London Art Exhibitions 2026 An Artlyst Month by Month Guide

2026 promises an exciting new programme of art exhibitions opening in London. Artlyst has put together a month-by-month guide to steer you through this plethora of exhibitions. 2026 will see solo shows by Modern British and Contemporary greats Lucian Freud, David Hockney, and Anish Kapoor; surveys of women artists like Tracy Emin, Frida Kahlo, Rose Wylie, Cecily Brown and Chiharu Shiota; and historical exhibitions featuring Stubbs, Whistler and Renoir, plus much more, including the opening of the new V&A East. The list will be updated as soon as we receive new information.

January / February

Lucian Freud: Drawing Into Painting

12 February – 4 May 2026

National Portrait Gallery

Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting will explore the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the human face and figure from the 1930s to the early twenty-first century, focusing on Freud’s mastery of drawing in all its forms – from pencil, pen, and ink to charcoal and etching. In addition, a carefully selected group of important paintings will reveal the dynamic dialogue between his practice on paper and on canvas.

£23.00 / 25.50 with donation

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Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends

opens 12 February

Young V&A

Young V&A’s third exhibition, Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends,unpacks the making of some of the most well known and loved animated characters of all time.  Coinciding with the studio’s 50th anniversary year, the exhibition invites visitors to explore the familiar and fantastical worlds of Aardman Animations – creators of Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, Morph, and more. Created primarily for children and families, interactive activities will enable visitors to go behind the scenes of the animation process, from idea development and storyboarding to model making, filming and production, and post-production. Over 150 objects will be on display, including never-before-seen models, sets, and storyboards from Aardman’s archives.

£11

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Lynda Benglis
Encounters: Giacometti
Thu 12 Feb—Sun 31 May 2026,

Barbican Level 2

Works by contemporary artist Lynda Benglis and 20th-century sculptor Alberto Giacometti are displayed together for the first time in this major new exhibition, the third in Encounters: Giacometti.

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Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life 

Tue 17 Feb – Sun 3 May 2026,

Hayward Gallery

Following her recent blockbuster exhibition at the Grand Palais, Threads of Life marks Berlin-based Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota’s first major solo exhibition in a London public gallery. The intricate takeover will see the artist weave her signature immersive works from floor to ceiling across the Hayward Gallery’s top floor, accompanied by new large-scale sculptures, drawings, early performance videos and photographs. Best-known for her large-scale installations which engulf ordinary objects – such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs and dresses – within huge structures of woolen thread, Shiota’s work explores the body, memory, consciousness and the fragility of existence, making visible the intangible connections we make throughout life.

£19 along with entry to Yin Xiuzhen

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Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart

Tue 17 Feb – Sun 3 May 2026,

Hayward Gallery

The first major UK survey of work by leading Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen, Heart to Heart, will span the entire lower-level galleries, bringing together seminal projects from the past three decades, alongside new commissions and historic works reimagined for the space. Observing China’s fast economic growth, urbanisation and global integration, Yin began working with mundane materials in the 1990s to uncover the traces of memory, personal history and time embedded within them. Through large-scale installations made from everyday objects, industrial materials and used items of clothing, Heart to Heart invites us to see the familiar in new ways, revealing the personal and collective stories these overlooked items carry.

£19 along with entry to Chiharu Shiota

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Beatriz González
Wed 25 Feb—Sun 10 May 2026,
Barbican Art Gallery

Bringing together over 150 artworks, many showing in the UK for the first time, this major exhibition explores Beatriz González’s influential practice from the 1960s to now.

From her monumental paintings to repurposed furniture, wallpaper and installations, González draws from found images in popular postcards, reproductions of Western art, and newspaper clippings. In her distinctive graphic style and vivid palette, she transforms these images, playfully questioning ideas of taste, critiquing power structures, bearing witness to violence and offering moving reflections on grief, displacement and community.

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Tracey Emin

26 Feb – 31 Aug 2026,

Tate Modern

This landmark exhibition traces 40 years of Emin’s groundbreaking practice, showcasing career-defining sensations alongside works never exhibited before. Through painting, video, textiles, neons, writing, sculpture, and installation, Emin continues to challenge boundaries, using the female body as a powerful tool to explore passion, pain, and healing.

