Gwendoline Christie and Sølve Sundsbø on the New Pirelli Calendar

Since 1964, the Pirelli Calendar – referred to and trademarked simply as ‘The Cal’ – has provided preeminent photographers the opportunity of realising big-budget ideas with some of the world’s most celebrated faces. The not-for-sale calendar is also perceived as a sort of litmus test for contemporary sensibilities, with projects over the last decade eschewing the sexualised imagery of the 80s and 90s in favour of high-concept fashion set pieces. 

For the 2026 calendar, Norwegian-born, London-based photographer Sølve Sundsbø loosely adopted “the elements” as a theme, shooting 12 women from across film, fashion, music and sport, including Venus Williams, Susie Cave, FKA Twigs, Isabella Rossellini, Tilda Swinton and Gwendoline Christie. Sundsbø and Christie, who’ve worked together in the past, collaborated on the conceptualisation of her month, in which the actor is shown emerging from a dance of light interference. They’re extraordinary images (the calendar dedicates two to each model) – technically considered yet unfiltered, Christie embodying an ethereal hybrid of contemporary and classical. 

Sundsbø, who has always engaged new technologies, chose not to shoot his subjects in natural landscapes – “too much information,” he says – but instead, to bring the outside world into a controlled studio setting. “I mean, what is nature?” he asks. “Is it Hyde Park, is it the Hawaiian landscape? It’s everything! We took it down to its bare bones, and then it’s about immersion.” This immersion – which sees Venus Williams reclining against a vast LED backdrop of flames and Eva Herzigová submerged, weightless, in a water tank – involved spending days shooting timelapse clouds in Norfolk and capturing footage of fire, as well as crafting complex sets. 

“It’s classic,” says Christie of the calendar. “It’s something I’ve always seen, I’ve always known about, always looked at.” With any legacy project, and perhaps particularly with one that at times in its history has appealed to a singularly male gaze, the actor thought carefully about “what elements to embrace and what to reject? What may be new that I can bring?” 

For her, the images reflect a shared vision to capture “something simply about that moment”. A performer who doesn’t delineate between modelling and acting – as anyone who witnessed her magnetic performance at the Spring/Summer 2024 Margiela show will attest – Christie has striking command of the lens. “I love working with photographers because I love the immediacy of image making,” she explains. “Throughout my entire life, I’ve seen that [work] as a partnership.” 

The traditional idea of the ‘muse’, she says, is now a reassuringly wide, encompassing notion that bears the sweetest fruit when approached as a collective: “I see the potential for creative opportunity everywhere and in every moment, [which relies] on being approached as an equal. The best results come about when you’re working with a group: your set designer, lighting designer, your hair and make-up designers, and with costume and stylists,” she says (for the calendar, she wears Giles Deacon Couture). “Then it becomes a sacred moment when you can all communicate clearly and freely. That’s where the magic happens – in that energetic exchange.”  

Sundsbø’s cast for this year’s calendar is entirely women aged from their thirties to their seventies: “[They’re] really smart, talented people,” he says. “They’re not going to turn up and sit in the corner. They go into any project and they embrace it because they’re creative, curious people. That is such a gift for a photographer.” For FKA Twigs, for example, Sundsbø initially proposed a completely different elemental theme, but the musician wanted to work with something more of the earth. In the final images, she is depicted crawling through a desert of red sand. 

Sundsbø is the latest in an illustrious list of previous Pirelli calendar photographers, including Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz and Ethan James Green. Prior to the shoot, his team spent long days in the archives of the Italian tyre manufacturer, who established the calendar as a remarkably successful profile-raising exercise. Sundsbø’s finished object pays homage to the 1965 calendar, allowing choice in the order of the double-sided images rather than affixing a model to a month. “I think most photographers would say it’s a dream project,” he smiles. “It’s hard to talk about it because there’s a certain vanity involved … it kind of puts you in a pantheon.”