The Pirelli Calendar is looking beyond fashion to tell a deeper story about India

For more than six decades, the Pirelli Calendar has reflected changing ideas of beauty, culture and photography. Once synonymous with glamour and supermodels, it has gradually evolved into one of the world's most anticipated artistic projects, with each edition offering not simply a collection of portraits but a statement about the moment in which it was created. Increasingly, the calendar has become a platform for storytelling, using photography to explore identity, history and place as much as fashion.

The 2027 edition continues that evolution by turning its attention to India, bringing together two distinct photographic voices to present a country whose richness cannot be reduced to a single perspective.

Norwegian photographer Sølve Sundsbø returns following his work on the 2026 calendar, while Avani Rai undertakes a deeply personal project inspired by the vision of her late father, the acclaimed Indian photographer Raghu Rai. Together, the two chapters seek to capture different interpretations of India, combining Sundsbø's highly stylised visual language with Avani Rai's documentary approach rooted in everyday life.

Photographed across Rajasthan, including Jaigarh Fort, Jaipur and the village of Ajabgarh, as well as the streets of Old Delhi, the calendar places fashion alongside the people, landscapes and traditions that have shaped India for generations. Rather than attempting to define the country through a single narrative, the project embraces its contrasts, presenting heritage and modernity as experiences that exist simultaneously.

That approach is reflected in the cast, which brings together figures from across the worlds of film, literature, music and fashion. Among those appearing are actors Freida Pinto, Aditi Rao Hydari and Avantika Vandanapu, author and poet Rupi Kaur, musician Anoushka Shankar, television presenter and food writer Padma Lakshmi, and models Lakshmi Menon and Bhavitha Mandava. Avani Rai's chapter also moves beyond established public figures, incorporating street artists and ordinary people from across India to create a broader portrait of the country's cultural identity.

For Sundsbø, photographing India meant confronting the challenge of representing one of the world's most visually complex nations without reducing it to familiar imagery. He has described the country as impossible to capture through a single story, instead embracing colour, light and texture to acknowledge its extraordinary depth and diversity.

For Avani Rai, however, the project carries a more personal significance. Working in places her father spent decades photographing, she describes the experience as continuing a conversation across generations, seeking not to explain India but to capture what it feels like to stand within it. Her images are intended to reflect continuity rather than nostalgia, presenting the country's past and present as worlds that exist alongside one another.

The creative team supporting the project includes casting director Piergiorgio Del Moro, stylist George Cortina, set designer Robbie Doig, make-up artist Val Garland and hair stylist Syd Hayes, bringing together some of the fashion industry's most respected creative figures.

While the completed photographs will not be unveiled until later this year, the direction of the 2027 calendar reflects a broader shift in fashion photography itself. Increasingly, the industry's most influential images are moving beyond aesthetics alone, drawing on culture, history and lived experience to create work that resonates long after the camera is put away.

The Pirelli Calendar has long been regarded as a barometer of creative ambition. In choosing to explore India through two complementary artistic perspectives, its latest edition suggests that the most compelling fashion photography is no longer simply about what people wear, but the stories the images leave behind.