Dame Tracey Emin is one of the most important contemporary artists of her generation. She was catapulted into the public eye in the 1990s with iconic works like her Turner Prize-nominated My Bed, which sparked fierce critical and public debate, challenging what art could be. Emin’s disregard for any separation of the personal and the public, along with her commitment to unapologetic self-expression, came to define a historic moment in British culture and global art history.

£20

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Rose Wylie

Royal Academy of Arts Main Galleries

28 February – 19 April 2026

In Spring 2026, Rose Wylie OBE RA will take over the Main Galleries of the Royal Academy of Arts with her vibrant figurative paintings and striking drawings. One of the most notable and intriguing artists working in Britain today, this exhibition will be Wylie’s largest survey exhibition ever to take place in the UK. A 21st century painter of contemporary life, her work draws from a diverse range of references that include art history, ancient civilisations, literature, cinema, celebrity culture and current affairs. Visually chronicling the times she has lived through, her large format paintings and works on paper document everything from her experience of the Blitz as a young girl, to more quotidian events such as an exhibition opening or a game of football, and feature a cast of characters that include Nicole Kidman, Elizabeth I and Snow White. This exhibition will bring together some of Wylie’s most iconic pieces with previously unseen and new works.

£21-23

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March

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

Next 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, contextualizing 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.

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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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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.

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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

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April

Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations

1 April – 14 June 2026

Whitechapel Gallery

Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations is a major exhibition dedicated to the award-winning British artist Veronica Ryan (b.1956, Plymouth, Montserrat). Encompassing more than 100 works, the exhibition draws on every aspect of her practice, revealing her multifaceted work across sculpture, textiles and works on paper. Significantly, it includes recently rediscovered works from the 1980s – large-scale sculptures made from plaster and beaten lead, as well as vivid drawings – which reveal enduring artistic interests across her career.

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Opening of V&A East 18 April

First exhibition: The Music is Black: A British Story

V&A East Museum opens in April 2026 on East Bank in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Co-created with young people, creatives, and those living, working and studying in east London, V&A East Museum includes galleries exhibitions, creative commissions and events spotlighting the people, ideas and creativity shaping global culture right now.

V&A East Museum’s first landmark exhibition, The Music is Black: A British Storyreveals how Black British music has shaped British culture – and its global impact – to tell a long-overdue story of Black excellence, struggle, resilience, and joy. Celebrating 125 years of Black music in Britain from Jazz to Reggae, 2 Tone, Drum & Bass, Trip Hop, UK Garage, Grime and beyond, it unveils hidden stories behind early 20th Century pioneers, international music makers and today’s groundbreaking artists from Sampha to Little Simz, Jorja Smith, Ezra Collective and more. To coincide, V&A East will launch a major partnership with BBC Music and collaborate on The Music is Black Festival with East Bank partners on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.

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May

Zurbarán

2 May – 23 August 2026

National Gallery

The first major monographic exhibition in the UK devoted to Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664) will open at the National Gallery next spring. This exhibition is the first dedicated presentation of the artist’s paintings at the National Gallery since 1994. The exhibition of almost 50 paintings will span the chronological and iconographic breadth of the artist’s career, and unite exceptional works from the collection of the National Gallery with paintings from the Musée du Louvre (Saint Bonaventure on His Bier and Saint Apollonia) and the Art Institute of Chicago (The Crucifixion, Saint Romanus of Antioch and Saint Barulas ), the two partner museums to which the exhibition will travel between October 2026 and June 2027.

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Rising Voices: Contemporary Art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific

Opens 16 May 2026

V&A South Kensington

Rising Voices: Contemporary art from Asia, Australia and the Pacific presents the work of 40 leading artists in a landmark collaboration between the V&A and the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Brisbane. Drawing on more than 30 years of The Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT) exhibition series, the exhibition offers an unparalleled view of the region’s dynamic creative landscape. Foregrounding First Nations perspectives and diverse artistic approaches, the exhibition includes rare works by pioneering creatives—some never before seen outside the region. Combining traditional forms such as weaving, ceramics, jewellery and miniature painting with global contemporary practices, each object carries deep cultural significance, blending ancestral knowledge and contemporary experience through rich materials and symbolic expression. The exhibition will reveal how long-standing artistic traditions continue to evolve, reflecting the interconnected, ever-changing cultures of the Asia Pacific today.

