Pirelli's 53rd calendar was shot in India for the first time by Sølve Sundsbø, Raghu Rai and his daughter Avani Rai, and was presented on 23 October in New Delhi.
Raghu Rai died in April 2026, aged 83, before finishing the project. Avani Rai took it over and returned older photographs to the places where they were taken, with around 130 people appearing in her part.
On 22 October Pirelli announced an agreement with India's BKT to produce 800,000 premium tyres in India by 2030.
Pirelli presented The Cal 2027, the 53rd edition of its calendar, in New Delhi on Friday, 23 October. For the first time in the calendar's history its photographs were shot in India, and the country runs through the whole set. Pirelli invited 150 journalists from around the world to the Indian capital for the presentation. The calendar has been published since 1964 and is never sold: about 11,000 copies are printed each year and given away. The production and the presentation events cost Pirelli millions, including business-class flights for guests.
Sølve Sundsbø, the Norwegian photographer who also shot the 2026 edition, made nine portraits of Indian women between Jaigarh Fort in Jaipur and Ajabgarh in Rajasthan. His cast includes Freida Pinto, Padma Lakshmi, Aditi Rao Hydari, Anoushka Shankar, Rupi Kaur, Lakshmi Menon, Bhavitha Mandava and Avantika Vandanapu. Raghu Rai had photographed India since 1965 and died in April 2026, aged 83, before he could finish the project. His daughter Avani Rai carried the work forward by bringing older photographs, some never published, back to the places where they were taken, including the alleys of old Delhi. Her section, shot in old Delhi and Mumbai, features around 130 people, mostly anonymous, along with Bollywood star Ranveer Singh.
Freida Pinto told ANSA that she felt she had been herself in the pictures and called them an intense portrait of a country in ferment. She hopes the images help break down the familiar idea of Indian women as uniform, traditional, silent and submissive. Sundsbø described the offer to redo the calendar as a rollercoaster ride, one he welcomed but approached warily because of the stereotypes he might carry as a European. He wanted a range of figures, including poets, musicians, architects and models. Each photographer contributes nine pictures in separate blocks, Sundsbø's on glossy paper and Rai's on matte, and the calendar weighs about three and a half kilograms.
The presentation came a day after Pirelli announced on 22 October an agreement with India's BKT to produce 800,000 premium tyres in India by 2030. Executive chairman Marco Tronchetti Provera acknowledged the commercial context but insisted on the calendar's artistic purpose.
“Year after year the calendar has become a much-anticipated art object. It does not have to sell anything or promote anything; it is there to express an artistic vision.”
At a cocktail at the Safdar Jang tomb, lit by 3,000 candles, Tronchetti Provera greeted officials, including the Italian ambassador to India, Antonio Bartoli, before a party at the Imperial hotel. He described India as a calm force with strong growth but complex rules, and he said there are tensions in the country alongside a strong desire for the future.
Like its predecessors, the 2027 edition is given away rather than sold.
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The 53rd Pirelli calendar, The Cal 2027, was presented in New Delhi on Friday, 23 October. It combines work by Sølve Sundsbø with photographs by Raghu Rai and his daughter Avani Rai, who finished the project after his death in April.
AI text based on reports by Blick.ch, AGI, LaVanguardia and other publishers. Published .