Two new bis-perylenes, BPC with a meta-disubstituted benzene linker, and BPD with a p,p'-disubstituted biphenyl linker, have been synthesized and their photophysical parameters measured. Their singlet and triplet energies decrease incrementally in the order perylene, BPC, BPD, making them ideally matched with C-60 for triplet-triplet energy transfer in sensitized photon upconversion schemes. Following photosensitization by triplet C-60, BPC exhibits strong fluorescence upconversion by triplet-triplet annihilation, indicating that these bis-perylene dyads (and the multimers that can be constructed from them) will be interesting candidates for use in organic devices such as bulk-heterojunction and dye-sensitized solar cells employing non-coherent photon upconversion. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.