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James McNeill Whistler

21 May 2026 – 27 Sep 2026,

Tate Britain

A truly global figure, Whistler re-wrote the rules of what it meant to be an artist. He pioneered new and innovative techniques, creating astonishingly beautiful, ethereal visions of modern life that would earn him a place as one of the most influential artists of the 19th and 20th centuries.

This retrospective – the first major European exhibition of Whistler’s work in 30 years – brings together the artist’s world-famous paintings alongside rarely, or never seen, works. It includes exquisite portraits, drawings, prints, and designs, from as early as his teens in St. Petersburg to the enigmatic late self-portraits.

The exhibition presents both a boldly experimental artist and cosmopolitan celebrity, disrupting the conventions of Victorian society in pursuit of truth, beauty, and progress.

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Winston Churchill: The Painter

23 May – 29 November  2026

The Wallace Collection

Universally renowned as an inspirational statesman, writer, orator and the man who led Britain to victory in the Second World War (1939-45), what is arguably less well known about Winston Churchill (1874-1965), was that he was also an enthusiastic amateur painter. In this major retrospective and first exhibition of Churchill’s creative oeuvre in the UK since his death, the Wallace Collection will bring together more than 50 paintings that represent the very best of the former Prime Minister’s output. Half of the loans are coming from private collections and have rarely, if ever, been seen before in public.

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June

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait

4 June – 6 September 2026

National Portrait Gallery

In celebration of the Hollywood star’s 100th birthday and in association with the Marilyn Monroe estate, Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait will explore the life, career and legacy of Marilyn Monroe through portraits created by some of the greatest photographers and artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Bringing together works by Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, Marlene Dumas, James Gill, Rosalyn Drexler and Audrey Flack, alongside over 20 era-defining photographers, including Cecil Beaton, Philippe Halsman, Bernard of Hollywood, Andre de Dienes, Eve Arnold, Inge Morath, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Milton Greene, Sam Shaw, Richard Avedon and George Barris, the exhibition will foreground Monroe’s collaborative approach to image making and her creative agency. The exhibition will also include personal belongings such as books, scripts and clothes to enrich understanding of the woman behind the image.

From the earliest ‘cheesecake’ pin-ups made when she was a young model named Norma-Jeane, to the most poignant final photographs taken on the beach in Malibu in 1962, Marilyn Monroe was one of the most photographed people in the world. A defining presence in popular culture, she captivated audiences with performances in much loved films such as Some Like it Hot.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Marilyn Monroe’s popularity secured her starring roles in the work of artists including Richard Hamilton, Pauline Boty and Andy Warhol, whose ‘Marilyn’ portraits are among the most highly prized works of art in the world. She continues to fascinate artists, drawn to her iconic presence and fascinating life.

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Julio Le Parc

11 Jun 2026 – 3 May 2027,

Tate Modern

Colourful and seductive, this immersive exhibition celebrates the visionary work of Julio Le Parc. Featuring his iconic interactive installations, striking sculptures, and large-scale op art paintings, the show spans an extraordinary career from the 1950s to the 2010s.

Best known for his pioneering kinetic sculptures, which use light, movement and mirrored surfaces to playfully draw in the viewer, the show also explores the depth and diversity of Le Parc’s talent, revealing him to be a politically engaged artist and highly skilled painter with a passion for colour.

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Project a Black Planet
The Art and Culture of Panafrica
Thu 11 Jun—Sun 6 Sep 2026,

Barbican Art Gallery

The term Pan-Africanism refers to a broad spectrum of political and philosophical movements advocating anti-colonial resistance and transnational solidarity amongst peoples of African descent. While it has long been recognised as a galvanising force in 20th-century global history, Project a Black Planet is the first exhibition to consider both its influence on visual art and culture, and the critical role of artists in shaping Pan-African visions.

The exhibition presents work produced across Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean, North America and Western Europe, from artists including Chris Ofili, Marlene Dumas and Kerry James Marshall. The symbolic site of Panafrica is presented not as a fixed territory but as a conceptual terrain where rupture, dissent, and collective imagination converge in the pursuit of emancipatory futures.

