Photography exhibitions to see in London in 2026
Photography is one of the most compelling artistic mediums, uniquely capable of capturing fleeting moments, shaping memory, and revealing unseen perspectives. In London, a city renowned for its rich gallery culture, photography thrives across institutions both large and small, from the historic National Portrait Gallery to contemporary spaces such as Autograph and The Photographers’ Gallery. In 2026, the city will host a remarkable range of exhibitions, spanning intimate portraits, experimental works, archival reconstructions, and landmark retrospectives. From explorations of queer life, diasporic memory, and American urban history to inventive contemporary approaches, this guide provides an overview of the most anticipated photography exhibitions in London this year.
Catherine Opie: To Be Seen
Pig Pen, 1993 © Catherine Opie, courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles; Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, London, and Seoul; Thomas Dane Gallery
#FLODown: To Be Seen is the first major UK museum exhibition of American artist Catherine Opie, opening at the National Portrait Gallery in March. Spanning over 30 years, it explores identity, intimacy, and power through portraits that centre queer communities, collaborators, families, and the artist herself. Curated with Opie, the exhibition places her work in dialogue with the Gallery’s collection, questioning who has been represented in portraiture, and who has been left unseen.
Date: 5 March – 31 May 2026. Location: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE. Price:£19.50 / £21.50 with donation. Free for Members. Book now
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026
Rene Matic, Clapham, London (2022). © Rene Matic. Courtesy the artist and Arcadia Missa, London.
#FLODown: The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026 will go on display at The Photographers’ Gallery in March. This year, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Weronika Gęsicka, Amak Mahmoodian, and Rene Matić have been shortlisted. Established in 1996, the prize recognises artists whose exhibitions or books have made a significant contribution to photography in the past year. Atwood documents women’s prisons and ongoing inequalities; Gęsicka reimagines fake encyclopaedia entries to question truth; Mahmoodian explores exile, memory, and identity through collaborative visions of a borderless world; and Matić captures intimate everyday moments, showing how identities are shaped by politics. The £30,000 winner will be announced on 14 May, with the other shortlisted artists each receiving £5,000.
Date: 6 March – 7 June 2026. Location: The Photographers’ Gallery, 16–18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW. Price: £10 (£7 concession). Advance: £8.50 (£6 concession). Members go free. Book now
Nhu Xuan Hua
Nhu Xuan Hua, Family portrait at the wedding - Archive from the year '85, 2016-2021
#FLODown: Autograph in London will host the first solo exhibition of French-Vietnamese artist Nhu Xuan Hua, curated by Bindi Vora. Spanning both gallery spaces, the exhibition will feature newly commissioned works that explore memory, family history, and the ways stories are communicated, or withheld, across generations. Hua reimagines archival photographs from her family’s time in Vietnam and early years in Europe, creating dreamlike, digitally-altered compositions that blur recognition and distortion. Drawing on her own experience growing up in Paris with immigrant parents and navigating linguistic and cultural silences, her work reflects the fragility of memory and the complexities of diasporic identity.
Date: 16 April – 19 September 2026. Location: Autograph, Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA. Price: Free (pre-booked timed tickets required). 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: Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography, opening in March at Dulwich Picture Gallery, will offer a vivid overview of American urban life from 1907 to 2012 through the work of 34 influential photographers. Set across New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, the exhibition explores how photography evolved alongside the modern city, capturing people and communities shaped by migration, labour, social change, and protest. By adapting traditions of portraiture to the street and the cityscape, artists including Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus, and Garry Winogrand reveal intimate human stories within rapidly changing urban environments. Together, these works form a powerful collective portrait of a nation in constant transformation.
Date: 28 July - 4 October 2026. Location: Dulwich Picture Gallery, College Road, London SE21 7AD. Price: TBC. Book now
Nan Goldin – The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
Nan Goldin, Skeletons coupling, New York City, (1983) from The Ballad of Sexual, Dependency, 1973-86, 126 archival pigment prints, in frames, each: 15, 3/4 x 11 × 11/8 inches (40 x 27.9 × 2.9 cm), overall dimensions variable, edition of 10. © Nan Goldin
#FLODown: Gagosian will present The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, exhibiting all 126 photographs from Nan Goldin’s landmark photobook for the first time in the United Kingdom. Spanning work created between 1973 and 1986, the series offers an intimate chronicle of relationships, gender, intimacy, and power, capturing the vibrancy and struggles of downtown New York life. Described by Goldin as “the diary I let people read,” the photographs are drawn directly from her own experiences and friendships, documenting a generation often absent from mainstream history.
