The prestigious Pirelli Calendar, known globally as ‘The Cal’, will dedicate its 2027 edition to India through the dual visions of Sølve Sundsbø and the late Raghu Rai, whose final project will now be completed posthumously by his daughter, photographer Avani Rai.
In 1962, British art director Derek Forsyth created an unpublished mockup of what would eventually become known as ‘The Cal’, an annual calendar for Pirelli tyres. The Cal has since become an icon in the world of visual culture for its selection of photographers, including Annie Leibovitz, Peter Lindbergh, and Richard Avedon. For the first time in the calendar’s six-decade history, two photographers will jointly shape a single edition in 2027. But what might otherwise have been an ambitious curatorial experiment has now become something more elegiac: a posthumous final work by one of India’s greatest photographers.
The 2027 edition of The Cal will stand apart not only for its subject, India, but also for the circumstances of its making. Announced in Milan on 4 May, the forthcoming calendar will bring together two distinct photographic visions: that of celebrated Norwegian image-maker Sølve Sundsbø and the late Indian master Raghu Rai, who passed away on 26 April 2026.
According to Pirelli, Rai spent the last three months before his passing developing an original series of photographs reflecting “his heritage and his vision of India.” Over a career spanning more than five decades, Raghu Rai documented India with unmatched intimacy — from the violence of Partition’s afterlives and the Bhopal gas tragedy to everyday street life, spirituality, labour, and political power. As a member of Magnum Photos and perhaps India’s most internationally recognised photojournalist, Rai shaped how the world visually understood modern India. If completed as envisioned, the Pirelli Calendar may now function as his swan song: a final meditation on the country that remained at the centre of his life’s work. The project will now be completed by his daughter, Avani Rai, herself an acclaimed photographer, who described the process as “stepping into his gaze and the way he saw India through his camera.”
“The work my father created for Pirelli was a tribute to India — bringing together his lifelong vision with a more contemporary expression of its people and diversity, something he was always deeply drawn to. I cannot bear the thought of it remaining unrealised,” Avani Rai said.
Notably, only 20,000 copies of the calendar are produced annually; they do not go on sale but are instead given as gifts to celebrities and select Pirelli customers. The Cal’s 2027 subject, “India as protagonist,” signals recognition of India as both a subject and a collaborator in contemporary global visual culture — a spiritual culmination of Raghu Rai’s life and work.
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