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Anish Kapoor

Tue 16 Jun – Sun 18 Oct 2026,

Hayward Gallery

As a centrepiece of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary programme, this landmark exhibition from Anish Kapoor marks his highly-anticipated return to the space after it was the first public gallery in the UK to host a major survey of his work in 1998. Curated by Ralph Rugoff, the show will span new monumental works that defy the boundaries of sculpture alongside seminal works, offering a series of spectacular encounters with Kapoor’s mind-bending art across the entire gallery and its terraces.

£22

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Summer Exhibition 2026

Royal Academy of Arts Main Galleries

16 June – 23 August 2026

The Royal Academy’s annual Summer Exhibition, the world’s largest open submission contemporary art show, will be in its 258th year. It provides a unique platform for emerging and established artists to showcase their work to an international audience, encompassing a range of media from painting, printmaking and photography to sculpture, architecture and film. It has been held each year without interruption since 1769. Around 1200 works will go on display, the majority of which will be for sale, offering visitors an opportunity to purchase original work. A significant portion of the funds raised continues to support postgraduate students at the RA Schools.

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Frida: The Making of an Icon

25 Jun 2026 – 4 Jan 2027,

Tate Modern

Organised by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in collaboration with Tate Modern. The exhibition is in partnership with Lead Global Supporter, Bank of America. Supported by John J. Studzinski CBE with additional support from Tate Members

Discover the extraordinary story of how Frida Kahlo became one of the most influential artists of all time, a cultural phenomenon, and an internationally recognised commercial icon.

Frida: The Making of an Icon will showcase works by the artist that introduce her ‘many selves’ – the dedicated wife, the intellectual, the modern artist, and the political activist. Featuring over 130 works, including some of her most well-known paintings, the exhibition will also feature documents, photographs and memorabilia taken from Kahlo’s archives, as well as the work of more than 80 of her contemporaries and artists she inspired from later generations.

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Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award

25 June – 7 October 2026

National Portrait Gallery

The Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award celebrates the very best in contemporary portraiture and is one of the most important platforms for portrait painters today. The artworks explore the variety of approaches, from the classic to the contemporary, and encourage viewers to reflect on the creativity of the artists’ processes. Since its inception, the long-standing competition has attracted over 40,000 entries from more than 100 countries and has been seen by over six million people. The highly competitive Award encourages artists over the age of 18 to focus upon, and develop, the theme of portraiture in their work. Using an impressive range and complexity of skill, artists explore both classical and innovative techniques that show the enduring relevance of portraiture today.

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July / August

Waldmüller: Landscapes

2 July – 20 September 2026

National Gallery

In summer 2026, the National Gallery will present the first-ever UK exhibition of paintings by the Austrian 19th-century artist Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793–1865). Waldmüller: Landscapes (2 July – 20 September 2026), additionally the first devoted solely to his work as a landscapist, is a collaboration between the National Gallery and the Belvedere Museum, Vienna, which is lending most of the works on display. Waldmüller is one of the most important figures in Austrian 19th-century art, significant for his work both as an artist and as an influential teacher. As well as landscapes, he painted portraits, genre pictures and still lifes, all characterised by his absolute commitment to truth.

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Ana Mendieta

9 Jul 2026 – 10 Jan 2027,

Tate Modern

This major exhibition dedicated to Ana Mendieta presents many of her iconic works alongside newly remastered films, early paintings, and late sculptural pieces, many of which have never been seen in the UK before. The show will continue outside the gallery walls, embracing Mendieta’s deep relationship with the natural world.

Mendieta is best known for her Silueta Series, exploring the presence and absence of the human body, using a number of natural materials including fire, water and flowers. These ephemeral works were recorded as photographs and films.

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Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam

Royal Academy of Arts The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries

25 July – 25 October 2026

In July 2026, the Royal Academy will present a survey of the Victorian artist Richard Dadd (1817-1886).

Dadd constructed fairytale worlds and compelling compositions inspired by Shakespeare. Dadd’s art reflects a unique perspective from within the Victorian asylum. He experienced psychosis and spent 42 years as a patient in Bethlem and later Broadmoor Hospitals, where he drew upon his previous works, his powerful visual memory, and the landscapes and people available within the context of his confinement, to create his art. These paintings and watercolours are full of extraordinary detail and technical refinement, conveying the painstaking dedication Dadd devoted to keeping alive his memory, his imagination and his profession.

