levels to apply!”
Deadline: 2/20/26
Location: Whittier City Hall
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “This exhibition celebrates the enduring legacy, landscapes, and cultural imagery of the American West, inviting artists to reflect on its history, traditions, and evolving identity.”
Deadline: 2/22/26
Location: City of Santa Clarita City Hall, Valencia
Exhibition Dates: 3/4/26 - 5/20/26
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “A Life in Color is a group exhibition celebrating lived experience through color. Artists are invited to explore how color can express emotion, identity, culture, and community in everyday life.”
Deadline: 2/22/26
Location: The Chula Vista Center, Chula Vista
Exhibition Dates: 3/28/26 - 6/28/26
Mediums: all 2D or 3D artwork (must be able to hang on a wall)
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “Esperanza Community Housing is pleased to invite artists to submit work for an upcoming International Women’s Day exhibition centering grassroots immigrant women social leaders in the United States. Esperanza Community Housing is a social justice organization dedicated to comprehensive community development in South Los Angeles, uplifting voices that challenge inequality and celebrate resilience, dignity, and collective power. This exhibition highlights immigrant women from all ethnic backgrounds who are leading, organizing, caregiving, creating, and sustaining their communities. The exhibition honors women whose leadership often goes unseen yet remains foundational to social change. As we mark International Women’s Day, we celebrate immigrant women as visionaries shaping our present and future.”
Deadline: 2/23/26
Location: Esperanza Community Housing, Los Angeles
Exhibition Dates: 2/26/26 - 5/11/26
Mediums: All 2D artwork
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “A Woman’s Place: Framing the Future” envisions a woman’s place as an ever-expanding horizon—one that redefines the trajectory of our collective future. Informed by memory, story, and lived experience, this exhibition explores how shifting perspectives on womanhood are documented, questioned, and celebrated through art. The artists showcased in this exhibition will engage in a vital dialogue between past aspirations and present possibilities, forging new pathways for art and society alike. Their works both challenge traditional boundaries and honor the complexity of women's experiences across generations and cultures.”
Deadline: 2/24/26
Location: The Ebell of Los Angeles
Exhibition Dates: 3/19/26 - 4/22/26
Mediums: 2D artwork
Entry Fee: $25

Summary: “The Los Angeles Makery invites artists to submit work for a politically charged group exhibition exploring structures of power, immigration enforcement, state control, and the hidden mechanisms that enable exploitation and abuse. This exhibition seeks artwork that responds to contemporary and historical narratives surrounding detention systems, ICE, immigration policy, institutional secrecy, and the cultural reverberations of elite power networks and protected influence. Artists are encouraged to interrogate themes of justice, accountability, vulnerability, resistance, and survival.”
Deadline: Delivery February 24th-26th or 28th between 12-5pm
Location: Los Angeles Makery, Los Angeles
Exhibition Dates: March 2026
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “You Made It” invites artists to explore the moment of relief upon finding the threshold of home. Where weariness vanishes with an exhale, the sense of searching slows as the body finally relaxes; a sugar cube dissolving in tea. From your perspective as a queer artist, reflect on senses of safety, belonging, or quiet joy. Consider spaces, relationships, routines, or moments where identity feels affirmed and at rest. Let the work exist without tension or resolution, let it be rooted instead in comfort, presence, and being seen.”
Deadline: 2/27/26
Location: FOLD Gallery, Los Angeles
Exhibition Dates: 3/18/26 - 5/13/26
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “THEME: In the Present. In the Present calls on artists to respond to the urgency of now. This moment is marked by overlapping crises, rapid change, and negotiations of power, identity, survival, and resistance. We invite works that grapple with the socio-political and environmental realities shaping our present lives, from visible struggles to embodied experiences of living through uncertainty. This call welcomes bold, critical, and vulnerable artistic responses that refuse distance but reflect on the present.”
Deadline: 3/1/26
Location: Plaza de la Raza, Los Angeles
Exhibition Dates: 4/18/26 - 5/17/26
Mediums: Printmaking
Entry Fee: $35 for 1-3 prints, LAPS members: $25 for 1-3 prints

Summary: “The San Diego Art Directory, in collaboration with Hera Hub Carlsbad, invites artists to submit work for “Space to Exhale,” an exhibition exploring sanctuary not as escape, but as intentional refuge in response to a world that often feels overwhelming, unstable, or relentlessly demanding.”
Deadline: 3/1/26
Location: Hera Hub, Carlsbad
Exhibition Dates: March 2026 – September 2026
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: $22 for up to two pieces, $35 for up to four pieces

Summary: “The City of Laguna Beach Banner Competition is a project of the Arts Commission. Artists are provided with banner material on which to paint original artwork. The completed banners are displayed on lampposts throughout the city of Laguna Beach during June, July and August and celebrate the summer season. The completed banners are temporary and will be displayed when and where the City desires for up to 7 years or based on condition. Open to Orange County, CA residents, 18 years of age or older. $4,000 will be awarded for all completed banners selected.”

