Exhibitions

William Eggleston: The Last Dyes at David Zwirner, New York: 15 January – 21 February, 2026

In the 70s, the American image-maker William Eggleston pioneered the use of dye-transfer printing in art photography, rendering vernacular subject matter in rich, glorious colour. Coming soon to David Zwirner’s 19th Street space in New York, The Last Dyes will constitute a series of new dye-transfer prints, representing the last major group of Eggleson’s photographs ever to be produced using this printing method. Expect to see quintessential Eggleston scenarios – children lounging in and on 70s sedans; a rural Shake Shack; a lone ceiling light – in the inimitable format he originally presented them in.

Martin Parr: Global Warming at Jeu de Paume, Paris: 30 January – 24 May, 2026

From the 1970s up until his death in December of last year, the lauded British photographer Martin Parr dedicated himself to capturing “the absurdities and malfunctions of our contemporary world”. So explains the Jeu de Paume in Paris, where a curation of some 180 works, taken in countries around the globe, will reveal Parr’s knack for encapsulating the “inequalities of our planet and the excesses of today’s modern lifestyle” with both humour and a hefty dose of irony.

David Lynch at Pace Gallery, Berlin: 29 January – 22 March, 2026

Lynch-heads in Berlin are in for a treat. A new exhibition at Pace Gallery will soon unite a selection of paintings, sculptures and early short films by the late director, as well as photographs he took during his various visits to the German capital. Those schooled in the esoteric American auteur will know he considered himself a visual artist above all else, having studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia in the late 60s. This show – which foreshadows a larger display of Lynch’s work set to open at Pace’s LA outpost later this year – will reveal the interconnection of his wonderfully idiosyncratic ideas and imagery across different media. 

Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency at Gagosian, London: 13 January 13 – 21 March, 2026

Marking 40 years since the publication of Nan Goldin’s pioneering photobook The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, an upcoming show at Gagosian’s Davies Street space will present all 126 photographs from the original publication for the first time ever in the UK. Described by the US image-maker at the time as “the diary I let people read,” the book’s pictures reveal both the hedonistic nature of New York’s downtown scene in the 70s and 80s (all sex, drugs and punk) and the deeply influential style that Goldin championed. 

New Contemporaries 2026 at the South London Gallery: 30 January – 12 April, 2026

If you’re looking to discover a host of exciting emerging artists, look no further than New Contemporaries’ annual exhibition, opening at South London Gallery at the end of the month. The initiative has spotlit the early careers of everyone from David Hockney and Tacita Dean to Chris Ofili and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, while this year’s edition will feature work by 26 UK-based artists including River Yuhao Cao, Ali Cook, Eliza Wagener, Varvara Uhlik and Timon Benson, each selected via an open call. According to the gallery, the curation collectively explores “our relationships and connections with each other, our ancestors and digital technologies across time and geographical borders.”

Don McCullin: Broken Beauty at Holburne Museum, Bath: 30 January – 4 May, 2026

The feted British war photographer Don McCullin may have just turned 90, but he will soon showcase a whole new facet of his practice – photographs of ancient Roman statues snapped in museums across the world, which have never been exhibited in the UK. Intimate and haunting, the photographs feel more like portraits, the crumbling sculptures, forever relegated to one position, appearing to strike a pose before McCullin’s lens. Also on display are a complementary array of McCullin’s landscapes, portraits and still lifes, imbued with an equal sense of poetry and depth. 

Samora Pinderhughes: Call and Response at MoMA, New York: 24 January – 15 February, 2026

In New York, the composer, filmmaker and artist Samora Pinderhughes will soon present an exhibition of new work, alongside a series of live performances and a public programme developed with community partners. Collaboration and improvisation are key to Pinderhughes’ striking multidisciplinary output, which positions performance as “a communal practice that can facilitate healing in the face of oppression, racism, and incarceration.” The artist’s new film, Real Talk – a particularly pertinent project that asks, “How do we survive in America? How do we support each other? What if we built a world around community care?” – will screen on a loop during the course of the show.

Mona Hatoum: Over, Under and In Between at Fondazione Prada, Milan: 29 January – 9 November, 2026

Towards the end of January, the British-Palestinian artist Mona Hatoum will unveil a new site-specific project, titled Over, Under and In Between, at Fondazione Prada in Milan. Made up of three installations, the display will centre three archetypal components of Hatoum’s distinct artistic vocabulary: the web, the map and the grid. Embodying the sense of instability, danger and fragility so inherent to our times, the individual works will occupy the museum’s Cisterna – a tripartite building that formed part of a former distillery – operating in dialogue with the space to create a decidedly physical viewing experience.