This exhibition will bring together around 60 of Dadd’s most impressive oils and works on paper – art that was radical in his own time and which has since inspired artists, writers and musicians, including Cornelia Parker, Angela Carter and Freddie Mercury – Queen’s ‘The Fairy-Feller’s Master Stroke’ was directly inspired by Dadd’s painting of the same name. This will be the first major retrospective devoted to the artist in over 50 years.

£15

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September

Amar Kanwar
Serpentine North Gallery

September 2026 – January 2027

For over two decades, New Delhi-based artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar has developed a distinctive body of lyrical films that move between documentary, travelogue and visual essay. This major solo exhibition unfolds as a site-specific installation, bringing together new and existing films to transform Serpentine North into a meditative visual and sonic environment.

Kanwar’s works often trace the legacies of decolonialisation and the partition of India and Pakistan. While rooted in the specific conditions of the Indian subcontinent, his practice grapples with broader themes of displacement, nationalism, violence, power, censorship, and memory – ultimately revealing what unites us rather than differentiates us regardless of context.

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October

The 90s

1 Oct 2026 – 14 Feb 2027,

Tate Britain

Curated by industry game changer Edward Enninful OBE, an image maker who has played a pivotal role in shaping fashion’s history, The 90s examines a seminal decade in which a groundswell of creativity changed the face of British culture.

The 90s brings together iconic images by photographers including Juergen Teller, Nick Knight, David Sims and Corrine Day. They will be shown alongside the work of artists like Damien Hirst, Gillian Wearing, and Yinka Shonibare, as well as fashion collections by decade-defining designers including Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, and Hussein Chalayan.

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Painting the French Riviera

Royal Academy of Arts Main Galleries

2 October 2026 – 31 January 2027

Matisse and Klein in Nice. Cezanne in L’Estaque. Signac in Saint-Tropez. Monet and Picasso in Antibes. Bonnard in Le Cannet. Renoir in Cagnes-sur-Mer. Since the 1870s, artists have been escaping to the sumptuous Mediterranean landscapes of the South of France – prompted by the temperate climate and inspired by the southern light, blue skies and azure seas. The luxurious Calais-Mediterranée Express—better known as Le Train bleu—that began operation in 1922 made the French Riviera a destination for the wealthy and glamorous. This exhibition will examine the rise and development of modern art on the Mediterranean coast of France in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Featuring over 120 works of art, among them paintings, sculpture, travel posters and film, it will focus on key moments and figures that were drawn to this remarkable paradise.

Exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts, London in collaboration with the Cleveland Museum of Art.

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Renoir and Love

3 October – 31 January 2027

National Gallery

Renoir and Love will be the most significant exhibition of work by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) in the UK for 20 years. The exhibition will including the iconic Bal au Moulin de la Galette(1876, the Musée d’Orsay, Paris), which has not been seen in the UK since 1985. Organised in partnership with the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Renoir and Lovewill focus on the crucial years of the artist’s career, from the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s, tracing the evolution of the imagery of affection, seduction, conversation, male camaraderie and the sociability of the café and theatre, as well as merry-making, flirtation, courtship and child-rearing in Renoir’s art.

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Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography

8 Oct 2026 – 14 Feb 2027,

Tate Modern

Bringing together over 50 artists from Seoul to Sydney, New York to Cape Town and Brazil to Singapore, this truly international exhibition takes a fresh and inclusive look at the history of art photography.

Featuring never-before seen works from around the world alongside pieces from Tate’s Collection, Light and Magic highlights the vast and varied artistic possibilities of photography as a medium.

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Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends

8 October 2026 – January 2027

National Portrait Gallery

Tim Walker’s Fairyland is an exploration of queer identity, community, and love through the lens of one of Britain’s foremost photographers.

Walker rose to prominence in the 1990s with his unique style of whimsical photography inspired by fairytales and adventures. He has photographed famous faces including Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga, Pet Shop Boys, Hunter Schafer, Miriam Margolyes and Frank Ocean, with his work featured in international magazines including Vogue, Vanity Fair, W, LOVE, Another Man and i-D.

