The art world saved its best for last. Book the Eurostar accordingly.
We’ll be the ones to say it: autumn 2026 is the most exciting season for European art in a decade. A medieval masterpiece has crossed the Channel for the first time in nearly a millennium. Every surviving Van Eyck portrait is coming together in one room. And Edward Enninful has turned Tate Britain into the 90s party we all wish we’d been invited to.
Paris alone could fill your diary until Christmas, and that’s before you’ve considered Amsterdam, Venice, Vienna or a brand-new museum on the Spanish coast. Then there are the closing dates, the timed tickets that vanish in hours, and the eternal question of whether a show is actually worth the flight.
These are the twelve exhibitions we’re telling our friends about, all open before the year is out. Some close sooner than you’d think, so start planning now.
Europe’s best exhibitions at a glance
Best for history lovers: The Bayeux Tapestry, British Museum, London
Best once-in-a-lifetime reunion: Van Eyck: The Portraits, National Gallery, London
Best for fashion lovers: The 90s, Tate Britain, London
Best for a Paris weekend: Mary Cassatt, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Best for photography obsessives: Remember Me, Bourse de Commerce, Paris
Best for pure joy: Yayoi Kusama, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Best new museum: Faro Santander, Spain
How we chose
Our editors weighed the shows that are genuinely rare (loans that may never travel again, first-ever retrospectives, debuts) against the ones simply generating the most noise. We considered the setting, the city around it and how easy it is to actually get a ticket. Every show on this list is open before 31 December 2026, and we’ll keep it updated as booking windows open and close.
1. The Bayeux Tapestry, British Museum, London
Best for: Seeing history, literally, unspool in front of you
Dates: Until 11 July 2027
Price: £25 to £33, timed entry
Address: Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG
Why we love it: Come on, it’s the Bayeux Tapestry! The 70-metre embroidery telling the story of 1066 has left France for the first time in its history, and it’s on display in Britain for the first time since it was stitched. It hangs in a long, darkened gallery inside a glowing glass case, and walking its full length is a little like reading a graphic novel written by monks. Don’t miss the Norman feast at Pevensey, where everyone appears to be having a much better time than the Anglo-Saxons.
A note on tickets (read: brace yourself). The first release sold out in hours and crashed the museum’s website. The next batch, covering January to March 2027, goes on sale on 21 October, so set an alarm. You get a 40-minute slot, which is just enough time to find your favourite tiny horse.
2. Van Eyck: The Portraits, National Gallery, London
Best for: A reunion that will never happen again
Dates: 21 November 2026 to 11 April 2027
Price: From £18
Address: Trafalgar Square, London WC2N 5DN
Why we love it: Jan van Eyck invented the modern portrait, and for the first time ever every portrait he painted is gathered in one place. That means nine paintings plus his only surviving drawing, about half of everything by his hand that still exists. The Arnolfini Portrait, which has barely left the building in a century, is the obvious star. But it’s the quieter faces that floor you: stubble, crow’s feet, flushed cheeks, painted almost 600 years ago and still looking straight at you.
Look out for the goldsmith Jan de Leeuw, one of two Van Eycks Vienna is lending at the same time for the first time ever. Several portraits are shown in the round, so you can see the painted backs and trompe-l’oeil frames too. Our insider tip? The Londoner’s Whitcomb’s restaurant offers à la carte lunch or dinner with your exhibition ticket included. Culture and a long lunch. Hear, hear.
3. The 90s, Tate Britain, London
Best for: Fashion people and anyone who still owns a slip dress
Dates: 8 October 2026 to 14 February 2027
Address: Millbank, London SW1P 4RG
Why we love it: Former British Vogue editor Edward Enninful has curated a love letter to the decade that made him, and it’s every bit as glorious as you’d hope. Juergen Teller’s Kate Moss, Corinne Day and Nick Knight hang alongside Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas and Gillian Wearing, with collections by Alexander McQueen, Vivienne Westwood and Hussein Chalayan holding their own between the paintings. Nearly 70 artists and designers, one era-defining mood.
What makes it more than nostalgia is the argument: that the 90s were when high art and pop culture finally stopped pretending not to know each other. Enninful has joked that his all-women curatorial team is Tate’s answer to the Spice Girls. We’d like a T-shirt of that, please.
4. Mary Cassatt, Musée d’Orsay, Paris
Best for: A long Parisian weekend with a feminist twist
Dates: Until 31 January 2027
Price: €16, or €12 for the Thursday late opening
Address: Esplanade Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, 75007 Paris
Why we love it: Here’s a fact that should make you a little cross. Mary Cassatt lived in France for almost sixty years, was the only American (and one of the very few women) exhibiting with the Impressionists, and yet this is the first major show a French national museum has ever given her. Marking the centenary of her death, the Orsay has gathered around 80 paintings, pastels and prints, many rarely seen.
The thread running through it is independence. Cassatt chose not to marry, bought her own land with her own money and later campaigned for women’s suffrage, and the show ends with exactly that. Girl in the Garden is the image everyone will photograph, but linger over the prints, which are astonishingly modern. Go on a Thursday evening when the museum stays open until 9.45pm, then walk it off along the Seine.
