The rumblings of Frieze have begun as the city prepares for its largest art fair as it kicks into gear between 4 and 18 October in Regent’s Park. If you cannot make it this year, there are many other art exhibitions to keep yourself busy during the month. Buckle up and get your diary at the ready, as our monthly round-up is brimming with exhibitions, retrospectives and installations across the city.
Heading across the pond? Here are the best New York art exhibitions to see this month.
London art exhibitions: what to see in October 2026
Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends
National Portrait Gallery 9 October 2026 - 7 February 2027
Tim Walker, one of Britain’s most renowned photographers, presents Fairyland: Love and Legends. Here he explores queer identity, community and love. Having photographed many famous faces, including Chappell Roan, Lady Gaga, Hunter Schafer, Miriam Margolyes and Frank Ocean. He spent the past five years photographing activists, performers, and artists in preparation for the exhibition. Discover fantastical landscapes and fairy-like portraits.
Renée Levi: September
The Southbank Centre’s Hayward Gallery until 15 November 2026
Explosive colour and bold strokes animate the walls of the Hayward Gallery. These are the works of Swiss artist Renée Levi, who created the large-scale piece on the facade of the gallery. The commission seeks to bring joy and humour, which is captured through her painterly strokes.
Robert Ryman: The Real Thing
Barbican from 8 Oct 2026 until Sun 28 Feb 2027
The Barbican presents a retrospective on Robert Ryman, the American artist known for his use of white paint and square formats. The exhibition explores over 60 works made from the mid 1950s to the early 2010s. What anchored Ryman’s works was his intention for people to experience his paintings in person, in order to notice everything. The texture of the paint, the brushstrokes, and how it is presented on the wall. This way you see how the painting isn’t just materials pieced together, but how they interact with the space it's presented in.
Amar Kanwar
Serpentine North Gallery 23 September 2026 - 31 January 2027
New Delhi-based artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar presents his first solo show. At Serpentine North, discover the site-specific installation that captures the artist in a documentary-style video. Kanwar is constantly inspired by the legacies of decolonisation and the 1947 Partition, which led to the creation of India, Pakistan and eventually Bangladesh. His films are heavy, capturing social upheaval and displacement, along with arrogance and power. However, the videos also offer a sense of unification, as we collectively reckon with the past to accommodate the urgencies of the present.
Justin Caguiat: Change Ringing
Serpentine North Gallery 8 October 2026 – 10 January 2027
Architecture, spirituality and rituals come together in Justin Caguiat’s exhibition at Serpentine North. The interdisciplinary artist presents an exhibition of painting, sculpture, printmaking, sound and film. Working with the gallery’s architectural and infrastructural features, Caguiat’s new paintings are thermochromic, responding to heat and light. presents a new series of thermochromic paintings that continuously change in response to heat and light. There is also a series of bronze bells in the shapes of various flowers which ring in changing sequences. The echoing sound nods to Le Corbusier’s conception of architecture as an acoustic receiver.
Khalif Tahir Thompson: Send in the Clowns
Victoria Miro from 13 October - 7 November
Brooklyn-based artist Khalif Tahir Thompson presents his first solo show at Victoria Miro. He creates vibrant domestic scenes which tightrope between pieces rich with texture and pattern, and intricate portraiture. The exhibition’s title is borrowed from the 1973 theatrical ballad written by Stephen Sondheim and sung by Jazz vocalist Sarah Vaughn. ‘The phrase “send in the clowns” is a metaphor for bringing in comedic relief or distractions when a plan fails or a situation turns chaotic,’ says Thompson. ‘For me, it resonates deeply: it reflects the layered facets of my life and experiences, the ways we deploy humour to mask vulnerability, and it speaks to how I respond to tragedy.’
Sanlé Sory: Colour Years
The Photographers Gallery 14 October 2026 until 21 February 2027
Sanlé Sory is one of West Africa’s most renowned photographers, capturing daily life in Burkina Faso. The photographer took more than a million photographs over seven decades, capturing social and political changes. At The Photographers' Gallery, Sory’s images in colour are seen for the first time in the UK, presenting a lesser-known chapter of his career.
thephotographersgallery.org.uk
LIVING MULTIPLICITY: Nour Malas
The Arts Club until 24 January 2027
Artist Nour Malas has deep roots in many places. Born to Syrian parents in France and raised in Dubai, Malas spent time in London and trained in Chicago before settling in New York, where she now lives and works. Her work is influenced by growing up and adapting to multiple overlapping places, one of them long held only in memory.
