Art Wrap: All the London Exhibitions We’re Excited About in 2026

Whether you’re a fan of 20th century giants like Frida Kahlo, Picasso and Lucian Freud, or you love getting lost in immersive installations, you’ll find something to get excited about in London this year. There’s also the once-in-a-millennium return of the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK, and a deep dive into the fashion, art and music that shaped the ’90s in Britain. Here are the exhibitions to look forward to in 2026.

Raw, intense, unflinching, brutal: Lucian Freud made his name as one of the great figurative painters of the 20th century with a body of work that pushed portraiture to often uncomfortably honest extremes. This show at the National Portrait Gallery takes a more intimate look at his art, concentrating on his works on paper rather than the big flashy canvases.
Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting runs from February 12 to May 4 at the National Portrait Gallery, Charing Cross Road.

The Hayward Gallery is going to be enveloped in vast webs of red string this February, thanks to Chiharu Shiota and her near-maniacal predilection for thread-based art hijinks. The Japanese artist does one thing, and does it a lot: she covers objects and spaces in dense networks of red string, creating intricate, delicate and absolutely eye-popping immersive installations that ruminate on death, memory and relationships.
Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life runs from February 17 to May 3 at Hayward Gallery, South Bank.

For a short period in the 17th century, Francisco de Zurbarán was a seriously big deal. Post-Velazquez, pre-Murillo, he was the leading painter in Spain, an art megastar, and this show at the National Gallery is going to show why. The exhibition is a celebration of his stark, austere, atmospheric paintings – mostly done for Spanish religious orders – and his minimal, quiet, contemplative approach to deeply spiritual art.
Zurbarán runs from May 2 to August 23 at The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square.

The Hayward continues its year of big, impressive installation art with a celebration of one of the genre’s elder statesmen. Anish Kapoor has been doing his “look at this giant thing” art for decades now, and he’s showing no signs of slowing down. This exhibition will feature his recent experiments with Vantablack (a nanotechnology that absorbs 99 per cent of light), alongside loads of huge installations and mirrored knick-knacks.
Anish Kapoor runs from June 16 to October 18 at Hayward Gallery, South Bank.

You’ve got to be careful tossing around words like icon, but when it comes to Frida Kahlo, it’s absolutely justified. Few artists are as immediately recognisable, as unique or as influential as the Mexican painter, and this Tate Modern exhibition is going to be one of the biggest blockbusters London has seen for decades, featuring over 130 works by Kahlo, her contemporaries, and the artists she inspired.
Frida: The Making of an Icon runs from June 25 to January 3, 2027 at Tate Modern, Bankside.

In 1066, the Anglo Saxons got absolutely dominated by invading Norman forces from France – poor old King Harold even got shot in the eye. And the whole embarrassing affair was commemorated on the 70-metre-long Bayeux Tapestry, a jaw dropping historical artefact that hasn’t been seen in the UK since it was made 1000 years ago. This exhibition isn't just a once in a lifetime event, it's a once in a millennium event – definitely an exhibition to keep an eye on.
Bayeux Tapestry runs from autumn 2026 to summer 2027 at the British Museum, Bloomsbury.

The south of France at the turn of the century was a magnet for artist talent. Something about the weather, the light, the beauty just made artists flock there: Renoir, Monet, Picasso, Leger, Cezanne, Matisse, Cocteau, Bonnard, and so on. This exhibition at the Royal Academy will explore what made the Cote d’Azur and its neighbouring regions so appealing, and how this gorgeous part of the world became a hotbed of modernism.
Painting the French Riviera runs from October 2 to January 31, 2027 at The Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly.

How do you follow up an exhibition like last year’s The ’80s at Tate Britain? Well, with The ’90s obviously – a photographic celebration and exploration of a whole decade on this damp old island, featuring a huge variety of photographers who documented all the hope, raves and excess of the ’90s, curated by mega-influencer and former Vogue editor Edward Enninful OBE.
The ’90s runs from October 8 to February 14, 2027 at Tate Britain, Millbank.