The EMAF is regarded internationally as one of the most influential forums for contemporary media art. Each year it offers its visitors an overview of current artistic productions in film programmes, exhibitions, performances and hybrid formats. Guest-curated projects and retrospectives provide in-depth insights into historical positions and contexts.

At the heart of the festival is the annually changing theme, which in the exhibition, in specially curated film programmes and talks by theorists from various disciplines, illuminates the interfaces between artistic practice, technological development and social reality. The main themes of the last few years have included documentary working methods in art (2018: Report. Notizen aus der Wirklichkeit /i.e. Report. Notes from Reality), the relationship between language and transgression (2019: Wild Grammar), the entanglements of I and We (2020: First Person Plural) and the multiple relationships between possession and being possessed (2021: Possessed). In its Campus section, the EMAF also offers selected German and European art academies a forum. In exhibitions and film screenings, they present current works or develop projects through which they respond to local conditions or thematic impulses.

The festival identifies as a place of experimentation, where extraordinary works are created and actors from different fields can enter into dialogue with each other. Each year, around 14.000 international artists, curators, researchers, students and film and art lovers meet at the EMAF.