Art to see in London: February 2026 Highlights
February will see a vast number of art exhibitions opening across London as the city moves into the full swing of 2026. From installations and performance art to sculpture, photography, and animation, the variety of media on display reflects the city’s dynamic contemporary scene.
Below is a guide to some of the art exhibitions to see in London in February 2026, including the much-anticipated Tracey Emin and Rose Wylie exhibitions at Tate and the Royal Academy of Arts respectively; Klára Hosnedlová’s debut exhibition at White Cube; works by artists Aki Sasamoto and Stina Fors at Studio Voltaire; the third edition of the Barbican’s Encounters series with Lynda Benglis; an Isaac Julien world premiere at Victoria Miro; and an exciting new Wallace and Gromit exhibition for younger visitors and Wallace and Gromit enthusiasts at the Young V&A.
Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov
Christine Kozlov, Self-Portraits (detail), 1968–70 © Christine Kozlov Estate Photo: Chloe Page
#FLODown: Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov will examine the influential yet often overlooked contribution of Christine Kozlov to the development of Conceptual Art from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. Focusing on her objects, ideas, and collaborative practices, the exhibition situates Kozlov within a radical artistic movement that rejected dominant trends such as Minimalism, Pop Art, and high modernism in favour of politically engaged, dematerialised approaches to art-making. Featuring works made with everyday materials and documentary formats, alongside pieces by key peers and collaborators including On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, and Art & Language, the exhibition highlights Kozlov’s role within an international network of artists and traces her practice through her move to the UK and her later responses to global political events.
Date: 19 February–26 April 2026. Location: Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS. Price: Free. ravenrow.org
Klára Hosnedlová: Echo
Klára Hosnedlová, Untitled (from the series embrace), 2025 © Klára Hosnedlová. Photo © Zdenek Porcal - Studio
#FLODown: Klára Hosnedlová’s solo exhibition Echo opens at White Cube Bermondsey on 11 February 2026, marking the artist’s debut with the gallery. Her distinctive multidisciplinary practice, spanning sculpture, performance, architecture, and intricate embroidery, creates immersive installations that draw on historical narratives, utopian design, and Central-Eastern European architectural forms, evoking futuristic archaeological worlds.
Date: 11 February – 29 March 2026. Location: White Cube Bermondsey, 144–152 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3TQ. Price: Free. whitecube.com
Tracey Emin
Tracey Emin My Bed 1998 Tate Lent by The Duerckheim Collection 2015, On long term loan. © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage
#FLODown: Tate Modern will open the year with a landmark exhibition tracing 40 years of Dame Tracey Emin’s groundbreaking practice, showcasing iconic works alongside never-before-seen pieces across painting, video, textiles, neons, writing, sculpture, and installation. Renowned for using the female body to explore passion, pain, and healing, Emin is remembered for rising to prominence in the 1990s with provocative works like My Bed, which challenged traditional ideas of art and sparked widespread debate. The exhibition will celebrate her raw, confessional style as it explores profound themes of love, trauma, and autobiography, while also highlighting her lifelong commitment to painting, presenting recent works as the culmination of her unapologetic artistic journey.
Date: 26 February – 31 August 2026. Location:Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG. Price: from £20 / Free for members. Concessions available. £5 for Tate Collective. Book now
Encounters : Giacometti x Lynda Benglis
Encounters : Giacometti x Lynda’s Benglis at Barbican Centre. © Jonathan Pow
#FLODown: The third exhibition in the Barbican’s Encounters series, brings together works by contemporary American artist Lynda Benglis and 20th-century Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti for the first time. Benglis presents a new body of previously unseen works alongside her own selection of Giacometti’s sculptures, creating a dialogue across generations. Since the 1960s, Benglis has been celebrated for her playful yet visceral forms that are simultaneously organic and abstract, while Giacometti is renowned for his elongated figures and existential approach to the human form. The exhibition highlights the connections between their practices, offering a conversation between past and present sculptural languages.
Date: 5 February – 24 May 2026. Location: Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: From £8. Concessions available. Book now
Aki Sasamoto: Grilled Diagrams
Aki Sasamoto, Point Reflection, 2023. Digital video, 23 minutes 31 seconds. Image courtesy of the artist and Bortolami, New York
#FLODown: Aki Sasamoto’s Grilled Diagrams marks her first solo institutional exhibition in the UK, featuring a site-specific installation that functions as both a sculptural environment and performance set. The work includes a custom-built, oversized griddle, inspired by cooking shows and street food, which Sasamoto activates in live performances during the opening and closing weeks. The installation explores the tension between disorder and control, using commonplace objects and improvised interactions to probe the relationships between people, objects, and their surroundings. Through this work, Sasamoto invites audiences to reconsider the poetics of daily life and the participatory possibilities of sculpture.
Date: 4 February – 19 April 2026. Location: Studio Voltaire, 1A Nelsons Row, London SW4 7JR. Price: Free. studiovoltaire.org
Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis
Issac Julien, All That Changes You. Metamorphosis (2025) at Palazzo Te. Image credit © Isaac Julien
#FLODown: The world premiere of Isaac Julien’s acclaimed five-screen installation All That Changes You. Metamorphosis will open at Victoria Miro, accompanied by new photographic works. The exhibition presents Julien’s signature fusion of cinematic and sculptural forms, creating a dialogue between moving image and photography that examines identity, transformation, and contemporary social narratives.
Date: 13 February – 21 March 2026. Location: Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW. Price: Free. victoria-miro.com
Stina Fors Residency
Portrait of Stina Fors, courtesy of the artist and Steinsland Berliner. Image credit Knotan.
#FLODown: Performance artist, drummer, and choreographer Stina Fors (b. 1989, Sweden) will be in residence at Studio Voltaire from 2–16 February 2026, as part of the H13 Lower Austria Prize for Performance. Fors works across dance, theatre, and music, often combining humour, tension, and raw energy in spontaneous performances. During the residency, she will adapt her durational work Answer me, Pythia, first performed in 2025 in Vienna, into a new, shorter live performance. Drawing on the ancient Greek oracle of Delphi, Fors blends classical myths with contemporary references, using her voice, body, and a ventriloquist’s dummy to explore humanity’s fascination with figures who claim to reveal our fate.
Fors will have an artist talk at Studio Voltaire in February. Click here to discover more.
Date: 2–16 February 2026. Location: Studio Voltaire, 1a Nelsons Row, Clapham, London SW4 6AS. Price: Free. studiovoltaire.org
The Griffin Catalyst Exhibition: Seurat and the Sea
Georges Seurat, 1859-1891, Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy, 1888, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
#FLODown: The first exhibition dedicated to Georges Seurat’s seascapes will open at the Courtauld Gallery. This landmark showcase is also the first UK exhibition focused on Seurat in nearly 30 years. Showcasing around 25 works, including paintings, oil sketches, and drawings, the exhibition explores how Seurat developed his pioneering Neo-Impressionist technique during five summers on the northern coast of France (1885–1890). Best known for using tiny dots of pure colour to depict light and form, Seurat died young at 31, leaving behind a small but significant body of work.
Date: 13 February – 17 May 2026. Location: Denise Coates Exhibition Galleries, Floor 3, The Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN. Price: £18. Concessions available. Book now
Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting
Portrait of a Young Man, 1944 (black crayon & white chalk on paper) © The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2025 / Bridgeman Images. Private Collection.
#FLODown: The National Portrait Gallery will open the UK’s first museum exhibition dedicated to Lucian Freud’s works on paper, exploring his lifelong focus on the human face and figure across drawing media such as pencil, ink, charcoal and etching. The exhibition will also include key paintings that reveal the relationship between his drawings and finished canvases. Ahead of the show, the Gallery has acquired 12 works from Freud’s estate, including eight etchings. These are now on display in a free archive exhibition offering new insight into Freud’s creative process and working methods.
Date: 12 February - 4 May 2026, with tickets available from autumn 2025. Location: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London WC2H 0HE. Price: from £23-25 / £25.50-27.50 with donation. Free for members. Book now
Beatriz González
Beatriz González, Los papagayos (The Parrots), 1987 © Beatriz González. Photo: Oriol Tarridas.
#FLODown: This landmark retrospective explores the work of the late Colombian artist Beatriz González, whose six-decade practice examines the political and emotional resonance of everyday images. Drawing from newspaper clippings, religious iconography, and fragments of Western art, González transforms familiar visuals into powerful commentaries on violence, displacement, and power structures. Her playful yet poignant style spans painting, sculpture, print, and installation, challenging cultural hierarchies. With over 150 works, many never before seen in the UK, this exhibition will prompt a look into how images shape memory and meaning.
Date: 25 February – 10 May 2026. Location: Barbican Art Gallery, Barbican Centre, Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS. Price: from £19. Concessions available. Book now
Rose Wylie: The Picture Comes First
Rose Wylie, Snowwhite (3) with Duster, 2018. Oil on canvas in two parts, 183.5 x 320 cm. Photo: Jo Moon Price. © Rose Wylie. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
#FLODown: One of Britain’s most distinctive and celebrated artists, Rose Wylie OBE RA, will take over the Main Galleries at the Royal Academy of Arts with her largest UK survey to date. Known for her figurative paintings and character driven narratives, Wylie draws on everything from art history and classical literature to celebrity culture and current affairs. Her work captures the spirit of modern life with energy and wit, offering visual reflections on events both grand and everyday, from the Blitz to football matches and gallery openings. This exhibition will feature some of her most iconic works alongside previously unseen and newly created pieces.
Date: 28 February – 19 April 2026. Location: The Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. Price: from £21-£23. Concessions available. Book now
Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends
Image courtesy of Young V&A
#FLODown: Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends at the Young V&A offers a behind-the-scenes look at the craft of stop-motion animation. The exhibition showcases how Aardman’s beloved characters and imaginative worlds are brought to life, revealing the storytelling, models, sketches, and techniques that have made the studio’s animations iconic. It highlights the creative process that turns ideas from sketchbook to screen, celebrating the artistry and innovation of Aardman’s work.
Date: 12 February – 15 November 2026. Location: Young V&A, Cambridge Heath Rd, Bethnal Green, London E2 9PA. Price: £11. Concessions apply. Book now
