Canon Singapore is marking the 20th edition of its PhotoMarathon with its largest public event around the competition to date, broadening the occasion into a three-day festival designed to appeal not only to photographers, but to a wider community of makers and creators.
Called Your Canon Event, the new initiative will run from 23 to 25 July 2026 at Urban Park @ Guoco Tower. Across its first two days, Canon will stage a free-access maker festival before turning the spotlight back to the PhotoMarathon itself on 25 July.
Too Kok Yong, Head of Singapore Operations Group at Canon Singapore, said the 20th edition of the Canon PhotoMarathon was a milestone that belongs as much to Singapore’s photography community as it does to Canon. He added that the company wanted to use the occasion to widen the celebration and bring together creators and makers from different walks of life, in keeping with Canon’s kyosei philosophy of living and working together for the common good.
The first two days of the event will see Urban Park @ Guoco Tower transformed into an open, public maker festival running daily from 11am to 8pm.
Visitors will be able to join workshops led by hobbyist communities across a mix of interests. Soilboy will host sessions in kokedama, plant repotting, styling and photography, while TableMinis will introduce participants to miniature painting and Dungeons & Dragons.
Marian Carmel will lead a scrapbooking workshop, and a dedicated pet photography workshop will also be part of the line-up. Some sessions will be available on a first-come, first-served basis and may carry a small registration fee.
Four activity stations will run across both days, allowing visitors to collect stamps and redeem random collectable cards at a designated counter. The cards come in five designs of varying rarity, with those who collect all four stamps receiving an additional fifth card.
Visitors who complete the entire set of five designs will stand a chance to win a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III. Guided photowalks will also take place, while Canon cameras and printers will be made available throughout the space for visitors to try.
On 25 July, the event shifts back to its historical centre. Canon PhotoMarathon returns for its 20th edition, more than two decades after the format first sent photographers out into Singapore with a theme, a deadline and a simple challenge to interpret both.
This year’s competition remains open in spirit, and in a more literal sense too. Canon says the 2026 edition is open to all cameras and all brands, with three themes to be revealed on the day itself. Each theme will carry a two-hour window for participants to shoot and submit their entries. More than S$50,000 worth of Canon gear will be available as prizes across the Open and Student categories.
There is also a notable new addition this year: a video category, being introduced for the first time in the PhotoMarathon’s history. The format is open enough to include smartphone filming.
The video theme will be announced at 12.01am on 23 July, and participants will have until 11.59pm the same day to shoot, edit and submit their work. Winners in both the video and photo categories will be announced on 25 July at the event site.
Registration for the Canon PhotoMarathon is already open, and Canon says both the broader event and the competition are intended to welcome participants across different experience levels.
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