8+ art exhibitions to see in London exhibitions in August 2026
London’s galleries and cultural spaces are presenting a varied programme of exhibitions this summer, featuring major retrospectives, landmark displays and explorations of contemporary art, fashion, identity and the natural world. Highlights include Henry Moore’s monumental sculptures at Kew Gardens, Tracey Emin’s career-spanning retrospective at Tate Modern, and work by the late David Hockney at the Serpentine. Here are the shows not to miss in London this summer.
Henry Moore: Monumental Nature
Henry Moore, 'Large Two Forms' 1969 (LH 556). Photo: Jonty Wilde.
The largest display ever staged of Henry Moore’s work brings more than 100 pieces to Kew Gardens, set across the garden landscape. Featuring 30 monumental sculptures installed throughout the grounds, alongside drawings, models, and smaller works in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, the exhibition explores the role of nature in shaping Moore’s artistic vision. Drawing inspiration from bones, stones, and organic forms, it reveals how these influences informed his creative process and lifelong approach to sculpture, highlighting the enduring relationship between his work and the natural world.
Date: 9 May 2026 – 31 January 2027. Location: Kew Gardens, Kew, Richmond, London, TW9 3AE.Price: from £25. Concessions available. Book now.
Hassan Hajjaj: My London Rockstars, Ends to Estates
Courtesy of Our Motherland Collective crew. Image courtesy of Vigo Gallery, London and Hassan Hajjaj Studio
#FLODown: An exhibition by Hassan Hajjaj is on view at Sotheby’s London, in partnership with Vigo Gallery, presenting iconic works alongside a new series from his ongoing My Rockstars project. A self-taught artist and photographer, Hajjaj’s practice brings together photography, fashion, installation and design, drawing on his Moroccan heritage and his experiences of London’s club, hip-hop and reggae scenes. Ends to Estates celebrates a new generation of creative figures shaping London’s contemporary cultural landscape, including artists, musicians and designers such as Central Cee, Slawn and Clint 419. Through his bold portraits and distinctive visual language, Hajjaj celebrates migration, identity, cultural exchange and the communities that continue to shape London’s creative scene.
Date: 13 July – 7 August 2026. Location: Sotheby’s London, 34–35 New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA. Book now.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life
Tracey Emin My Bed 1998 Tate Lent by The Duerckheim Collection 2015, On long term loan. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage
#FLODown: Tracey Emin’s major exhibition at Tate Modern brings together four decades of her artistic practice, from the early 1980s to the present day. Featuring more than 100 works across painting, sculpture, video, textile, neon, and installation, it examines how Emin has transformed lived experience into a bold and distinctive artistic language. Bringing together landmark works including My Bed (1998) and Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made (1996), alongside recent pieces such as Ascension (2024), the exhibition charts the evolution of her practice and her lasting impact on contemporary art.
Date: 27 February – 31 August 2026. Location: Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: £22 adult (other ticket types available). Book now
NIGO: From Japan with Love
NIGO photographed at the Design Museum. Photo credit Elliot James Kennedy
#FLODown: A major retrospective at the Design Museum celebrates Japanese designer and creative director NIGO, exploring his 30-year career as a pioneering figure who has bridged streetwear and luxury fashion while working across music, design, and contemporary culture. Bringing together more than 700 objects from his personal archive and creative output, the exhibition features vintage clothing, hand-crafted ceramics, a recreation of his teenage bedroom, and large-scale installations including a life-size glass tea house. It traces NIGO’s journey from Tokyo’s Harajuku street scene and the founding of A Bathing Ape in the 1990s to his current role at KENZO, highlighting the influences, from hip-hop and vintage Americana to Japanese craft and 1980s Tokyo subculture, that have shaped his global cultural impact.
Date: 1 May–4 Oct 2026. Location: Design Museum, 224–238 Kensington High Street, London W8 6AG. Price: from £19. 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 explores more than a century of artistic and cultural production shaped by Pan-African thought, assembling over 300 works that span painting, film, photography, posters, and archival material from artists across Africa and its global diasporas. Rather than framing Pan-Africanism as a single fixed movement, the exhibition treats it as a shifting set of ideas built around solidarity, resistance, and cultural exchange, revealing how these connections have evolved across different countries, generations, and political moments. Alongside the exhibition, the Barbican Art Gallery shop will also stock FLO London products, with a selection of items including aprons, scrunchies, napkins, tote bags and beach bags available to purchase.