Date: 13 January – 21 March 2026. Location: Gagosian, Davies Street, London W1K 3DE. Price: Free. gagosian.com
We Others: Donna Gottschalk and Hélène Giannecchini
Oah, Robin, Binky, Chris et moi, Bébés Gouines, E. 9th Street, New York, 1969
#FLODown: We Others, also opening at The Photographers’ Gallery in March, brings together Donna Gottschalk’s intimate photographs of queer life with texts by Hélène Giannecchini, creating a dialogue across generations about visibility, memory, and the courage to be seen. Gottschalk (b. 1949, New York) grew up on the streets of the Lower East Side, and her work documents the daily lives of her chosen family, friends, lovers, and fellow activists, capturing moments of tenderness and resilience amid violence and homophobia. Her photographs, taken during the early years of the lesbian, trans, and gay rights movements, celebrate those she describes as “brave and defiant warriors.” These are paired with Giannecchini’s texts, written after they met in 2023.
Date: 6 March – 7 June 2026. Location: The Photographers’ Gallery, 16–18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW. Price: £10 (£7 concession). Advance: £8.50 (£6 concession). Members go free. Book now
Mughal Banaras: Forgotten Histories in a Troubled Present
Local Hindu women making offerings and prayers at the Chunar Dargah, a Sufi shrine near Varanasi. Image credit Jateen Lad
#FLODown: SOAS Gallery will present Mughal Banaras: Forgotten Histories in a Troubled Present, a photographic and archival exhibition uncovering the city’s overlooked Mughal heritage. Moving beyond Banaras’ reputation as a Hindu pilgrimage site, the show highlights hidden neighbourhoods, imperial mosques, gardens, cemeteries, and devotional sites associated with Mughal descendants, particularly Crown Prince Jahandar Shah (1749–1788) and his family. Drawing on the work of historian Malavika Kasturi and architect-photographer Jateen Lad, the exhibition captures everyday life and fragile monuments in a politically charged context, reflecting on the significance and vulnerability of these sites.
Date: 15 January – 21 March 2026. Location: SOAS Gallery, Thornhaugh Street, London WC1H 0XG. Price: Free. soas.ac.uk
Richard Avedon: Facing West
Richard Avedon. James Story, coal miner, Somerset, Colorado, December 18, 1979. © The Richard Avedon Foundation
#FLODown: Facing West, an exhibition of rare prints from Richard Avedon’s iconic series In the American West (1979–84), will go on show at Gagosian’s Grosvenor Hill. Curated by Avedon’s granddaughter, Caroline Avedon, the exhibition will bring together 21 images from the original group of 126, including works not exhibited since 1985. Created over a five-year period, the series saw Avedon travel across twenty-one US states, photographing a wide range of working-class and often-overlooked individuals, from drifters to coal miners. Produced outside the conventions of the studio, these portraits capture both hardship and resilience, reflecting Avedon’s belief that “all photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”
Date: 15 January – 14 March 2026. Location: Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London W1K 3QD. Price: Free. gagosian.com
Tim Walker’s Fairyland: Love and Legends
Ian McKellen, Love, London, 2023 © Tim Walker. Tim Walker’s Fairyland. Love and Legends to open at National Portrait Gallery in 2026
#FLODown: An exhibition celebrating queer identity, community, and love through the imaginative lens of one of Britain’s most influential photographers, Tim Walker will open at the National Portrait Gallery in the autumn, (in time for Frieze Week 2026). Known for his whimsical, fairytale-inspired style, Walker presents a body of new work developed over five years, featuring activists, performers, artists, and writers photographed in his distinctive visual language.
Date: 8 October 2026 – 31 January 2027. Location: National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, London, WC2H 0HE. Price: TBC. npg.org.uk
Constantin Brancusi: Photographs
Constantin Brancusi, Princess X (Princess Marie Bonaparte), 1921|Vintage silver gelatin print, 22.5 x 16.6 cm (8.86 x 6.77 in)
#FLODown: Thaddaeus Ropac will present the first UK exhibition dedicated to Constantin Brancusi’s photographic work in over twenty years and his first solo show in London since 2004. The exhibition will bring together a selection of images created by the Romanian artist between 1906 and 1938, most of which will be on view in London for the first time, offering insight into Brancusi’s exploration of form, composition, and the interplay of light and shadow beyond his sculptural practice.
Date: 13 January – 21 March 2026. Location: Thaddaeus Ropac, Ely House, London W1S 4NJ. Price: Free. ropac.net
Jerwood/Photoworks Awards 2026
© Sayuri Ichida
#FLODown: The inaugural exhibition of the fifth edition of the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards will open at Drawing Room/Tannery Arts, featuring the work of UK-based artists Roman Manfredi and Sayuri Ichida. Manfredi’s TRA explores liminal states and the fluidity of identity, place, and time through still and moving images, reflecting on human relationships and environments in Napoli. Ichida’s Kūseki (“empty seats”) examines Japan’s rural population decline, documenting the closure of schools with photography, collage, sound, and sculptural installation, capturing the quiet disappearance of once-vital community spaces. The Jerwood/Photoworks Awards, launched in 2015, support early-career photographers within the first ten years of their practice, offering funding, mentorship, and a platform to develop ambitious, socially and culturally engaged projects.
Date: 10 January – 8 February 2026. Location: Drawing Room, Unit 1B New Tannery Way, London SE1 5WS. Price: Free. drawingroom.org.uk
