What's On in 2026

Coming up in 2026: Lots more big exhibitions starring women artists, including Frida Kahlo, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington and Gwen John, as well as a host of names from the 17th-century Low Countries. And women almost certainly embroidered the Bayeux Tapestry, a contender for this year's hottest ticket in London.

 
Here's a selection of shows that have caught our eye around Britain and Europe, in more or less chronological order; as ever, we make no claim to comprehensiveness, and our choice very much reflects our personal taste.

January

We'll start the year at the Fondation Beyeler on the outskirts of Basel, where they're devoting an exhibition to Paul Cezanne. Focusing on the artist's later years, the show will bring together some 80 oil paintings and watercolours. January 25 to May 25. 

February

Two leading British women artists feature in exhibitions opening this month, with the National Museum in Cardiff honouring the best-known female painter Wales has produced, Gwen John, to mark her 150th birthday. Gwen John: Strange Beauties is billed as the first major collection of her work in over 40 years. Running from February 7 to June 28, it will move on to Edinburgh in August before heading in 2027 to the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC. 

Meanwhile, at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris, you can explore the Surrealism and mythology in the paintings of the long-lived and always rebellious Leonora Carrington, now Britain's most expensive woman artist. This show is on from February 18 to July 19. 

Yellow was Vincent van Gogh's favourite colour, and at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam they'll be exploring its significance for him and his contemporaries, how it feels and how it smells. Yellow: Beyond Van Gogh's Colour runs from February 13 to May 17 and will include an installation by Olafur Eliasson. 

The Dane Vilhelm Hammershøi is one of our favourite painters, with his silent and enigmatic interiors. At the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid from February 17, they're offering a "wide-ranging and comprehensive survey" of his oeuvre with around 100 works, entitled Hammershøi: The Eye that Listens, a show that will also explore links with Dutch Golden Age painters and more modern artists such as Edward Hopper. Until May 31, and then on to Zurich. 

We very much enjoyed the overview of the German Impressionist movement when we saw it at the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden in October. It moves on to the Museum Barberini in Potsdam as Avant-Garde: Max Liebermann and Impressionism in Germany from February 28 to June 7. Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt are the other big names in this show. 

And at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, there'll be a big retrospective devoted to one of the most influential and innovative French artists of the mid-19th century: Gustave Courbet, Realist and Rebel. With about 90 paintings, this show is on from February 19 to June 21 before moving to the Museum Folkwang in Essen. 

March

One of the exhibitions we're most keen to get to this year is a show aimed very much at correcting the historical record and demonstrating how important woman artists were in the Golden Age in the Low Countries. More than 40 will be highlighted in Unforgettable: Women Artists from Antwerp to Amsterdam 1600-1750 at the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, which is on from March 7 to May 31. Judith Leyster, Clara Peeters, Rachel Ruysch and Maria Sybilla Merian are some of the names to reckon with. 

And one of the painters to be seen in Ghent is getting the full retrospective treatment at the Royal Academy in London from March 27 to June 21: Michaelina Wautier. Wautier has only recently been rescued from obscurity, her works reattributed. And the stunning thing is, they include the sort of monumental history paintings you might expect from Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens or Anthony van Dyck. This show comes to London from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. 

Ah yes, van Dyck: He's getting his biggest show in 25 years at the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa. More than 50 paintings from 32 museums across Europe are being assembled for Van Dyck, the European from March 20 to July 19, which aims to trace the development of the painter's career from Antwerp to Genoa to London. Sounds very tempting.

Etretat in Normandy, with its stunning cliff formations, has been a key motif for French artists for more than two centuries. We've just seen an excellent exhibition on the subject at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, and it's transferring to the Städel Museum in Frankfurt from March 19 under the title Monet on the Normandy Coast: The Discovery of Etretat. Courbet and Eugène Delacroix are among the other stars of a show that runs until July 5. 

Auguste Renoir's paintings are now so familiar, says the Musée d’Orsay, that it's hard to comprehend how radical they were. Renoir and Love from March 17 to July 19 aims to re-examine his contribution to Impressionism through the notion of love as the central driving force of his work. There will, of course, be pretty girls in gardens, theatres and dance halls, and they'll be moving on to the National Gallery in London later in the year before heading across the Atlantic to Boston. 

Elsewhere in Paris, you can see the work of perhaps the most prominent of all those artists who worked in a naïve or primitive style at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Henri Rousseau: The Ambition of Painting, which is on from March 25 to July 20. This show comes from the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which has one of the two biggest collections of Rousseau's work along with the Orangerie. 

April

Peggy Guggenheim became a key figure in the development of modern art when she opened a gallery in London in 1938 that championed the avant-garde. Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice from April 25 to October 19 will bring together key works from her pioneering exhibitions, featuring artists such as Henry Moore, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Wassily Kandinsky. This show transfers to the Royal Academy in London in late autumn before going on to the Guggenheim in New York. 

May

Tate Britain is putting on the first major exhibition of James McNeill Whistler's work in Europe for 30 years. Running from May 21 to September 27, the show will feature rarely seen works alongside the American's major paintings. And yes, his mother will be coming. 

It's the 800th anniversary of the founding of the magnificent Gothic cathedral at Toledo in central Spain, and to celebrate they're holding a gigantic exhibition of around 350 works of art. Nearly a third of the exhibits are coming from elsewhere and half have never previously been displayed. El Greco, Velázquez and Zurbarán will be among the painters featured; the show is entitled Primada in Spanish, reflecting Toledo's claim to outrank all other episcopal sees in the country, and it will run from May 25 to October 14. 

