Getting asked to shoot the Pirelli Calendar is a career milestone for any photographer. But unlike, say, winning an Academy Award, the honor doesn’t celebrate the success of a creative project; it marks the beginning. “You win a prize, but then you have to go and earn it afterwards,” says Sølve Sundsbø, the Norwegian photographer tasked with creating the 2026 edition of the cultural touchstone known as The Cal. “It’s very flattering, but it’s also quite intimidating.”
With his appointment, Sundsbø joins a list of photographers that includes Tim Walker, Peter Lindbergh, and Nick Knight, all of whom have contributed their visions throughout the publication’s 60-plus-year history. Initially launched by the Italian tire manufacturer in 1964 as a trade gift, The Cal has evolved into an annual touchstone of culture’s current ideation of beauty and artistry. For the 2026 iteration, Sundsbø tackled the broad concept of nature, enlisting a diverse group of women to bring his vision to life.
Pirelli gave Sundsbø an impressive amount of free rein for the project, though they did have two requests. “They were very liberal with the brief, but they said they wanted women and they wanted it to be about nature,” he told W. In 2025, Ethan James Green included some rare men in his take, but Pirelli wanted this year to be solely focused on women.
Sundsbø’s calendar features names from a variety of different industries, including Tilda Swinton, FKA Twigs, Isabella Rossellini, Susie Cave, and Gwendoline Christie, many of whom have worked with Sundsbø in the past. “I wanted to work with women I knew because there’s a huge element of trust,” he says. “I’m 55, so I didn’t want to shoot 19-year-old girls. That doesn’t feel natural for me.” Venus Williams, Irina Shayk, Eva Herzigová, Adria Arjona, Du Juan, and Luisa Ranieri round out the cast of models.
Sundsbø was able to put his own spin on the nature element as well. While the photographer did head out into the wild—or, more specifically, the beaches of Norfolk and Essex—to capture content, all the images were taken in studio. “It was important to not shoot in nature, because that has been done so many times, and so well, for Pirelli,” he says, calling the decision to shoot a nature-themed editorial solely in studio “a bit twisted.”
The calendar features 11 women representing a range of different elements: water, earth, fire, and wind. Christie took on the challenge of embodying ether. For the most part, the women got to choose which they would represent. Twigs was supposed to take on water until she expressed her utter distaste for the element ahead of the shoot. “She told me, ‘I want to be earth. I want it to be naked, rolling in sand,’” so Sundsbø made it happen.
Clouds originally shot in Norfolk are projected onto Chinese actress Juan for a Magritte-like effect. Swinton poses among whimsical greenery, while Christie is bathed with light. “Sølve uses modern technology to enhance the creative process rather than replace it,” says Christie, who has worked with Sundsbø many times over the years, but is only now making her debut in The Cal. She reflects on her studio experience, calling it “almost ritualistic.” To create the eerie ether effect, Sundsbø used a long exposure as he dragged a fiber-optic light over Christie. “It was so homemade,” Sundsbø says with a laugh. The results are anything but.
In addition to representing the elements, Sundsbø also hoped to capture human emotion with the 24 images displayed in the calendar, an admittedly Herculean task. “It is impossible,” he admits. “But it is important to be ambitious and set your targets high. You might not achieve them, but you can move towards them. And then sometimes you might hit it.”
So, did Sundsbø reach his goal with the 2026 Pirelli Calendar?” I can only see the things I could do better,” he says, before pausing for a moment. “But I am very, very happy with it.”