Katherine Hubbard: The Great Room at Studio Voltaire
Studio Voltaire from 7 October 2026 until 10 January 2027
Studio Voltaire presents Katherine Hubbard’s first solo exhibition outside of the United States. Discover a new series of photography and sculptural installation which disects the relationship between mother and daughter. This also looks at the shifting relationship between photographer and subject, and how the camera and body work together and interact with a space.
Salman Toor: Someone Like You
The Courtauld 2 October 2026 – 10 January 2027
New York-based painter Salman Toor presents his first solo exhibition in Europe. The showcase will display 19 paintings that will explore Toor’s fascination with human interactions and the conflicting desire and struggle to achieve a sense of belonging. Although thought-provoking, the paintings also have lovely moments of humour, love and friendship. Speaking of his works, he says they ‘depict queer and immigrant lives that straddle different cultures and inhabit the tension between intimacy and exposure, belonging and estrangement. What it means to find a community, but also the daily costs associated with visibility.’
Cecilia Vicuña
Whitechapel Gallery 7 October 2026 – 14 February 2027
Born in Santiago, Chile, Cecilia Vicuña is one of South America's most prolific artists, known for her female activism, poetry and, of course, art. The exhibition looks at six decades of her work, which spans across visual art, performance and ritual, through painting, textile work, photography and film. Her work transitioned into more political pieces during the Allende period (1970-73) in Chile. While she was in London during this time, her work captures her experience of displacement, loss, political violence and instability.
Agatha Christie: A world of mystery
The British Library 30 October- 30 June 2027
The British Library presents an immersive exhibition capturing the works of Agatha Christie, the mind behind characters like Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Items on display include the author’s Remington typewriter from 1937, family photographs of Christie in Egypt, Hawaii and Southern Africa , and personal letters from Christie to family members, including one to her second husband about her journey on the Orient Express.
events.bl.uk
This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte
Gagosian until 12 December 2026
The works of Belgian artist René Magritte are collectively displayed at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill gallery. His legacy is explored through his works on paper, sculptures, and paintings, which capture his quirky surrealism. The exhibition also includes loans from collectors and museums, presenting the artist’s uncanny juxtapositions of his oddly placed ordinary objects set within strange contexts.
Fernando Botero 'In Praise of an Amplified World’
Opera Gallery London 12 October - 22 November, 2026
Fernando Botero’s work has taken a new generation by storm, with many of his rotund portraits becoming the faces of memes online. Although his style has a slow renaissance flair, his work is more contemporary than one first thinks. The exhibition brings together paintings and drawings across six decades, looking at the artist's interpretation of animals, figures, landscapes, and objects.
'Revisiting: Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands'
The Hellenic Centre 8 October – 7 November 2026
After debuting in Athens in 2025, the Irene Y. Panagopoulos Collection makes its international debut with Revisiting: Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands. The show examines 17 works by 15 artists spanning sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking, collage, video and books. What ties the exhibition together is how the artists explore how Greece has been remembered and reinvented over centuries, and how it is shaped by travel and mythology.
Cindy Sherman : Fabrix Matrons
Hauser & Wirth London 13 October – 23 December 2026
Artist Cindy Sherman presents her new series titled Fabrix Matrons. It comprises photographic works that frame large, draped fabrics across her subjects, resulting in an image that looks dissolved. The main protagonists are women, and they are used to explore how visibility and femininity are used to convey a public image. The exhibition feels theatrical and leans into the world of fashion, via the incorporation of fabrics from Chanel's archives. It's an intriguing juxtaposition of themes and material.
The Royal Society of Sculptors Summer exhibition, curated by Henry Holland
Royal Society of Sculptors until 28 November 2026
Designer Henry Holland has curated the Royal Society of Sculptors Summer exhibition titled ‘There’s No Place Like It’. Visitors will find the once-derelict basement of Dora House, transformed into a welcoming flat for visiting artists with flexible studio space and a home for the Royal Society of Sculptors’ archive.
Krzysztof Grzybacz, Haruspex
Pace London until 3 October 2026
Kraków-based artist Krzysztof Grzybacz presents Haruspex, the artist’s first solo show in the UK. Here, people will see a presentation that looks at the body as a construct and how it holds memories of our past selves. The artist is known for exploring the relationship between the human body, nature, and everyday objects. This presentation is no different, except for the shift of focus to how the body is used as a contoured map, layering memory, instinct, and lived experience.
