From Tracey Emin’s landmark retrospective at Tate Modern to Rose Wylie at the Royal Academy, here are the shows not to miss in 2026
When it comes to major exhibitions, women are noticeably in the spotlight next year thanks to a bumper crop of top-billed showcases and retrospectives at some of the country’s most respected galleries. The Tate Modern has a particularly stellar line up including a major showcase of Tracey Emin’s 40-year career, an exploration into the life and work of Frida Kahlo and an exhibition examining the influence of Ana Mendieta. Elsewhere, Rose Wylie’s playful paintings will fill the walls at the Royal Academy while Elsa Schiaparelli’s singular, surreal vision is comprehensively shown at V&A.Meanwhile anyone looking for a hit of nostalgia will be champing at the bit for The 90s exhibition at Tate Modern, boasting photographs, paintings and fashion that came to define a decade.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life at Tate Modern: 17 February – 31 August 2026
Once a rebel, whose blisteringly candid works, especially her Turner Prize winning bed, shocked audiences – Emin is now an RA and a Dame. Her forthcoming show, A Second Life, explores 40 years of her varied practise through sculpture, drawing, painting, video and textiles, including her Why I Never Became a Dancer video as well as the Turner Prize-winning My Bed. The show is split, as the name suggests, into the period before Emin’s cancer diagnosis and the time after, which is characterised by a commitment to painting. These new pieces are typically candid and brutally honest: I Followed You To The End depicts a figure literally dripping with the deep red that is something of a trademark hue for Emin, while handwritten confessional text sprawls beneath.
Francisco de Zurbarán at National Gallery: 2 May – 23 August 2026
Dramatic, robust and a little eerie, Francisco de Zurbarán’s paintings marked him as one of the most influential artists of the Baroque era: he painted religious altarpieces and devotional paintings for the church and had private patrons including the King of Spain. He also produced vivid still lifes which often serve as metaphors for holy devoutness. If the bound and supine lamb from Agnus Dei looks familiar, it might be because it was recently used as cover art for award-winning novelist Otessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona. But even without any context, just seeing these paintings in person – and taking in his stellar treatment of light and shade – is quite the experience.
Schiaparelli at V&A Museum: From 28 March 2026
Bugs resting on the brim of a simple straw sunhat, acrobats flipping across a Pepto Bismol-hued silk shirt, a headpiece shaped like an upturned court shoe, the heel a cone in shocking pink. These are just some of the surreal creations by Elsa Schiaparelli that will be on display in what is the UK’s first exhibition focused on the Italian designer. The collection charts 100 years of Schiaparelli’s influence and innovation (the fashion house is still true to its roots under Daniel Roseberry, current creative director), including her collaboration with artists including Man Ray and Salvador Dali. This show promises much more than just clothes but a clever, beautiful and strange visual language.
The 90s at Tate Britain: 1 October 2026 – 14 February 2027
Britain in the 90s will always be considered a time of cool rebellion, shaking off a pitiless recession and leaving people with a sense of optimism about the future that showed up in pop culture, design and art. Blur and Oasis were at war, we reached peak supermodel, and the Young British Artists were disrupting the establishment. Now the thrill of that hedonistic decade will be laid bare in The 90s, a collection of works curated by former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful OBE. The 90s will look at some of the key creative figures who made this decade so iconic and memorable. Images by the likes of photographers Juergen Teller and Corinne Day will rub shoulders with paintings by Yinka Shonibare and dresses by Vivienne Westwood.
Rose Wylie at Royal Academy: 28 February – 19 April 2026
A mixture of some of her best-loved pieces with new works, this will be the biggest exhibition of Rose Wylie’s paintings ever staged. Wylie’s work is popular for its playfulness: each painting teems with colour and cultural references plucked from various spheres including literature, celebrity gossip and medieval England. Women, words and animals, as well as a specific red, are repeated themes, but there’s definitely a buzz at the prospect of decoding each piece. Wylie, who is 90 now and yet seemingly at the height of her powers, is a gratifying example of how talent wins out in a world obsessed by youth and ‘bright young thing‘ culture. Wylie's art is bold and striking, and offers a reminder that life is full of small, often funny, but no less touching moments.
Frida: The Making of an Icon at Tate Modern: 25 June 2026 – 3 January 2027
The accolade ‘icon’ is used fast and loose these days, but in the case of Frida Kahlo, it’s wholly justified: despite various serious health issues, she became one most influential artists of all time, a political activist and feminist trailblazer. This forthcoming show will not only comprise 130 of her paintings, but it will also include personal photographs and memorabilia. There will also be some 80 pieces by painters who worked alongside Kahlo, as well as artists she inspired. The concept of Kahlo as a cultural phenomenon with an instantly recognisable physical image – thanks to both a distinctive personal style and her numerous self-portraits – will also be explored.
Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait at National Portrait Gallery: 4 June – 6 September 2026
It’s hard to be indifferent about Marilyn Monroe. Impossibly famous (she was one of the most photographed people in the world) and yet mysterious and tragic – she once said, “I am always alone, no matter what”. Staged to commemorate what would have been Monroe’s 100th birthday, this exhibition comprises portraits by some of the greatest painters and photographers of all time. From Andy Warhol’s high contrast, colour burst pop art, to candid shots by her confidante, Sam Shaw. Early images of her as a teenage pin-up model in the 1940s show an intoxicating mixture of innocence and ambition. The final shots of her smiling and relaxed, draped in a green towel, taken on the beach in Malibu in 1962 (the same year that she sang Happy Birthday to President JFK just months before she died) betray little of the personal turmoil a high-profile divorce had taken on her. Seeing her in so many different guises, but always undeniably herself, is a treat for diehard fans and those who are new to her story.
Mrinalini Mukherjee at Hepworth Wakefield: 21 May – 1 September 2026
Mrinalini Mukherjee’s sculptures make for an exciting assembly at Hepworth Wakefield for a comprehensive retrospective of the Indian artist’s output over a 40-year career. She was best known for her towering, intricate textile pieces made using macramé, the craft of knotting fibres into patterns. Though soft, these sculptures are vast and stand without support – both abstract and figurative (but also neither). The show will also include bronzes and ceramics, watercolours and etchings, illustrating what scope and talent Mukherjee had, literally at the tips of her fingers.
Ana Mendieta at Tate Modern: 9 July 2026 – 10 January 2027
The first comprehensive UK exhibition of Mendieta’s work in over a decade, this showcase draws together some of her most celebrated pieces with early paintings and remastered films. There is the promise that the show will extend to the gallery’s exterior, as a nod to the artist’s preoccupation with the natural world: she frequently used organic materials such as flowers and water in her practice. Her Siluta Series, which spanned some seven years from 1973 and incorporated 200 works in film and sculptures, will loom large – exploring the relationship between the human body and nature.
Salman Toor: Someone Like You at the Courtauld: 2 October – 10 January 2027
Pakistani-born, New York-based artist Salman Toor makes paintings concerned with feelings of belonging, alienation and the push and pull between friendship and solitude. Some 20 of his works will be shown at the Courtauld Gallery in what will be his first European solo show. The Courtauld is perhaps the perfect place for the show, not least because one of Toor’s standout paintings, The Bar on East 13th (2019), chimes with Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), which is part of the gallery’s permanent collection. Funny, sexy, intimate and painterly – Toor’s work is for anyone who relishes contemporary discourse in a traditional style.