Date: 11 June – 6 September 2026. Location: Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: from £19. Concessions available. Book now
Elisa Giardina Papa: She Flickered In and Out of History
Elisa Giardina Papa, She Flickered In and Out of History, 2026. Video installation, 18 minutes, variable dimensions. Still from the video. Courtesy of the artist. The project is supported by the Italian Council program (2024) promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
#FLODown: Elisa Giardina Papa presents She Flickered In and Out of History at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London. The mixed-media installation explores the volcanic island that appeared in the Mediterranean between Tunisia and Sicily in 1831 and disappeared a few months later. Different countries argued over who had control of it while it existed. Through video, sculpture and images, the exhibition tells this story and reflects on what happens when places appear and disappear. It also connects the island’s story to ideas about history, power, and how events are recorded or forgotten over time.
Date: 17 July – 6 September 2026. Location: Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, The Mall, St. James’s, London SW1Y 5AH. Price: from £7. Concessions available. Book now.
Ana Mendieta
Ana Mendieta Untitled: Silueta Series 1978, remade 2026. Installation view at Tate Modern 2026
#FLODown: Tate Modern revisits the work of Ana Mendieta in an exhibition bringing together films, sculptures, photographs, and early paintings from across her career. The presentation explores the Silueta Series, in which Mendieta used natural materials such as earth, fire, and water to imprint the human form onto the landscape. It also includes newly restored films and rarely shown works, offering a fuller understanding of her practice and its engagement with themes of displacement, identity, and belonging. Mendieta’s career was tragically cut short in 1985 when she died at the age of 36 after falling from the window of her New York apartment. Her death, and the controversy surrounding the circumstances, has continued to shape discussions of her life, work, and legacy.
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
East of the Aldgate Pump
#FLODown: East of the Aldgate Pump is a group exhibition exploring how migration, cultural exchange and community have shaped East London. Inspired by the historic Aldgate Pump, which once marked the boundary between the City of London and the East End, the exhibition brings together photography, film, textiles, painting and installation to share personal and collective stories. Featuring works by Fozia Ismail, Marwan Bassiouni, Jyll Bradley, Adam Farah-Saad (with Ezra-Lloyd Jackson), Denzil Forrester, Rachel Garfield, Laisul Hoque, Kabir Hussain, Nour Jaouda, Rene Matić, susan pui san lok, Reetu Sattar and Rehana Zaman, the exhibition brings together ideas of identity, belonging, memory, everyday life and food, celebrating the diverse cultures, traditions and histories that continue to define the East End today.
It is part of Backyard Biennial: East, an eight-week festival marking Whitechapel Gallery’s 125th anniversary with free arts events across venues in East London.
Date: 15 July – 6 September 2026. Location: 77–82 Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX. Price: Free.
Hurvin Anderson
Hurvin Anderson, Hawksbill Bay, 2020. Tate: Lent by Tate Americas Foundation, courtesy of Mala Gaonkar 2023. © Hurvin Anderson. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and VeneKlasen
#FLODown: The first major solo exhibition of British artist Hurvin Anderson brings together over 80 of his paintings, spanning his entire career from student works to previously unseen new pieces. Anderson’s colour-drenched landscapes and interiors explore experiences of belonging and diaspora, reflecting his journey between the UK and the Caribbean. Many works feature family members, childhood memories, and culturally significant spaces such as barbershops, while layering locations and memories to examine the tension between personal and cultural heritage. Combining a profound sense of atmosphere with influences from British landscape painting, the exhibition highlights Anderson’s distinctive approach to identity, memory, and place.
Date: 26 March – 23 August 2026. Location: Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1P 4RG. Price: from £18. Concessions available. Book now
David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting
David Hockney working on iPad. David Hockney, Normandy, 2021 © David Hockney. Image Credit Jonathan Wilkinson.
#FLODown: Serpentine currently has an exhibition of works by the celebrated British artist David Hockney, David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting. Opened in March 2026 before Hockney’s death, the exhibition presents his monumental digital frieze A Year in Normandie(2020–2021) in London for the first time, alongside a new site-specific mural, still lifes and portraits. Created on an iPad, the frieze captures the changing seasons at his Normandy studio, reflecting Hockney’s lifelong exploration of colour, nature and new ways of seeing.
Date: 12 March – 23 August 2026. Location: Serpentine North, London. Price: Free. serpentinegalleries.org
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
Installation view of “Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art” at the V&A. Photo: courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum.
#FLODown: The Victoria and Albert Museum’s first UK exhibition dedicated to Elsa Schiaparelli explores her pioneering fusion of fashion and art. Tracing the evolution of her couture house from the 1920s to its contemporary direction under Daniel Roseberry, it brings together over 400 objects, including garments, artworks, and archival materials, it highlights her collaborations with artists such as Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso, while emphasising her impact as an innovative designer and entrepreneur whose surrealist vision reshaped modern fashion and continues to influence contemporary culture.
Date: 28 March - 8 November 2026. Location: V&A Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL. Price: Weekday £28.00 / Weekend £30.00. Concessions apply. Book now
Discover more art exhibitions to see in London with our May, June and July guides to the shows that have opened across the city this summer.
