Victoria and Albert East Museum (V&A East)
| Opening April 18, 2026
A new V&A branch in Stratford, London, conceived as a living platform for art, design, fashion, and performance.
Its permanent exhibition Why We Make combines historical and contemporary objects, emphasizing interaction, curatorial experimentation, and visitor engagement rather than traditional static display models.
The building is designed by the Irish architectural studio O’Donnell + Tuomey.

Lucas Museum of Narrative Art
| Opening September 22, 2026
The museum was founded by Star Wars director George Lucas and his wife, Mellody Hobson. Its core concept is narrative art—including painting, illustration, comics, cinematic artifacts, and visual storytelling. The permanent collection includes more than 40,000 works, featuring pieces by Norman Rockwell, Frida Kahlo, Jack Kirby, and photographs by Gordon Parks, as well as George Lucas’s personal archive of film-related objects.
The futuristic building is designed by Ma Yansong of MAD Architects.


David Geffen Galleries at LACMA
| April 2026
This project has become one of the most controversial experiments within the professional community.
The new building of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), designed by Pritzker Prize laureate Peter Zumthor, has become one of the most discussed museum projects of recent years. The building, costing approximately $720 million, proposes an alternative museum model: instead of fixed routes — free movement and fluid space, where visitors independently construct their path through the collection. The monolithic concrete structure, compared by critics to an overpass above a freeway, replaces four former LACMA buildings that were demolished to make way for the new complex.
It will house a constantly updated display from the museum’s collection of more than 150,000 artworks from around the world.
The radical architecture has caused professional debate, primarily over exhibition principles: how to work with art in a gallery where walls are formed by massive concrete slabs.
The building is conceived as a single body that crosses Wilshire Boulevard and physically unites the museum campus.


Dataland Museum | Spring 2026, Downtown Los Angeles (The Grand LA)
The world’s first museum fully dedicated to AI-generated art.
Co-founded and artistically directed by media artist Refik Anadol, Dataland positions itself as a global center for AI creativity, generative systems, and data-driven aesthetics.
The building is designed by Frank Gehry, making it his second major museum project after Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.
Dataland represents a new institutional model where art, machine intelligence, and human creativity merge into a single cultural language.

61st Venice Biennale
| May 8 – November 22, 2026
Giardini, Arsenale, and additional venues across Venice
The concept of In Minor Keys is rooted in a musical metaphor: minor keys signify not only melancholy, but also depth, nuance, resonance, and sensitivity. The Biennale focuses on subtle, multilayered states of being, modes of perception, and ways in which art connects with emotional and social conditions—moving away from simplified responses to social and political challenges in favor of more complex, introspective forms of meaning.

In 2024, Koyo Kouoh was appointed curator of the 61st Venice Biennale. She became the first African woman to hold this position. She was also part of the curatorial teams of Documenta, one of the world’s most influential contemporary art exhibitions, held in Kassel, Germany.
Sadly, in 2025 she passed away, one year before the opening of the Venice Biennale. Despite this, the organizers decided to realize the exhibition strictly in accordance with her original artistic vision.


Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy
| May 6 – October 19, 2026
Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice
A major solo exhibition of the iconic performance artist featuring seminal works including Rhythm 0, Imponderabilia, and Balkan Baroque. Interactive installations invite audiences into direct dialogue with the works, exploring presence, energy, and embodied experience.
Why it matters: This will be the first-ever solo exhibition by a living artist in the history of Gallerie dell’Accademia. It is also the first exhibition dedicated to a woman artist to occupy both the permanent collection galleries and temporary exhibition spaces. The project marks a breakthrough moment for the institutional recognition of performance art and contemporary practice within a classical museum context.


Whitney Biennial
| March 8 – August 23, 2026
Whitney Museum, New York City
The landmark survey of the new generation of American artists. In 2026, 56 participants explore emerging trends across technology, social media, ecological thinking, and interspecies relationships, presenting new voices shaping the contemporary U.S. art scene.

Design Doha Biennale
| April 16 – June 30, 2026
Multiple venues, Doha, Qatar
Design Doha Biennale is a biennial international exhibition dedicated to contemporary design, creativity, and innovation. Founded by Qatar Museums, it has quickly become one of the leading global platforms for designers, curators, and critics — particularly from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
The biennale’s core mission is to build an international platform for dialogue around design, foster collaboration and idea exchange, and strengthen the region’s presence on the global creative map. The program includes exhibitions, panel discussions, public events, awards, and special projects, integrating multiple design disciplines: architecture, graphic design, digital media, sustainable design, product design, and urbanism.

Cézanne — Retrospective
| January 25 – May 25, 2026
Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Canton Basel-Stadt), Switzerland
The first major monographic exhibition of Paul Cézanne at Fondation Beyeler. Focused on the artist’s late period, when his painting reached the height of expressive power.
Features: Works from public and private collections, many rarely exhibited, highlighting Cézanne’s search for structure, color, and meditative compositions that shaped 20th-century art.


