Best Art Exhibitions by City — Fall 2026

Nakaya’s fog installation transforms the monumental central space of the Bourse de Commerce into an unstable environment where architecture, visibility and bodies continually appear and vanish.

This is the first major monographic exhibition ever devoted to Eva Gonzalès, an artist often grouped with the women Impressionists despite never formally belonging to the movement. The Petit Palais brings her out of Manet’s shadow and places her in dialogue with Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Marie Bracquemond.

Rather than presenting another conventional Cezanne retrospective, Cezanne et nous traces his afterlife in modern and contemporary art. Around 174 works place 69 paintings and works by Cezanne alongside 105 works by 78 artists, from Gauguin and Matisse to Picasso, Mondrian, Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley and Peter Doig.

Timed to the centenary of Cassatt’s death, this is the first major exhibition devoted to her by France’s national museums. It repositions her as a central Impressionist figure with a transatlantic career, rather than simply the painter of mothers and children.

This is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of Queen Elizabeth II’s fashion ever staged, bringing together more than 300 objects from all ten decades of her life, many shown publicly for the first time. Beyond royal glamour, it reveals how clothing was deliberately used to communicate continuity, diplomacy and visibility on a global stage.

The inaugural exhibition of the new V&A East Museum combines objects with a soundtrack of more than 120 tracks to tell a cultural history too often fragmented across genres.

This is the largest outdoor exhibition of Henry Moore ever presented: 30 monumental sculptures spread across Kew Gardens, complemented by more than 70 drawings, models and smaller works indoors. It is also the most comprehensive presentation of Moore’s work in a generation — and Kew gives his organic forms an exceptional natural setting.

The largest European Whistler retrospective in around 30 years brings together roughly 150 paintings, prints, drawings and designs.

This IVAM exhibition offers a concentrated way to understand Julio González through one of his central subjects: women. Family portraits, nudes, mothers, readers, workers and allegorical figures reveal how his sculpture moved from solid bodies toward more open, abstract forms.

Igshaan Adams’ Guggenheim Bilbao project is the third chapter of the museum’s in situ series, made for artists who create works in direct relation to the building’s architecture. Adams brings weaving, movement and memory into a site-specific installation.

This exhibition brings together significant pieces from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Panza Collection, offering a rare look at the foundational structures that defined minimalist light art.

Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now revisits the museum’s own Pop history, pairing historic works from the collection with recent acquisitions by contemporary artists who test how Pop’s visual language still works today.

Past Continuous is the first major New York exhibition to consider Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock together across the full span of their careers. More than 120 works reveal not just a famous artistic partnership, but two distinct practices that developed in parallel, sometimes converging and often moving in very different directions.

This major MoMA exhibition looks at Constantin Brancusi through the lens of his studio at the impasse Ronsin in Paris, showing how the space shaped his sculpture, his photographs and the way his work was seen.

This MoMA presentation reframes Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera through a collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera, placing their artworks inside a stage-like setting connected to El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego.

This is the first major European survey of a surrealist whose intricate paintings are rarely seen outside private collections or Mexican institutions, offering a dense look at her alchemical technique.

Spanning five decades, the show brings together seven major series and over 300 individual pieces, offering a rare chance to see how Calle blends photography and text to investigate loss, memory, and human longing.

APERTURA is the official start of Madrid’s gallery season and one of the best moments of the year to discover the city’s contemporary-art scene. Galleries open new exhibitions simultaneously, extend their hours and organise talks, guided visits and special events — all with free admission.

Because this is a genuinely unusual exchange. For the first time, the Thyssen-Bornemisza and the Mauritshuis swap 25 masterpieces simultaneously, giving Madrid an exceptional concentration of Dutch Golden Age painting while 25 works from the Thyssen travel to The Hague. At the centre is one of Vermeer’s greatest landscapes, View of Delft.

This is the first major exhibition in Spain devoted to Gottfried Helnwein, one of Europe’s most unsettling contemporary figurative artists. His monumental hyperrealist images use the visual language of cinema, advertising and popular culture to confront trauma, authoritarian power and the loss of innocence.

A welcome reassessment of Aurèlia Muñoz as a radical figure in fibre art, moving textile practice out of the decorative realm and into contemporary sculpture.

The Stedelijk Museum presents an expansive survey of Yayoi Kusama’s career, developed closely with the artist and her studio. It goes well beyond the familiar dots and Infinity Mirror Rooms, tracing the evolution of her practice across painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, collage, performance, fashion and literature.

The Van Gogh Museum presents the first major retrospective of James McNeill Whistler ever held in the Netherlands, bringing together around 100 works to reveal an artist who was as radical in his ideas and self-presentation as he was subtle in his paintings.

Four days, 25 galleries and more than 50 artists: Barcelona opens its art season all at once and turns the city into one large contemporary-art route. Barcelona Gallery Weekend is one of the best moments of the year to understand the city’s real gallery ecosystem. The 2026 edition brings together 25 galleries and more than 50 national and international artists, with simultaneous openings, special exhibitions, performances, artist-led visits and free routes across Barcelona and L’Hospitalet.

Art, politics, science and environmental history converge in what promises to be one of Barcelona's major winter exhibitions.

An original way to understand Picasso through Mediterranean antiquity rather than another chronological account of Cubism and modernism.

A new interpretation of the collection by Florian Ebner, Chief Curator of Photography at Centre Pompidou.

This is the artist’s first major solo presentation in Germany, staging his most famous provocations alongside a massive new intervention designed specifically for the Mies van der Rohe glass hall.

This is Barbara Kruger's first solo exhibition in Greece, and instead of a gallery, she takes over the outdoor spaces of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center with 13 new, site-specific works. The highlight is a monumental 90-metre mural on the National Library of Greece.