10+ art exhibitions opening in London this summer 2026
The clocks went forward last weekend, marking the start of British Summer Time. Alongside longer days and the return of summer in London, there is plenty to look forward to across the city’s galleries and museums. From a major exhibition on Marilyn Monroe at the National Portrait Gallery to presentations by Ranti Bam and Paulo Nimer Pjota at South London Gallery, as well as large-scale shows including Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery, Frida Kahlo at Tate Modern, and Project a Black Planet at the Barbican, this summer brings a wide range of exhibitions across the capital. Here is our guide to the art exhibitions opening in London this summer 2026.
Zurbarán
Francisco de Zurbarán, ‘Agnus Dei', 1635–40. Oil on canvas, 37.3 cm x 62 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid. © Photographic Archive Museo Nacional del Prado
#FLODown: The National Gallery will present the first UK exhibition devoted to Spanish Baroque master Francisco de Zurbarán in the Sainsbury Wing this summer. Known for his work in 17th-century Seville, Zurbarán combines precise naturalism with a strong sense of spirituality, moving between intimate still lifes and large-scale religious scenes. His attention to texture is central to his work, from richly detailed fabrics to the simple robes of monastic life, while carefully rendered everyday objects bring a sense of immediacy to his compositions. Spanning his full career, the exhibition brings together major loans from international collections, including works by his son, Juan de Zurbarán, offering a broader view of his studio and legacy.
Date: 2 May – 23 August 2026. Location: National Gallery, Sainsbury Wing, Trafalgar Square, London, WC2N 5DN. Price: £20 (off-peak, Sun–Thu), £22 (Fri–Sat), members free. Book now
Paulo Nimer Pjota: Encantados
Paulo Nimer Pjota, Duplo, 2025. © Paulo Nimer Pjota. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo. Photo by Gui Gomes
#FLODown: At South London Gallery, Brazilian artist Paulo Nimer Pjota will present his first UK public gallery exhibition with Encantados. Bringing together a new body of paintings and a large mural made directly onto the gallery walls, the show builds a visual language populated by animals, hybrid figures, and symbolic objects. Motifs such as suns, moons, musical instruments, and plants appear across the works, drawing on art history, folklore, and popular culture, rooted in his background in graffiti and Brazilian hip-hop.
Date: 1 May – 23 August 2026. Location: South London Gallery, 65–67 Peckham Road, London, SE5 8UH. Price: Free entry https://www.southlondongallery.org/exhibitions/paulo-nimer-pjota/
Ranti Bam: Sacred Groves
Ranti Bam, In Hearthlands, 2022. Video Still from Performance in Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove, Osogbo, Nigeria. Courtesy Ranti Bam and James Cohan, New York
#FLODown: Running alongside Pjota’s exhibition, Ranti Bam’s Sacred Groves will mark her first solo institutional presentation. Working across sculpture, performance, film, and photography, Bam considers how bodies relate to land, material, and ritual. The exhibition will bring together sculptural series including the Ifas and Abstract Vessels, alongside a newly commissioned film developed at the Ọṣun-Ọṣogbo Sacred Grove in Nigeria. Through these works, she reflects on touch, healing, and environmental change, exploring both spiritual knowledge systems and the physical impact of human activity on landscapes.
Date: 1 May – 23 August 2026. Location: South London Gallery, Fire Station Galleries, 82 Peckham Road, London, SE15 5LQ. Price: Free. southlondongallery.org
Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait
Marilyn Monroe, by Cecil Beaton, gelatin silver print, 1956, Collection: National Portrait Gallery.
#FLODown: Marking what would have been her 100th birthday, the National Portrait Gallery’s Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait brings together images and objects that trace the construction of one of the most recognisable figures of the 20th century. Developed in collaboration with the Marilyn Monroe Estate, the exhibition includes works by artists and photographers such as Andy Warhol, Pauline Boty, Cecil Beaton, Eve Arnold, and Richard Avedon. Alongside these are personal items—books, scripts, and clothing—that offer a more layered view of Monroe beyond her public image, following her trajectory from early modelling photographs to her final years.
Date: 4 June – 6 September 2026. Location: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE. £25–27 / £27.50–30 with donation. Concessions available. Book now
Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography
Lewis Hine, Riding the Ball High up on Empire State, c.1930. Courtesy of The Savings Bank Foundation DNB Collection, on deposit at Lillehammer Art Museum
#FLODown: Dulwich Picture Gallery’s summer exhibition will survey a century of American photography through the lens of urban life. Spanning the early 20th century to the 2010s, the show will bring together 34 photographers working across cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco. Figures such as Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, and Garry Winogrand document shifting social conditions, from industrial growth and migration to protest and everyday street life. The exhibition traces how photographers adapted portraiture beyond the studio, using the city itself as both backdrop and subject.