Alberto Giacometti: Faces and Landscapes of Home – Hauser & Wirth, St. Moritz | through March 28, 2026
An intimate look at Giacometti’s work: family portraits, landscapes of his native valley, and sculptures. Archival materials offer insight into the personal world of the artist.


Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection
| February 20 – June 26, 2026
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., United States
Focuses on the contribution of women artists of the 20th and 21st centuries to abstract art. Features over 60 works from the Shah Garg Collection.
Highlights: Artists include Magdalena Abakanowicz, Cecily Brown, Joan Mitchell, Faith Ringgold, Julie Mehretu, and others.


New Humans: Memories of the Future
| From March 21, 2026
New Museum, New York, United States
An interdisciplinary exhibition with over 200 participants — artists, writers, scientists, architects, and filmmakers — exploring how conceptions of humanity were shaped in the 20th century and how they may evolve in the future.
Features: Includes 20th-century classics alongside contemporary artists such as Hito Steyerl, Wangechi Mutu, Anicka Yi, Tau Lewis, and others. The museum also unveils its renovated building by OMA / Rem Koolhaas, doubling gallery space.


Matisse: 1941–1954
| March 24 – July 26, 2026
Grand Palais, Paris, France
A retrospective of Matisse’s later years, featuring over 230 works, including paintings, drawings, and collages.
Features: The show traces the artist’s shift from painting to decorative collages and his exploration of form and color.


James McNeill Whistler — Retrospective | May 21 – September 27, 2026
Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom
The first major European retrospective of James McNeill Whistler in 30 years. The exhibition spans the full range of his work — portraits, landscapes, drawings, prints, and designs. Highlights include the iconic Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (“Whistler’s Mother”) and the artist’s evolution from his early works in Saint Petersburg to his later, nearly abstract compositions.
Features: The show emphasizes Whistler’s experiments with color, light, and atmosphere, his rejection of academic conventions, and his pursuit of “art for art’s sake.”


Leonor Fini— Retrospective
| October 23, 2026 – February 28, 2027
Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
The first major retrospective of Leonor Fini in Germany, featuring around 100 works, including paintings, drawings, photographs, and objects.
Significance: Fini (1907–1996) maintained a unique visual language at the intersection of surrealism, myth, and theater. The exhibition explores her independent artistic stance and long career.


Peggy Guggenheim in London: The Making of a Collector
| November 21, 2026 – March 14, 2027
Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom
A large-scale exhibition focusing on Peggy Guggenheim’s early London period and her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune (1938–1939). It brings together landmark works and related pieces from that era, tracing Guggenheim’s path as a collector, visionary, and cultural mediator.
Significance: Guggenheim’s gallery became a center of the European avant-garde, shaping the map of modernism, surrealism, and abstraction. Featured artists include Eileen Agar, Salvador Dalí, Barbara Hepworth, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and others.

Hilma af Klint – Retrospective
| May 6 – August 30, 2026
Grand Palais, Paris, France
A major retrospective of Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, one of the pioneers of abstract painting. For the first time in France, her key series Peintures du Temple and Les Dix Plus Grands are presented.
Why it matters: The exhibition explores af Klint’s sources of inspiration, including esotericism, Theosophy, folklore, and science. This is the first major presentation of her work in France, highlighting her historical contribution and challenging traditional narratives of abstract art, which have long been dominated by male artists.

Marcel Duchamp – Retrospective
| April 12 – August 22, 2026
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, United States
The first major Duchamp retrospective in the US since 1973, covering six decades of his career. The show includes painting, sculpture, film, prints, and readymades.
Highlights: The exhibition addresses the central question always associated with Duchamp: “What is art?”—and whether a readymade object can be considered art.
Next stop: Philadelphia Museum of Art | October 10, 2026 – January 31, 2027

Frida: The Making of an Icon
| June 25, 2026 – January 3, 2027
Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom
A major international retrospective of Frida Kahlo, featuring over 130 works, including paintings, documents, photographs, personal objects, and works by 80 artists inspired by her.
Highlights: The exhibition examines Kahlo’s “many faces”—as artist, intellectual, and activist—and her influence on 20th and 21st-century art. Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in partnership with Tate Modern.

David Lynch – Pace Gallery, Berlin
| through March 22, 2026
The first major exhibition of David Lynch in Berlin, featuring painting, sculpture, installations, photography, and short films. The show explores his surrealist aesthetic and the interplay between objects, space, and perception.

Erwin Wurm: Tomorrow: Yes
Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris Pantin
| January 17 – April 19, 2026
Conceptual sculptures and interactive works exploring the boundaries of form, the body, and everyday life. Key pieces include School, Star, One Minute Sculptures, and Box People.

Carol Bove — Retrospective
| March 5 – August 2, 2026
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, United States
The first major museum retrospective of the American artist, spanning 25 years of work, from early paper works to monumental metal and steel sculptural collages.
Features: Bove’s works explore the interaction of objects with space and environment, offering a fresh perspective on contemporary sculptural language.

David Hockney: A Year in Normandie – Serpentine North Gallery, London
| May 12 – August 23, 2026
The exhibition combines traditional painting and digital media, exploring time, observation, and nature through a monumental frieze and new works.