Art Basel has opened its first fair in the MENASA region, choosing Doha as it’s launch-pad. Spread across Msheireb, Downtown Doha, the new edition runs until 7 February and gives the fair a presence in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. This also signals a new direction for the international art market, by shifting its focus away from the US and Europe.
Art Basel Qatar day one was full of local and international visitors eager to see the newest edition of the fair. The curation is excellent, and the experience was more digestible given the solo presentations and a strong focus on artists from this region of the world. – Clayton Calvert
The inaugural edition brings together 87 exhibitors presenting work by 84 artists, with more than half drawn from across the MENASA region. Rather than the familiar grid of stands, the fair has been organised around solo presentations spread across M7 and the Doha Design District. The result is a looser, more deliberate format that encourages sustained looking rather than rapid circulation. Under the joint artistic direction of Vincenzo de Bellis and Wael Shawky, the fair takes its cue from the theme Becoming, positioning this first edition as something provisional, open-ended and shaped by its setting.
Gagosian Stand Featuring Christo and Jean Claude Art Basel Qatar Photo © Clayton Calvert Artlyst 2025
There was a scarcity of galleries reporting sales on opening day. However, multiple dealers said a significant number of works across the fair were placed on reserve, following a private walkthrough on Monday by members of the Qatari royal family, who were granted the right of first refusal. Galleries said they were optimistic that reserves would convert into sales. This factor explains why some dealers, including Sadie Coles, ATHR, Almine Rech, Gladstone, Pace, Lisson, Lehmann Maupin, and Gagosian, reported strong interest but withheld confirmed sales figures.
On the eve of the VIP preview, Art Basel and Visit Qatar marked the launch with the unveiling of SONG, a new site-responsive work by Jenny Holzer at the Museum of Islamic Art. Projected across the museum’s façade and inner courtyard, and accompanied by a choreographed drone performance over Doha’s night sky, the work draws on poetry by Mahmoud Darwish and Nujoom Alghanem. Arabic and English text pulse across the building as light and interruption, extending Holzer’s long-standing engagement with language into the public realm. The projections will continue nightly throughout the fair.
The arrival of Art Basel in Qatar reflects decades of sustained investment in cultural infrastructure, from museums and collections to education and patronage. For Art Basel, now more than fifty years old, the Doha fair represents a strategic expansion that links the region’s growing artistic production with its established international network of galleries, collectors and institutions. For the market, it introduces a new point of exchange that sits somewhere between regional focus and global ambition.
Organisers were keen to stress substance over spectacle. Qatar Museums positioned the fair as a means of strengthening regional voices, not parachuting in a ready-made format. For Qatar Sports Investments and Visit Qatar, the emphasis sat within a wider strategy, one that places culture alongside sport and tourism as a shared point of connection rather than a standalone attraction. From Art Basel’s side, the emphasis was on building something locally rooted, with a structure that could evolve rather than replicate.
That sense of experimentation is most visible in the fair’s format. Solo presentations predominate, encouraging artists to present complete bodies of work rather than fragments constrained by booth space. It is a quieter proposition than Basel, Miami Beach or Hong Kong, but one that feels intentionally calibrated to its context. Commercial ambitions remain firmly in place, but they are woven into a slower rhythm that allows education, conversation and market activity to sit side by side.
Whether it becomes a permanent fixture on the global calendar will depend on what happens beyond the opening week, but its arrival already marks a shift. The art market, once again, is redrawing its centre of gravity.
Top Photo: Clayton Calvert © Artlyst 2026
Art Basel Qatar runs from 5 to 7 February, following preview days on 3 and 4 February.