Carmen Herrera
Lisson Gallery, London until 7 November
Curated by art historian Marie Perennès, Lisson Gallery looks at drawings, paintings and sculptures by Carmen Herrera, which span the final decade of the artist’s life. Born in Havana in 1915, the artist moved to Paris from 1948 to 1953, where she explored line, form, colour and geometric abstraction.
The Unclassified
Korean Cultural Centre until 31 December 2026
The Unclassified is a group exhibition of four leading contemporary Korean and Korean-heritage artists, Meekyoung Shin, Ayoung Kim, Siren Eun Young Jung, and Gala Porras-Kim. They examine how museums shape how we remember and interpret culture. As a result, the exhibition looks at alternative ways of thinking about culture and heritage.
Lucy Dodd: ‘The good, the true and the beautiful’
Sprüth Magers until 24 October 2026
A figure of Diana, the woodland huntress on earth and luminous celestial body in the sky, is at the centre of Dodd’s latest exhibition ‘The good, the true and the beautiful’. The name and figure are personal for Dodd, as her grandmother bore the same name, and it continues to extend outward to Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales. Dodd currently resides on the Moray Coast in Scotland, and draws the materials of her surroundings into her work. Peat collected from the shores of the Findhorn River, copper ink, spirulina, cochineal, and local herbs comprise her pieces.
Jonathan Wateridge
GRIMM Gallery until 10 October 2026
A new series of the artist's work will go on display at GRIMM Gallery. The exhibition will feature the artist’s atmospheric paintings which merge the world of classical painting with a mythic undertone. The series feels warm and abstract, which juxtaposes with the concept it is drawn from, peripeteia — the sudden reversal of fortune in Greek theatre — depicting points where tension and tragedy quietly accumulate.
grimmgallery.com
Liorah Tchiprout: The Family Katz
Pippy Houldsworth Gallery until 3 October 2026
In Tchiprout’s new paintings, a fictional Jewish family, the Katzes, are portrayed. The artist captures the family’s social circles and life around their imagined home in London’s Gunnersbury Park. The artist painted from life, as well as from the study of her idiosyncratic dolls, a series of small, hand-crafted mannequins inspired by her close friends and family, as well as characters from literature and film.
Lucie Rie / Hans Coper: Life at the Wheel
Offer Waterman, London until 31 October 2026
The exhibition will showcase the important role that Lucie Rie and Hans Coper had in shaping public perceptions surrounding ceramics in Britain and beyond. The exhibition features over 200 works, showing the artists’ creations side-by-side for the first time since 1997. The exhibition will span the full breadth of both artists’ careers, from Rie’s early works made after completing her studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, to those made during the decade they spent working together at Albion Mews, and later works made by Coper after his move outside London.
‘Sensual / Mutual’: Del La Grace Volcano
Auto Italia until 25 October 2026
Del LaGrace Volcano is an American artist, performer, and activist, currently based in Sweden. Across their career, Volcano has crafted a distinct photographic practice which spans portraiture and documentary, producing images that capture queer, trans, and feminist visual culture. ‘Sensual / Mutual’ marks their first institutional show in the UK, showcasing works from San Francisco and Santa Fe in the 1970s and 80s, challenging representations of gender and sexuality.
Bruiseless
Belmacz until 7 October 2026
Contemporary art gallery and jewellery showroom Blemacz presents ‘Bruiseless’. It brings together the work by German artist Ja Jess’ and French-Venezuelan artist Andrea Marcellier. Together they explore genetics and the act of giving and losing – captured in Jess’ still lifes of egg donation and Marcellier’s masturbatory sculptures.
‘Ana Mendieta’
Tate Modern until 17 January 2027
Cuban-born American artist Ana Mendieta’s multidisciplinary practice encompassed sculpture, film, performance, photography, painting and drawing, but she is best known for her ‘silueta’, or ‘earth-body ', works, in which she outlined her body in nature.
More than 120 of Mendieta’s works are now on view in a new retrospective, including a nude woman’s form in a tomb covered with sprigs of small white flowers, the flaming form of a body on a sandy landscape, and the shape of a body on a shoreline, being slowly eroded by the tide. The exhibition takes us through Mendieta’s practice, from her teenage years up until around 1984, exploring her whole body of work.
Writer: Amah-Rose Abrams
tate.org.uk
Ellen Gallagher: Art on the Underground programme
Ongoing
Transport for London recently revealed the latest in its ongoing series of Art on the Underground commissions for the cover of the pocket Tube map, courtesy of American artist Ellen Gallagher. Her piece, Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish, 2026, is the 42nd commission in the series and is an exploration of the capital’s long maritime history.