Deadline: 3/2/26

Location: Various locations throughout Laguna Beach

Mediums: Drawing, painting

Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “The Arts Commission is inviting artists to submit proposals for temporary art works for display at the Promenade at Forest. Works may be suspended or installed in various areas throughout the Plaza. Works will be selected by the City of Laguna Beach Arts Commission and on loan from the artist for a specified period. Installations must be durable and safe to the public and environment and withstand an unprotected display in a downtown plaza setting. The rotating temporary works must be appropriate in content for a public setting and audiences of all ages, while offering innovative and unique vision that will help to define the Promenade as a creative community gathering place to be savored and shared, time after time.”
Deadline: 3/2/26
Location: Downtown Laguna Beach
Exhibition Dates: From sixty days up to but not to exceed one year
Mediums: Highly durable and safe artwork designed to withstand the natural elements and public space
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “The City of Laguna Beach Council Chamber Banner Competition is a project of the Arts Commission. Selected artists are provided with banner material on which to paint original artwork. The completed banners are displayed in the City of Laguna Beach Council Chambers. Completed banners will be awarded a $900 honorarium.”
Deadline: 3/2/26
Location: Various locations throughout Laguna Beach
Mediums: Painting
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “Art That’s Small At City Hall” is an open exhibition coordinated by the City of Laguna Beach Arts Commission. All works deemed acceptable will be exhibited at Laguna Beach City Hall, located at 505 Forest Avenue, from March 9 through April 17, 2021, and via online catalogue. Honorarium- First place $600, Second place $300, Third place $150, and City Hall Choice $100. Entries will be accepted from residents of Orange County ages 18 or older.”
Deadline: 3/6/26
Location: Laguna Beach City Hall
Exhibition Dates: 3/9/26 - 4/17/26
Mediums: Artwork may include oil, acrylic, watercolor, photography, drawing, mixed media and relief
Entry Fee: $15

Summary: “Shadows. There are none, without Light. Shadows tell of the unseen, yet of things that exist. Show us the Unseen-But-Known: the suspense that builds, the lazy, languid afternoon in long shadow, the shadow-self, veiled, or revealed to us; the secrets that await. Show us, our selves.”
Deadline: 3/8/26
Location: TAG, The Artists Gallery, Los Angeles
Exhibition Dates: 3/25/26 - 4/16/26
Mediums: “Artwork submissions can be in any of the following media: drawing, painting, photographs, digital art, mixed media, collage, and sculpture. No performance art or AI is accepted. For sculptures, the gallery has pedestals, which will be available on a first serve basis.”
Entry Fee: “One or two entries: $35.00 for CAL members with 2026 dues fully paid, and $55.00 for non-CAL members. The $20.00 surcharge for non-members is a one-time offer that gives the new artist membership into CAL at a discount.”

Summary: “Covet Art Gallery invites artists to submit work for Art Crush, a group exhibition celebrating the pieces everyone can fall in love with and collect. We want to fill the gallery with art that sparks instant connection—works that feel irresistible, joyful, intriguing, or deeply personal. This exhibition is about your favorite pieces—the ones you’re proud of, excited about, and eager to share. Whether bold or subtle, playful or contemplative, polished or raw, we’re looking for art that draws people in and makes them say, “I have to have that.”
Deadline: 3/8/26
Location: Covet Art Gallery, Oceanside
Exhibition Dates: 3/28/26 - 4/25/26
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: $25

Summary: “The City of Santa Clarita (City) is inviting artists to submit artwork for consideration in the upcoming “Dreamscapes” juried exhibition, which will be on view at the Newhall Community Center from March 25, through June 24, 2026. This exhibition explores the imaginative, surreal, and subconscious worlds that emerge beyond waking reality, inviting artists to visualize dreams, inner landscapes, and fantastical environments. From ethereal scenes and abstract visions to symbolic narratives and altered realities, “Dreamscapes” encourages artists to blur the line between the real and the imagined.”
Deadline: 3/15/26
Location: Newhall Community Center
Exhibition Dates: 3/25/26 - 6/24/26
Mediums: Painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, photography, textiles, and mixed-media
Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “Open to all artists 18 years of age and older residing in Southern California. Work must be original, completed after 1/1/2023, and never previously exhibited in a judged TOAA show.”
Deadline: 3/15/26
Location: Thousand Oaks Community Gallery, Newbury Park
Exhibition Dates: 5/4/26 - 5/27/26
Mediums: Oil, Acrylic, Watercolor, Pastel / Graphics, Mixed Media, Photography / Digital Art, 3D / Sculpture
Entry Fee: TOAA Members - $35 first piece, $10 each additional piece, Non-Members - $45 first piece, $15 each additional piece

