Samurai battle gear next to Star Wars costumes. Marilyn Monroe and Frida Kahlo up close and personal. Wallace & Gromit figurines and Tracey Emin’s unmade bed (not, it should be stressed, in the same place). And the grand return of the Bayeux Tapestry… 2026 is shaping up to blow the blockbuster exhibitions of years prior out of the water.
Here are the 12 exhibitions we are most looking forward to:
Samurai
Whether you’re fascinated by the warrior class that emerged in Japan’s 12th century, or a fan of Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, there will be something here to pique your interest. This major exhibition tracks the legendary samurai from the medieval battlefield to the horror of surrender that defined Japan’s role in the Second World War.
Don’t miss the chance to see the silk-laced battle gear sent by Shōgun Tokugawa Hidetada to King James I, alongside the Darth Vader costume from Star Wars: A New Hope that was inspired by Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai film The Hidden Fortress. Fitting, then, that the exhibition closes on May the fourth (be with you).
February 3 to May 4, britishmuseum.org
Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting
There hasn’t been a major retrospective of Lucian Freud’s work at the National Portrait Gallery since 2012, just after his death. As the subtitle suggests, this show will explore Freud’s fascination with the human face and form through his preparatory works. Drawings in pen, pencil, ink and charcoal will be displayed alongside a selection of paintings.
Eight etchings have also been acquired, one of which depicts his daughter Bella Freud, purveyor of covetable slogan knitwear. Fingers crossed there’s a collaboration in store with the gallery’s impeccable gift shop.
February 12 to May 4, npg.org.uk
Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends
Young V&A
The Young V&A has been a colourful beacon in Bethnal Green since it re-opened in 2023. All kids, little and grown-up, are sure to be delighted by this exhibition of Aardman Animation’s greatest works, hand-sculpted from clay over its 50 years. There will be 150 items on show including the first-ever chance to see the sidecar from Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Banish brainrot with step-by-step guides on creating your own stop-motion works of art, with passes available so you can revisit as many times as you like. You’ll have to frisk us at the exit to stop us smuggling out Shaun the Sheep.
Opens February 12, vam.ac.uk/young
Tracey Emin: A Second Life
Few works of British contemporary art can lay claim to being as truly iconoclastic as My Bed, the 1998 sculpture of dishevelment that defined the term “bed rotting” decades before it entered the popular lexicon.
It’s just one part of a retrospective of Tracey Emin’s 40 years of creating art that will surely draw the crowds in spring. The show’s title refers to the artist’s metamorphosis post-cancer. Emin has called the show “a true celebration of living”.
February 27 to August 31, tate.org.uk
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art
If you weren’t lucky enough to catch the astonishing exhibition of Elsa Schiaparelli’s work at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris a few years ago, then this one’s for you. Tracing the French fashion house’s origins in surrealist wearable artworks through to its current iteration under Daniel Roseberry, this will have the fashion set clamouring at the steps of the V&A.
Opens March 28, vam.ac.uk
Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait
National Portrait Gallery
Marilyn Monroe would have been 100 years old this year. In her honour, the NPG will bring together the works of some of the greatest 20th-century photographers who clamoured to capture her, along with the artists her likeness inspired including, of course, Andy Warhol. Monroe’s personal belongings including books, scripts and clothes will also be on display to humanise the woman behind the face that defined an era.
June 4 to September 6, npg.org.uk
Anish Kapoor
Hayward Gallery
This landmark exhibition at the Southbank Centre will be a chance to commune with Anish Kapoor’s early works, as well as an opportunity to stare into his endless dark voids made possible by patented nanotechnology. Expect to see a thousand reflections taken in his disorientating mirror sculptures plastered across your social feeds come summer.
June 16 to October 18, southbankcentre.co.uk
Frida: The Making of an Icon
Tate Modern
Frida Kahlo was so much more than monobrow-themed feminist-lite. A revolutionary Mexican Marxist and openly bisexual, she took to painting after a terrible tram accident left her with chronic pain.
Tate Modern is bringing together 130 of her works to explore the artist’s “many selves”, including Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, above. Documents and memorabilia from her Mexico City archives will also be on display, along with 80 works from some of the many artists she inspired.
June 25 to January 3, 2027, tate.org.uk
The Bayeux Tapestry
British Museum
It’s taken years of diplomatic wrangling with the French government to get here, but the Bayeux Tapestry will be returning to British soil for the first time since it was made almost 1,000 years ago. It was quite the coup for the British Museum to win the chance to host.
The 70-metre long textile depiction of the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Hastings is forecast to be the institution’s most popular exhibition ever.
From September, britishmuseum.org
Es Devlin
London-based artist Es Devlin has worked on everything from the 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony to Stormzy’s 2018 BRIT Awards performance. This show at the Design Museum will be her first UK museum show entirely dedicated to her practice.
From set design to sculpture, this retrospective curated in collaboration with Devlin herself will be a chance to see inside her process with displays of maquettes and sketches, alongside new kinetic installations created for this exhibition.
September 18 to April 11 2027, designmuseum.org
Renoir and Love
Love in all its forms, romantic and platonic, is the theme of this Renoir exhibition at the National Gallery — the first major show of the French Impressionist’s work to be seen in the UK in two decades.
It will travel over from the Musée d’Orsay, bringing his celebrated 1876 masterpiece Bal du Moulin de la Galette, which was once one of the most expensive paintings ever sold. Grab your lover or your bestie and promenade down to fin-de-siecle Paris-on-Thames.
October 3 to January 31, 2027, nationalgallery.org.uk
The 90s
Tate Britain
Return to Cool Britannia this autumn, courtesy of Edward Enninful’s curation of the defining mood of Britain in the 1990s. The British Vogue alumnus is putting on an appropriately fashion-forward rogues gallery of punk optimism to keep the Britpop revival mood going post Oasis’s return.
Photographs from Juergen Teller, Nick Knight, David Sims and Corinne Day, alongside designs by Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, with a smattering of Damien Hirst art to boot. Kate Moss will feature heavily, as is only correct.
October 8 to February 14 2027, tate.org.uk
