The Royal Academy has named Helen Sear RA as co-ordinator of the 259th Summer Exhibition. The show runs in the Main Galleries from 18 May to 15 August 2027. Insight Investment is the sponsor.
Sear, a British artist and Royal Academician, has chosen the theme of Fascination. Her reasoning is rooted in the present. Data capture and social media now run through daily life, she says, and the images and unseen networks involved hold us spellbound. Artists have long felt that pull. They have also felt repelled by it. She points to early perspective and trompe l’oeil, then to photography, the industrial printing press, digital media and now artificial intelligence. Each one stirred up arguments about what it means to be human. Her question to artists is a direct one. How do we conjure other kinds of enchantment, and make them active forces in the world?
She will work with a committee of five Academicians: Brian Griffiths, Liane Lang, Níall McLaughlin, Chris Orr and Bob and Roberta Smith. Rebecca Salter, the RA’s President, chairs. Members serve in rotation, which is how the show keeps changing character from one year to the next. Each Academician takes charge of a particular gallery.
Artists and architects will soon be invited to submit work. Entry forms go live on Tuesday 5 January 2027 and stay open until Wednesday 21 January, or until the cap of 18,000 entries is hit, whichever comes first. The RA expects a figure close to that. About 1,500 works will make it onto the walls, across a wide range of media.
The selection process is a large part of the story. Work arrives from around the world and is judged on merit. The final choices are made during a nine-day hang, with the works physically in the galleries. Most of what is shown will be for sale. Proceeds support the exhibiting artists, the postgraduate students at the RA Schools and the Academy’s wider work. Royal Academicians may automatically submit up to six works. The rest of the show draws on invited artists and open entrants.
This is the world’s largest open submission contemporary art exhibition. It has taken place every year since 1769 without a break. The Academy was founded partly on the idea of an annual show open to all artists of distinguished merit, with the income paying for the training of young artists. That remains the arrangement. The RA Schools is the oldest art school in the UK, and it offers the only free three-year postgraduate programme in Europe.
Visitors have more room to see it this time. The Academy says the exhibition will open over an extended period from May 2027, so more people can take it in. The public opening is on Tuesday 18 May. Hours are 10 am to 6 pm, Tuesday to Sunday, with a late opening until 9 pm on Fridays.
Sear’s theme suits the moment. Few shows gather as many images in one place, and few viewers arrive more saturated with them. Whether 1,500 works can offer a counterspell to the screen is the question the committee has set itself.