Summary: “Honoring all creatures of the animal kingdom. Whether they are big or small, flying or swimming, or even creepy and crawly, we want to celebrate the diversity of wildlife through your work. You may submit one piece of art to this exhibition if you’re a San Diego resident or a member of the EAP, art must be your original work.”
Deadline: 3/21/26
Location: Escondido Arts Partnership, Escondido
Exhibition Dates: 4/11/26 - 5/1/26
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: Members: $20 Public: $30

Summary: “We are not generally interested in ceramics where the sole focus is process and material. We are looking for ceramics that hold a narrative or figurative focus. Interesting processes and materials will be considered.”

Deadline: 3/22/26

Location: La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles

Exhibition Dates: 5/1/26 - 5/31/26

Mediums: Ceramics

Entry Fee: No fee

Summary: “Chemers Gallery is seeking submissions for a floral inspired juried show. April showers bring May flowers! We are looking for the best you have to offer in all styles and all mediums. A wide variety of submissions are acceptable ranging from traditional botanical and flowers to still-life, gardens and abstracted representation. This will be our 18th exhibit in conjunction with Tustin Area Council for Fine Arts (TACFA).”
Deadline: 3/28/26
Location: Chemers Gallery, Tustin
Exhibition Dates: 5/2/26 - 5/16/26
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: $40

Summary: “The Associates of Brand Library & Art Center in Glendale, California announces its 54th Annual National Juried Exhibition of Works on Paper. Cash awards total more than $4,000, including a Juror’s Award. All accepted artworks will be included in an exhibition at Brand Library’s Gallery and in both printed and online exhibition catalogs. We welcome artists at any point on their artistic journey—students, professionals, and hobbyists.”
Deadline: 3/29/26
Location: Brand Library & Art Center, Glendale
Exhibition Dates: 6/6/26 - 8/28/26
Mediums: “Any artwork on or of paper, including collages, drawings, paintings, photography, prints, and 3-dimensional artworks. This year we will not be including video art. Paper must be a visible component of the artwork.”
Entry Fee: $25

Summary: “Barking Rabbit Art Collective invites all artists 18 and older residing in the Southern California Region to apply to our first annual open theme show, Locally Sourced.”
Deadline: 4/25/26
Location: Start Los Angeles
Exhibition Date: 5/30/26
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: $15

Summary: “The San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild is seeking art at the edge and beyond the traditional. The Art of Now is our Call to California artists to submit work that pushes boundaries in contemporary art—what it is and what it can be. This is a great opportunity for artists to stretch their creative wings, and try something they have always wanted to bring to fruition.”
Deadline: 5/8/26
Location: Union Hall Gallery, San Diego
Exhibition Dates: 6/5/26 - 6/28/26
Mediums: Painting and drawing, video art, installation, mixed media, fiber art, photography, and sculpture
Entry Fee: Members of SDMAAG: $20, Non-members: $35

Summary: “The 9th Annual PROUD+ Exhibition will be held June 19 - July 31, 2026, during San Diego Pride Month, showcasing the work of LGBTQ+ artists from across the country. Produced by The Studio Door, this national exhibition celebrates the unique perspectives and voices of the LGBTQ+ community through contemporary art.”

Deadline: 5/9/26

Location: The Studio Door, San Diego

Exhibition Dates: 6/19/26 - 7/31/26

Mediums: “Painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, assemblage, collage, mixed media, fiber art, artist book, and sculpture. Please note some restrictions apply to glass, stained glass, ceramics, and stoneware due to unsafe shipping practices by FedEx, UPS, and USPS. Oversized jewelry that can be defined as fine art is acceptable for this show.”

Entry Fee: $35

Summary: “La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, California, showcases figurative and narrative paintings and unusual sculptures. The Exhibition will take place on August 7, 2026 and run through August until the 31st, 2026. Artists need to be 18+ years of age to participate. Wall hanging artwork must not exceed 20 inches on the longest dimension. Sculpture work cannot exceed 20 inches in width or depth.” 
Deadline: 5/15/26
Location: La Luz de Jesus Gallery, Los Angeles
Exhibition Dates: 8/7/26 - 8/31/26
Mediums: All
Entry Fee: No fee