Date: 28 July - 4 October 2026. Location: Dulwich Picture Gallery, College Road, London SE21 7AD. Price: TBC. Book now
Frida: The Making of an Icon
Frida Kahlo (Mexican, 1907–1954), Untitled [Self-portrait with thorn necklace and hummingbird], 1940. Oil on canvas mounted to board. Nickolas Muray Collection of Mexican Art, 66.6. Harry Ransom Center.
#FLODown: At Tate Modern, Frida: The Making of an Icon will focus on how Frida Kahlo shaped her identity through art, image, and self-presentation. Bringing together more than 130 works, the exhibition will include paintings, archival materials, photographs, and personal objects drawn from her collections. It places Kahlo within a wider artistic and political context, while also considering how her image has been reinterpreted over time. Works by contemporaries and later artists highlight her influence across generations and geographies.
Date: 25 June 2026 – 3 January 2027. Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: £25. Concessions available. Book now
Anish Kapoor
Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto 2022 Mixed media 13.8x6.8x3.9 cm Photograph. Attilio Maranzano ©Anish Kapoor. All rights reserved, DACS, 2025.
#FLODown: The Hayward Gallery’s survey of Anish Kapoor will bring together key works from across his career alongside more recent pieces. Known for his use of reflective surfaces, pigment, and void-like forms, Kapoor’s work engages directly with perception, scale, and the limits of material. The exhibition will include large installations, mirrored steel sculptures, and works using industrial materials such as silicone and resin. Presented as part of the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary programme, it offers a broad view of a practice that continues to evolve.
Date: 16 June – 18 October 2026. Location: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, London. Price: from £22. Book now
Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta Imágen de Yágul, Mexico 1973 © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC. Licensed by DACS
#FLODown: This major exhibition at Tate Modern revisits the work of Ana Mendieta, and will bring together films, sculptures, photographs, and early paintings from across her career. A key element of the presentation will be the Silueta Series, in which Mendieta used natural materials such as earth, fire, and water to imprint the human form onto the landscape. The exhibition will also feature newly restored films and rarely shown works, offering a fuller understanding of her practice and its engagement with themes of displacement, identity, and belonging.
Date: 9 July 2026 - 10 January 2027. Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: £18. Concessions available. £5 for Tate Collective (16–25). Book now
Richard Dadd: Beyond Bedlam
Richard Dadd, The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, 1855-64. Oil on canvas, 54 x 39.4 cm. Tate. Presented by Siegfried Sassoon in memory of his friend and fellow officer Julian Dadd, a great-nephew of the artist, and of his two brothers who gave their lives in the First World War 1963. Photo: Tate.
#FLODown: The Royal Academy of Arts will present a focused look at Richard Dadd’s life and work, bringing together around 60 pieces that trace his artistic development. After early success, Dadd spent much of his life in psychiatric institutions, where he continued to produce highly detailed and imaginative paintings. The exhibition explores both the context of his life and the intricacy of his work, including The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, a painting that has had a lasting cultural influence.
Date: 25 July – 25 October 2026. Location: The Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. Price: £15. Concessions available. Book now
Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica
Chris Ofili, Union Black, 2003 © Chris Ofili. Courtesy the artist, David Zwirner and Victoria Miro
#FLODown: At the Barbican, Project a Black Planet will brings together over a century of artistic and cultural production shaped by Pan-African thought. The exhibition includes more than 300 works, from paintings and films to posters and archival materials, created by artists across Africa and its diasporas. Rather than presenting Pan-Africanism as a fixed movement, the show considers it as an evolving set of ideas centred on solidarity, resistance, and exchange, tracing connections across different geographies and generations.
Date: 11 June – 6 September 2026. Location: Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Discover more
Julio Le Parc
Julio Le Parc, Blue Sphere 2013. Tate. Lent by the Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of the Latin American Acquisitions Committee 2023. © ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2025. Photo © Museum of Art Pudong
#FLODown: Spanning several decades of work, Tate Modern’s exhibition of Julio Le Parc will focus on his exploration of movement, light, and viewer participation. Associated with kinetic and Op art, Le Parc developed works that shift and change through interaction, using mirrors, suspended elements, and projected light. Alongside these will be paintings that extend his interest in colour and optical effects. The exhibition will also reflect on his political commitments and his involvement in the experimental Paris art scene from the late 1950s onwards.
Date: 11 June 2026 – 3 May 2027. Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: £15. Concessions available. Book now