In preparation for this exhibition, he has spent the past five years photographing activists, performers, artists, and writers in his inimitable style. These new pictures are the result of Walker’s quest to connect with queer trailblazers in Britain and beyond.

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Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize

29 October 2026 – January 2027

National Portrait Gallery

The Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize showcases the work of talented young photographers, gifted amateurs and established professionals in the very best of contemporary photography.

The competition celebrates a diverse range of images and tells the fascinating stories behind the creation of works, from formal commissioned portraits to more spontaneous and intimate moments capturing friends and family. The selected images, many of which are on display for the first time, explore both traditional and contemporary approaches to the photographic portrait whilst capturing a range of characters, moods and locations.

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November / December

Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant 

12 Nov 2026 – 11 Apr 2027,

Tate Britain

This major exhibition features the work of two of the most celebrated British artists of the twentieth century. Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant delves into the extraordinary relationship between the artists, while tracing their remarkable creative partnership that spanned more than 50 years. The exhibition explores Bell and Grant’s legacy as core members of the famed Bloomsbury Group. The group’s commitment to living lives centred around freedom and radical experimentation had a significant influence on the course of art, literature, and societal thought in Britain.

The exhibition features over 250 works, including vivid portraits, still lives, landscape paintings, decorative works on furniture, ceramics, textiles, and much more. A once-in-a-lifetime restaging of Duncan Grant’s studio, relocated for the exhibition from their Sussex home, Charleston, is an unmissable highlight.

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Van Eyck: The Portraits

21 November 2026 – 11 April 2027

National Gallery

The first ever exhibition of the portraits of the Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck (active 1422–1441), will open at the National Gallery in winter 2026. Van Eyck was an artist who not only changed the genre of portraiture but also redefined who got to be portrayed.

Exceptional reunions will see among others the Gallery’s own Arnolfini Portrait (1434) displayed for the first time ever with a panel showing the same sitter, Portrait of a Man (Giovanni? Arnolfini)(c.1440, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) and van Eyck’s newly conserved Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?)(1433, the National Gallery) shown next to the portrait of his enterprising wife Margaret (1439, Groeningemuseum, Bruges), the first known portrait of a woman who was not a member of the aristocracy.

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Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector

Royal Academy of Arts The Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing of Galleries

21 November 2026 – 14 March 2027

This exhibition celebrates the groundbreaking gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, run by Peggy Guggenheim at 30 Cork Street, London between January 1938 and June 1939. It will explore the wide range of pioneering exhibitions that she staged there, the gallery’s central contribution towards the development of the London art scene, and the genesis of Guggenheim’s world-famous art collection now housed in Venice.

Guggenheim was a key figure in London in the late 1930s, and Guggenheim Jeune, her first gallery, quickly became one of the central places to see the latest developments in surrealism and abstraction. During a short period, she organised over 20 exhibitions and many curatorial firsts, such as the first UK solo show dedicated to Vasily Kandinsky, the first show of collage in the UK, and a contemporary sculpture exhibition that caused a scandal. This exhibition will reunite highlights from these shows, as well as similar works from the period, by artists including Eileen Agar, Salvador Dalí, Barbara Hepworth, Vasily Kandinsky, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Henry Moore, Piet Mondrian, Cedric Morris, Grace Pailthorpe, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Yves Tanguy amongst others.

Exhibition organised by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts, London.

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Shows continuing into 2026

Gilbert & George, Hayward Gallery until 4 January 2026

Cecil Beaton, National Portrait Gallery until 11 January 2026

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Tate Modern until 13 Jan 2026

Kerry James Marshall, Royal Academy of Arts until 18 January 2026

A Story of South Asain Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle, Royal Academy of Art until 25 January 2026

Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize, National Portrait Gallery until 8 February 2026

Peter Doig: House of Musis, Serpentine South Gallery until 8 February

Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists National Gallery ,Until 8 February 2026

Lee Miller, Tate Britain until 15 February

Theatre Picasso , Tate Modern until 12 April 2026

Turner & Constable, Tate Britain until 12 April 2026

Nigerian Modernism, Tate Modern until 10 May 2026

Wright of Derby: From The Shadows, National Gallery until 10 May 2026

 

Tags

2026 London Art Exhibitions, Barbican Art Gallery, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Royal Academy Of Arts, Tate