June

There's bound to be a lot of demand for tickets to the Frida Kahlo show at Tate Modern in London. Frida: The Making of an Icon is the name of the exhibition; she's perhaps the most immediately recognisable of all female artists and possibly the most influential, and one of her paintings has just set a record as the most expensive artwork by a woman. With more than 130 Kahlo works as well as exhibits by her contemporaries and followers, the show runs from June 25 all the way through to January 3, 2027.

July

Vilhelm Hammershøi: The Eye that Listens arrives at the Kunsthaus in Zurich from Madrid on July 3 and will be on until October 25. 

Along with Georges Seurat, Paul Signac was at the forefront of the Neo-Impressionist movement using dots of unmixed colour popularly known as Pointillism. A new show at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam traces his development in Paul Signac: Symphony of Colours, showing his work alongside those of his contemporaries. On from July 4 to October 11 before moving to the Kunsthal in Rotterdam. 

And in western Germany, the Museum Folkwang in Essen will be showing I, Gustave Courbet, from July 17 to November 8 following its transfer from Vienna. 

August

The Edinburgh leg of Gwen John: Strange Beauties opens at the National Galleries of Scotland's Modern Two building on August 1 and runs until January 4, 2027. 

September

Precise dates for the display of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum have yet to be announced, but it's scheduled to be shown from September to June 2027. Expect demand for tickets to be very high; we may not go, to be honest, because we've seen it several times in situ and once had the good luck to be able to view it with very few others in the museum in Bayeux. But if you've never made it to Normandy, seize the chance; the embroidered story of 1066 is one of the most extraordinary historical artefacts you'll ever encounter. 

One of the most distinctive of German Expressionist painters was Franz Marc, founder of the Blue Rider group and known above all for his vibrantly coloured depictions of animals. He was killed in the carnage of World War I. The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Dusseldorf is celebrating his legacy from September 12 to January 24, 2027, in Franz Marc: The Quest for a Better World.

October

More Blue Rider? Travel up the Rhine from Dusseldorf to the Museum Wiesbaden for Women of the Blue Rider, featuring not just the usual suspects in Gabriele Münter and Marianne von Werefkin, but 10 other female artists associated with the group as well. Running from October 23 to February 21, 2027, this show will be going on the Museen Böttcherstrasse in Bremen in March 2027. 

And it's a short hop from Wiesbaden to the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt for a retrospective of the Italian-Argentinian Surrealist Leonor Fini. On from October 23 to February 28, 2027, this exhibition will feature around 150 of her works.

It could be the perfect show for the grey days of autumn and winter in London: Painting the French Riviera at the Royal Academy. On from October 2 to January 31, 2027, and featuring more than 120 works, the exhibition will relate how Monet and Matisse, Bonnard and Cezanne, to name just a handful, had their creativity whetted by blue seas, blue skies and the warmth of the Sun. 

Renoir and Love, featuring 40 paintings, will be on at the National Gallery in London from October 3 to January 31, 2027, and it's then scheduled to travel on to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

The Paul Signac exhibition is due to be on at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam from October 24 to February 28, 2027; details weren't on the museum's website at the time of writing.

November

To end the year, we have a couple of blockbusters, starting at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, where they're already warning that you'll need to book in advance for Hals-Rembrandt from November 5 to February 28, 2027. They'll be putting together pairings of paintings by the two greatest portraitists in Dutch 17th-century art, reflecting on similarities and differences. 

But back in London, we have a couple of other things to tell you about before we get to the real zinger. First of all at Tate Britain, where they'll be assembling more than 250 works for an examination of the partnership between Vanessa Bell & Duncan Grant, central members of the Bloomsbury Group. This show is on from November 12 to April 11, 2027. 

Then, Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector starts at the Royal Academy on November 21; it's scheduled to run until March 14, 2027.

So, perhaps saving the best for last, and to quote directly from the organisers: "For the first time in history, see all of Jan van Eyck’s portraits together. Only once, only at the National Gallery." These fragile works, made six centuries ago, set new standards for realism in art, and all nine of them will be on show from November 21 to April 11, 2027, in Van Eyck: The Portraits. We were lucky enough to see the wonderful and short-lived Van Eyck exhibition in Ghent at the start of 2020; we weren't expecting this opportunity to come round so soon. 

Images

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), La Montagne Sainte-Victoire vue des Lauves, 1904/05, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Image courtesy of Nelson-Atkins Digital Production & Preservation
Cuno Amiet (1868-1961), The Yellow Hill, 1903, Kunstmuseum Solothurn. Photo: © Kunstmuseum Solothurn/David Aebi
Michaelina Wautier (1604-1689), The Triumph of Bacchus, c. 1655-59. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Photo: © KHM-Museumsverband
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910), The Snake Charmer, 1907, Musée d’Orsay, Paris. © Photo: Musée d’Orsay, dist. Grand Palais Rmn/Patrice Schmidt
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940, Nickolas Muray Collection of Mexican Art, University of Texas, Austin
Section of Bayeux Tapestry, 11th century. © Bayeux Museum
Leonor Fini (1907-1996), Le Bout du monde (The End of the World), 1948, Private collection. © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025/26, Photo: Galerie Minsky, Paris
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), Johannes Wtenbogaert, 1633, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam