Ten London Art Exhibitions Not To Miss Opening in March 2026

Artlyst has selected ten exhibitions not to miss in London this March. Spring is approaching quickly, and the new exhibition season in London is already in full swing. In March, several major exhibitions will launch, many of which will continue through the summer. The Serpentine Galleries are showcasing David Hockney in the North Gallery and Cecily Brown in the South Gallery. Meanwhile, the National Portrait Gallery is featuring photographs by American artist Catherine Opie. The Sir John Soane’s Museum is commemorating the 300th anniversary of the death of one of the UK’s greatest architects, Sir John Vanbrugh. Meanwhile, the National Gallery invites you to take a closer look at “Scrub,” a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham, painted by George Stubbs around 1762.

Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture (4 March – 28 June 2026) Sir John Soane’s Museum

300 years after his death, a major new exhibition exploring one of the UK’s greatest architects, Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726), will open at Sir John Soane’s Museum, London.

Hailed as ‘The Rockstar of the English Baroque’ and ‘The original starchitect’, Vanbrugh designed some of the UK’s most admired and loved country houses, including Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard, with each one featuring his signature ability to exploit the emotional impact of architecture by making exciting and dramatic use of light and shadow, recessions and projections.

Sir John Soane (1753-1837) cited Vanbrugh as one of his great influences, remarking that he had “all the fire and power of Michelangelo and Bernini”.

Vanbrugh: The Drama of Architecture (4 March – 28 June 2026) will feature never-before-exhibited drawings from the collections of the V&A, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the National Portrait Gallery and Sir John Soane’s Museum, including many in Vanbrugh’s own hand. It is an opportunity to see a selection of Vanbrugh’s drawings for major projects like Castle Howard, 9but also smaller, more experimental plans for schemes such as the housing estate he envisaged at Greenwich.

The show is curated by Sir Charles Saumarez Smith CBE, with the renowned architect and academic, Roz Barr.

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Catherine Opie: To Be Seen 5 March – 31 May 2026 National Portrait Gallery

This exhibition of photographic portraits by American artist Catherine Opie, curated in collaboration with the artist, will be the first major museum exhibition of her work to be shown in the UK. On a domestic scale her work questions representations of home, intimacy and family, and on a national and international level explores politics, identity and power structures. Over the past 30 years, Opie has explored and positioned the portrait in numerous contexts and visual formats. Conceptually rigorous and formally executed, her photographs make visible queer communities, mentors and collaborators, children, surfers, high school footballers, political crowds and Opie herself, through self-portraiture. Works featured in the exhibition will span her first major work, Being and Having (1991), and her ennobling portraits of LGBTQ+ friends inspired by court painter Hans Holbein, through to her Baroque-like portraits of artists. Portraits work in dialogue with one another to create new narratives, challenging viewers to reflect on the figures most commonly portrayed in art and those who go unseen. In addition to this exhibition, a series of interventions will place Opie’s photographs in dialogue with the permanent Collection, probing further into representation in the context of the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition will subsequently tour to the National Galleries of Scotland at the Royal Scottish Academy building in Edinburgh in summer 2026.

£19.50 / £21.50

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David Hockney Serpentine North Gallery 12 March – 23 August 2026

One of the most influential artists of our time, David Hockney invites viewers to slow down and notice the extraordinary within the everyday in his first exhibition at Serpentine. Created specifically for this presentation, Hockney’s new paintings extend his lifelong fascination with the act of looking, affirming his belief that simple beauty is worth celebrating. The exhibition is conceived in close collaboration with the artist and brings Hockney’s celebrated ninety-metre-long frieze A Year in Normandy to London for the first time. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry, which will be on display at the British Museum in 2026, this monumental work captures the changing seasons at the artist’s former studio in Normandy. In the context of the exhibition at Serpentine, it opens a dialogue with the surrounding nature of Kensington Gardens.

Free

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Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse 12 March – 31 May 2026 National Gallery

In spring, the National Gallery will present an exhibition devoted to Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham (about 1762), painted by George Stubbs (1724-1806). The exhibition will focus on the creation of Scrub, contextualising the commission through two projects Stubbs undertook throughout his career, which evidence his renown as an animal painter in Britain. These include 18 months Stubbs spent studying and drawing the anatomy of horses in a remote barn in Lincolnshire between 1756-58, as well as the much later project The Turf Review, commissioned in 1790, which saw Stubbs create a series of portraits of racehorses depicting the last 50 years of the Turf.