Pierre Huyghe at Halle am Berghain, Berlin: 23 January – 8 March, 2026

“I don’t want to exhibit something to someone, but rather the reverse: to exhibit someone to something,” the pioneering French artist Pierre Huyghe once said. And, in true Huyghe style, his forthcoming Berlin debut, presented by LAS Art Foundation at Halle am Berghain, sounds less like an exhibition than a multisensory riddle, encompassing film, sound, vibration, dust and light. In the lofty exhibition space, situated within the Berghain nightclub complex, visitors will come face to face with a faceless and hollow human form, created with input from scientist Tommaso Calarco and described by Huyghe as “a hybrid creature, an infinite membrane carved by void”. Intrigued? So are we.

Daidō Moriyama. Retrospective at Foto Arsenal Wien, Vienna: 31 January – 10 May, 2026

In Vienna, be sure to catch Daidō Moriyama’s touring retrospective, arriving imminently at Foto Arsenal Wien. The beautifully curated show presents more than 200 of the Japanese photographer’s artworks – from his famously grainy black-and-white street photographs, first captured in the 70s, to his more recent experiments in colour and digital photography. Presented along with a plethora of rare books, publication reproductions and audiovisual projections, these reveal the full scope of Moriyama’s radical vision – a profound commentary on “the upheaval of society, longing, taboos and the theatre of everyday life”.

Thornton Dial: From Bessemer to the Cosmos at Edel Assanti, London: 16 January – 14 March, 2026

The late American artist Thornton Dial produced genre-defying paintings and striking assemblages that convey both his personal experiences in Bessemer, Alabama, the city in which he was born and raised, and the broader history of Black experience, in a vernacular entirely his own. Soon, London’s Edel Assanti will bring together a selection of major, mostly unseen works produced between 1988 and 1998, a pivotal decade of Dial’s career. During this time, his work expanded in “scale, material complexity and thematic ambition,” looking beyond his immediate community and surroundings to the very edges of the cosmos. 

Spellbound at Firestorm Foundation, Stockholm: 22 January 2026

Firestorm Foundation in Stockholm has invited arts writer Jennifer Higgie to curate an exhibition from among its specialist collection of work by female and non-binary artists. The result is Spellbound, “a rich cross-section of historic and contemporary sculptures, paintings, and photographs that pivot around the mysteries and myths at the heart of our daily lives”. The show consists of around 50 such works, by artists including Ithell Colquhoun, Barbara Kruger, Rithika Merchant, Paloma Varga Weisz and Niki de Saint Phalle, each one “[mining] the alchemical potential of materials to reveal something of the innate enigma of our existence back to us.”

Events & Performances

January brings with it a number of exciting live productions to counteract the post-holiday slump. Wayne McGregor’s experimental ballet Woolf Works – a celebrated dance triptych inspired by the writings of Virginia Woolf and set to an original score by Max Richter – returns to the Royal Opera House from 17 January to 13 February. Marking the end of his tenure as artistic director of the Almeida, Rupert Goold will revive his joyous musical adaptation of American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis’s capitalist satire, from 23 January to 14 March. Acclaimed British playwright Luke Norris will premiere his latest work at the Royal Court from 16 January to 21 February. Titled Guess How Much I Love You?, it’s billed as a poignant story about “starting a family, impossible choices, and enduring love.”

At Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from 17 January, the ever-experimental theatre-maker Tim Crouch will deliver a candlelit take on The Tempest, Shakespeare’s dramatic tale of “power, freedom and the magic of story”. If a “funny and devastating fever dream of desire and teenagerhood” piques your interest, book your tickets for The Virgins, by playwright and Succession writer Miriam Battye, showing at Soho Theatre from 29 January to 7 March. Last but not least, for excellent (wordless) entertainment, be sure to check out MimeLondon, returning to the capital from 21–31 January. Highlights include physical theatre company Gecko’s wonderful ensemble work, The Wedding; Collaborator, an irreverent performance from circus act Occum’s Razor; and a Buster Keaton Double Bill at the Barbican, set to live piano music from John Sweeney.

Film

This month’s best new film releases include Peter Hujar’s Day, Ira Sachs’s screen adaptation of Linda Rosenkrantz’s book of the same name. It centres on a conversation that the writer had in New York in 1974 with her friend, the legendary American image-maker Peter Hujar, wherein he revealed “the small moments that define an artist’s life”. Chloé Zhao returns with Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel – a luminous portrait of the marriage between William and Agnes Shakespeare (Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley), centring on the loss of their child, Hamnet. Mescal also stars in The History Of Sound, Oliver Hermanus’s nostalgic tale of two young music students attending the Boston Conservatory in 1917, who forge a passionate connection over their shared love of folk music.