Writer Jonathan Bell
Rudy Loewe: Intimacies of Care - Spaces of Grief and Possibility
Wellcome Collection until 7 February 2027
Looking at the lived experience of Black people whose mental healthcare in the UK is shaped by racist discrimination, multidisciplinary artist Rudy Loewe asks viewers to consider alternative approaches to care. Through a collection of paintings and sound, the exhibition reimagines a mental healthcare system that is supportive.
Anish Kapoor
Southbank Centre's Hayward Gallery until 18 October 2026
For the Mumbai-born, Turner Prize-winning artist, Anish Kapoor, the scale of his work is important for the physical reaction it incites in the viewer. This is seen in his first retrospective in for 28 years. which squeeze, drip, and disorient in the Hayward’s Brutalist enclaves.
The Trixie Sullivan Archive
Handel Hendrix House, ongoing
Jimi Hendrix's memorabilia goes on show at his former home, Handel Hendrix House. A vast selection of the musician's treasured possessions is displayed. Such is the treasure trove of detail about the legendary musician’s period living in London that’s contained in a cache of paperwork saved by Trixie Sullivan.
Frida: The Making of an Icon
Tate Modern until 3 January 2027
In a major new exhibition, ‘Frida: The Making of an Icon’, Kahlo’s work is presented alongside that of her peers and later artists influenced by her legacy, including Kiki Smith, Judy Chicago, and Ana Mendieta. She created around 150 works in her lifetime, a third of which were self-portraits. More than 30 of these representations are here, tracing the way Kahlo’s self-perception developed, fractured, and rebuilt itself throughout her lifetime.
Julio Le Parc: Light. Colour. Action.
Tate Modern until 3 May 2027
Argentinian artist Julio Le Parc presents seven decades of works, which invites visitors to join in themselves. His kinetic sculptures uses light and movement across mirrored surfaces to create a mesmerising spectacle. The interactive nature of the installation allows for art to be enjoyed by all.
The Everythingists by Es Devlin
V&A East Storehouse until 18 October 2026
The work by the Russian artist Natalia Goncharova is the inspiration for Es Devlin’s exhibition at V&A East Storehouse. ‘Everythingism’, (Vsechestvo in Russian) was used to describe Goncharova’s work which spanned across painting, theatre design, fashion and performance art. Devlin, who is equally not enclosed to one medium, relates to this terminology. ‘The Everythingists’ showcases Devlin's sculptural drawings inspired by Goncharova’s painted backdrop made for 1926 Ballet Russes production of The Firebird.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
V&A from 28 March 2026
Designer Elsa Schiaparelli wearing black silk dress with crocheted collar of her own design and a turban, photograph by Fredrich Baker, Vogue, 1940
The V&A welcomes the UK’s first exhibition on fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, spanning her work from the 1920s, to the fashion house’s evolution today, under the creative director Daniel Roseberry. His contemporary designs have created conversation in recent years; including a dress with faux-taxidermy lion heads, to a delicate lung dress boasting a string of golden veins.
The Music is Black: A British Story
V&A East Museum from 18 April 2026
Also at the V&A is ‘The Music is Black: A British Story’, an exhibition charting 125 years of Black music-making in the UK. It is a deep dive into how this music shaped British culture.
The Coming of Age
Wellcome Collection from 25 March 2026
At the Wellcome Collection, ‘Coming of Age’ explores the perceptions of aging from adolescence to adulthood. Specifically it looks at how societies can adapt for us all to age better. The exhibition is rooted in the statistic that people are living longer. In the UK one in ten children are expected to live beyond the age of 100. The question the exhibition asks is ‘Who gets to live longer and “age well”?’ Bringing together different perspectives from art, science and popular culture, ‘Coming of Age’ explores the assumptions made about life stages and asks what greater longevity means for all of us.
The David Bowie Centre
V&A East Storehouse, permanent
Fashion, memorabilia and personal ephemera from David Bowie, now on view at the V&A East Storehouse in London, are as wondrous in their range as their creator. The pioneering musician's 90,000-item personal archive are equally accessible, and – like the artist at the heart of it – equally wondrous in their range. Bowie was an inveterate curator – you might say hoarder – of his own life, keeping every quicksilver fashion statement, every scrap of paper, every piece of memorabilia, amassing a deeply personal life-map that accompanies the Centre’s 70,000 photographs, negatives and colour transparencies. So, alongside the rejection letters are fan correspondence that he kept with equal assiduousness.
Writer Craig McLean
Read the full review of The David Bowie Centre