Free

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Konrad Mägi 24 March 2026 – 12 July 2026 Dulwich Picture Gallery

A pioneer of Estonian modernism, Mägi is renowned in his home country for his avantgarde, unique colouristic style and is widely considered the greatest Estonian artist of his generation. The exhibition will bring together over 60 works, including enigmatic landscapes and arresting portraits, many of which have never been seen outside of Estonia. It will consider the influence of major European movements upon Mägi’s work, such as Pointillism, Neo-Impressionism and Expressionism, as well as the independent approaches that he took in painting as a largely self-taught artist.

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Leonora Carrington – The Symptomatic Surreal, 25 March – 28 June 2026, Freud Museum

 

The first exhibition anywhere to be dedicated to the rarely-seen wartime work of one of the 20th century’s leading artists, Leonora Carrington, opens this spring at the Freud Museum in London. Leonora Carrington – The Symptomatic Surreal gathers together the currently-scattered drawings, painting, letters and other writings made by the British-born Mexican artist between 1938 and 1941, a time when she fled Nazi-occupied France before being hospitalised in a Spanish sanatorium.

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Hurvin Anderson 26 Mar – 23 Aug 2026 Tate Britain

Hurvin Anderson’s first major solo show brings together more than 60 of his vibrant paintings, spanning the artist’s entire career, from his days as a student to his most recent works. Through colour-drenched landscapes and interiors, Anderson meanders back and forth across the Atlantic, between the UK and the Caribbean. The youngest of eight children, he was the first to be born in the UK after his family left Jamaica for Birmingham in the 1960s. As a result, Anderson’s work reflects on his experiences of belonging and diaspora.

£18

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Cecily Brown: Picture Making Serpentine South Gallery 27 March – 6 September 2026

Known for her vigorous brushwork, vivid colour and dynamic compositions, Cecily Brown presents paintings inspired by Serpentine’s unique location in Kensington Gardens, a site of personal significance to the artist. Themes of nature and park life have long shaped Brown’s formal explorations. She experiments with scale, colour and recurring motifs, such as amorous couples, woodland scenes, and uncanny nature walks. New works made specifically for the exhibition are shown alongside a selection of key paintings dating back to 2001, in addition to recent monotypes and drawings. The exhibition gestures to Brown’s early memories of the English landscape, her fascination with children’s book illustrations, and the darker undercurrents of cautionary tales. Picture Making marks Brown’s first major solo presentation of paintings in a UK institution since her 2005 exhibition at Modern Art Oxford and represents a homecoming for the British artist who has worked in New York for the past thirty years.

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Michaelina Wautier Royal Academy of Arts,  The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries 27 March – 21 June 2026

Michaelina Wautier was a trailblazer. Active in 17th century Brussels, she was one of the foremost artists of the period, who transcended the usual limitations imposed on women. Yet, until the last decade, her career and work has been relatively forgotten, and discovery of her life remains a work in progress. This exhibition at the Royal Academy, the first of Wautier’s in the UK, will introduce visitors to this fascinating artist. It will present her wide-ranging oeuvre and include grand history paintings, portraiture, the monumental Bacchanal and her recently rediscovered Five Senses. Exhibition organised in collaboration with the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

£15

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Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art opens 28 March V&A South Kensington

In March 2026, the V&A will open the first exhibition ever staged in the UK devoted to the innovative and impactful Maison Schiaparelli. Spanning the late 1920s to today, the exhibition charts the history and impact of one of fashion’s most innovative houses. Drawing on new research, the exhibition places founder Elsa Schiaparelli at the centre of a creative network across Paris, London, and New York, highlighting her role as a pioneering female entrepreneur. The show will trace the house’s remarkable trajectory, from its first, paradigm-shifting garments, through to its present-day incarnation under Creative Director, Daniel Roseberry. Over 200 objects—garments, accessories, jewellery, artworks, perfumes and archival material— will showcase the house’s boundless creativity. Highlights include the V&A’s ‘Skeleton’ and ‘Tears’ dresses, the surreal Shoe hat made with Salvador Dalí, and artworks by Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, and Man Ray. Elsa Schiaparelli’s vision transformed ordinary objects into bold statements, and Daniel Roseberry continues that legacy at the original headquarters of 21 Place Vendôme, creating a contemporary oeuvre that continues to shape and inspire global culture today.

£28-30 Visit Here

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