State of Statelessness is the first ever Tibetan-language anthology feature, directed by a collective of acclaimed Tibetan diaspora filmmakers: Tenzin Tsetan Choklay, Tsering Tashi Gyalthang, Tenzing Sonam, Ritu Sarin, and Sonam Tseten. Conveying the painful realities of a scattered people, it explores the themes of statelessness and migration to profound effect. Korean auteur Park Chan-wook is back with the darkly funny drama No Other Choice, in which an increasingly desperate man hatches an extreme strategy to land a job: remove his competition. A different kind of comedy-drama comes courtesy of Richard Linklater, whose joyful new film Nouvelle Vague reimagines the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic feature debut, Breathless.

While for January’s must-see documentaries, make sure to catch Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros, Frederick Wiseman’s “gastronomic dream of a film”, taking viewers behind the scenes of one of the world's most prestigious restaurants (BFI). As well as Tunisian filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania’s searing docu-drama, The Voice Of Hind Rajab, based on the death of its eponymous, five-year-old subject, who was murdered by the Israeli army in 2024. And finally, secure a much-needed dose of Lynchian surrealism with the BFI’s new David Lynch: The Dreamer season, paying tribute to the unique visionary and his wonderful work a year after his death through screenings, talks and even “sip and paint” events. 

Food & Drink

If the January blues have started to set in, we recommend a trip to Cafe Linea in Duke of York Square. There, you can partake in delicious homemade pastries, excellent breakfast and all-day dishes (think: Cheese Waffle Benedict and lobster bisque with toasted brioche) and, until the end of the month, afternoon tea on the eatery’s winter terrace – all sparkling lights and refined seasonal cheer. From caviar-topped egg mayo sandwiches to crème brûlée choux with silver leaf, accompanied by champagne or an Apple Crumble Spritz, it’s the grey-day antidote we all need.

If seafood and Guinness sound like a perfect pairing, head to Gilroy’s Loft, the new rooftop restaurant in Covent Garden, headed up by award-winning chef Pip Lacey and specialising in just that. Offering a modern, coastal-inspired approach to British and Irish seafood, the menu consists of playful takes on classic dishes such as fruits de mer, and signature plates like the grilled half native lobster with tomato and pine nut brown butter. Each of these can be matched with refreshing drinks crafted by Hollie Stephenson, the Master Brewer at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery, and enjoyed alongside panoramic views over central London.

This month, Mayfair will gain a new restaurant and natural wine bar, DakaDaka, paying tribute to modern Georgian cuisine and the country’s 8,000-year winemaking heritage. With offerings ranging from colourful spreads of Pkhali (a traditional spinach and walnut dish) and steaming plates of Khinkali (dumplings) to perfectly grilled meats and wood-fired Khachapuri (cheese-filled bread), guests can anticipate a menu that represents and reimagines Georgian traditions, with open-fire cooking at its heart.

Decimo at The Standard hotel will continue its collaborative dinner series, La Mesa, joining forces with Michelin-starred Mexico City collective Masala y Maíz for two nights only, from 16–17 January. Chefs Norma Listman and Saqib Keval, whose celebrated cuisine blends the culinary lineages of India, East Africa and Mexico, will take over the Decimo kitchen for the purpose, whipping up dishes that explore “migration, maize, culinary memory, and the shared diasporic threads that connect Mexico City and London.”

A trawl of the Liberty sale can be rewarded by a hearty burger at Heard, the new Soho burger joint from two Michelin-star chef Jordan Bailey, located just next door to the storied department store. Following on from the success of its first iteration, which opened in Borough last spring, Heard’s double-patty smash burgers – made with aged British beef, topped by English cheese and homemade pickles, and served in a butter-toasted, roast potato bun – are well worth the hype. The Wild Umami burger provides a sumptuous vegetarian alternative. Pair with one of the restaurant’s thoughtfully curated low-intervention wines for a truly pleasing pit stop. 

Last but not least, for those looking to ring in Burns Night in style, head to Brasserie Max at the Covent Garden Hotel, where diners will be treated to a four-course menu, rare whisky pairings from Bruichladdich Distillery, and live spoken word from Scottish poet Kevin McLean. Highlights will include traditional haggis with neeps and tatties (naturally) and roast Highland venison with bay and juniper, poached salsify, burnt onion and whisky sauce. Slàinte Mhath!