This year will see the epoch-defining Bayeux Tapestry come to the UK for a not-to-be-missed visit. Other exhibitions to look forward to in 2026 include tributes to artistic legends, as well as opportunities to cast a fresh eye on artists who may be under-appreciated.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art, V&A, London
The work of this “most daring of designers”, who celebrated Surrealism with work such as her renowned dresses “Skeleton” and “Tears”, “ripped up the rule book”, said Laura Freeman in The Times. The collaborations of the “boundary-breaking couturier” with the likes of Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Man Ray and Salvador Dalí are illustrated by over 200 objects, including her couture creations, accessories, paintings, photos and even perfume, which reveal the fashion house’s “extraordinary history” from the late 1920s to its “present-day revival”, said Belle Hutton in Wallpaper.
28 March to 8 November, V&A
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Enid Marx, Compton Verney, Warwickshire
She may not be an artist you’ve heard of “but you’ve probably sat on one of her most famous works”, said The Times, because Enid Marx designed the fabric covering the seats of the London Underground. Her contemporaries at the Royal College of Art, St Ives School and Bloomsbury Group include better-known names such as Eric Ravilious, Paul Nash and Bernard Leach, but Marx is also a “force to be reckoned with”. A versatile artist and a “chronicler of British folk art”, she was a “prolific and imaginative designer” whose work spanned textiles, children’s books, wrapping paper, stamps and bookplates. “Set aside a whole day” for this show – “it’s going to be a cracker”.
18 July to 3 January 2027, Compton Verney
Bayeux Tapestry, British Museum, London
Arguably the “art event of the year”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian, is the early medieval piece going on display in the UK in a “once-in-a-lifetime triumph of cultural generosity by France”. At almost 1,000 years old and almost 230 feet long, this “vast embroidery” tells the story of the Norman Conquest, and “all manner of contemporary meanings” can be found in its stitches, from a “condemnation of war to nationalistic nonsense to proof that Britons are Europeans”. Book early – it’s expected to be a blockbuster exhibition, sure to “move and astonish you”.
September 2026 to July 2027, British Museum
James McNeill Whistler, Tate Britain, London
If you know only “Whistler’s Mother” you may believe Whistler to be “dour”, said The Times. If that is your “image of the artist”, then “banish it immediately”. In fact, Whistler was a “radical”, who “pioneered” a new “loose and exact, daring and contained” style of painting that “conjured fireworks from darkness and light from the lagoon”. Away from the easel, he was a “wit, a dandy, an idler and a baiter of fellow artists”. This major retrospective, his first in Europe for 30 years, curates his world-famous paintings, as well as lesser-seen works, bringing Whistler “out of the shadows”.
21 May to 27 September, Tate Britain
Beryl Cook: Pride and Joy, The Box, Plymouth
Celebrating her centenary year, this show is her biggest ever, with more than 80 works, from iconic paintings to rarely seen pieces from private collections. Chronicling everyday life, the work of this “self-taught painter” “may not be great art”, said The Guardian, but it is fun, colourful and larger-than-life, and serves up a “bawdy slice of Plymouth and post-war British life”, capturing scenes of “drinking and smoking and ogling and people getting up to all sorts”.
24 January to 31 May, The Box
Gwen John: Strange Beauties, National Museum, Cardiff; National Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh
This year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of the Welsh painter Gwen John. During her lifetime, the “visionary art of this quiet hero of modernism” was eclipsed by that of her brother, Augustus John, and her lover, Auguste Rodin, said The Guardian. However, her “luminous, introspective and quietist works” offer a vision that still feels strikingly modern, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. As the first major showing of her work for 40 years, this is an “unmissable retrospective”.
7 February to 28 June, National Museum, Cardiff; 1 August to 4 January 2027, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh
Marie Antoinette Style, V&A, London
This exhibition “brings you as close as it’s possible to get to the real Marie Antoinette”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. On display are portraits by Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, costumes, gold-trimmed chairs from her pastoral retreat, Petit Trianon, and even a piece of an original guillotine, along with a wealth of items created after her death that speak of her enduring significance as a cultural icon. While this is nominally a show about fashion history, it adds up to “a superb lesson in how history can be understood through images and objects”.
Until 22 March, V&A