5. Cézanne et nous, Grand Palais, Paris
Best for: Understanding why every painter after 1900 owes Cézanne a drink
Dates: Until 17 January 2027
Price: €19
Address: Grand Palais, 17 avenue du Général Eisenhower, 75008 Paris (entrance via Square Jean Perrin)
Why we love it: This isn’t a retrospective, and that’s precisely the point. The newly restored Grand Palais has gathered around 180 works to show how Cézanne’s apples and mountains detonated a century of art. You’ll find his Mont Sainte-Victoire canvases in conversation with Matisse, Picasso and Mondrian, and then, rather thrillingly, with Joan Mitchell, Bridget Riley and Peter Doig.
It’s a co-production between the Centre Pompidou, the Orsay and the Orangerie, which means the loans are extraordinary. Bring someone who claims not to “get” modern art. They’ll leave converted. No, really.
6. Remember Me, Bourse de Commerce, Paris
Best for: Photography lovers and anyone who appreciates a dramatic rotunda
Dates: From 7 October 2026 until January 2027
Price: €15
Address: 2 rue de Viarmes, 75001 Paris
Why we love it: Two hundred years after the first photograph, François Pinault has emptied his archives for the Bourse de Commerce’s first-ever photography exhibition, and it takes over the entire building. Around 700 works by more than 70 artists, from Gustave Le Gray to Cindy Sherman, Lee Miller to Annie Leibovitz. Barbara Kruger has filled Tadao Ando’s rotunda and its 24 vitrines with her largest installation ever made in France, and it’s worth the ticket alone.
Don’t miss the Irving Penn room, more than 400 prints of pure elegance. There’s no chronology, just a free-flowing wander guided by memory, which suits a slow Saturday perfectly. Speaking of which: the first Saturday of every month, entry is free from 5pm to 9pm. You’re welcome.
7. Yayoi Kusama, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Best for: Pure, unfiltered joy (and yes, the photos)
Dates: Until 17 January 2027
Address: Museumplein 10, 1071 DJ Amsterdam
Why we love it: What was planned as a celebration became something more moving. Yayoi Kusama died in August, two weeks before this retrospective opened, and the Stedelijk kept the show exactly as she approved it. She wanted it to feel like a party, and it does. More than seventy years of work fill more space than the museum has ever given to a single artist: paintings, fashion, collage, sculpture, those polka-dot pumpkins and new mirror rooms that make you forget where the walls are.
Kusama’s links to Amsterdam run deep (she showed at the Stedelijk back in 1965), which gives the whole thing a homecoming feel. Book the first slot of the day if you want a mirror room to yourself. Trust us when we say you’ll want a mirror room to yourself.
8. Whistler: Dandy and Disruptor, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
Best for: The perfect double bill on Museumplein
Dates: 16 October 2026 to 10 January 2027
Address: Museumplein 6, 1071 DJ Amsterdam
Why we love it: James McNeill Whistler was the art world’s original provocateur, a sharp-dressed American in London who sued critics, scandalised the Royal Academy and painted fog as if it were silk. Astonishingly, this is the first retrospective the Netherlands has ever given him. Expect his white symphonies and moody Thames nocturnes, plus plenty of the dandy swagger that made him infamous.
It’s a few steps from the Stedelijk, so do Kusama in the morning, Whistler after lunch. And while you’re there, slip into Yoshitoshi: Master of the Moon (until 4 January), a hundred dreamy Japanese woodblock prints, all about the moon. Delectable.
9. The 61st Venice Biennale: In Minor Keys, Venice
Best for: One last Venetian escape before winter
Dates: Until 22 November 2026
Price: €30 for both main venues
Address: Giardini and Arsenale, Castello, Venice
Why we love it: Consider this your gentle nudge, because time is running out. This year’s Biennale was conceived by the late curator Koyo Kouoh, who died before it opened, and La Biennale chose to stage it exactly as she designed it. The result is quieter and more intimate than usual, built around the idea of “minor keys”: improvisation, solitude, the overlooked. More than 100 national pavilions fill the Giardini, the Arsenale and venues across the city.
November is secretly the best time to go. The crowds have gone, the light is gorgeous and you can actually get a seat at Harry’s Bar. Autumn hours are 10am to 6pm, closed Mondays (except Monday 16 November). Give it two days, minimum.
10. The 18th Lyon Biennale, Lyon
Best for: A food-and-art weekend in France’s gastronomic capital
Dates: Until 13 December 2026
Address: Main venue: Les Grandes Locos, 25 ter quai Pierre Sémard, 69350 La Mulatière
Why we love it: If Venice feels like too much, Lyon is the clever alternative. Curated by Catherine Nichols under the gorgeously dreamy title To Pass From One Dream to Another, this edition spreads 120 artists and nearly 400 works across 11 venues. The main event is Les Grandes Locos, a vast former railway workshop, but the joy is in the detours.
The Musée des Tissus has reopened especially for the occasion, there’s art in a car park (natch), and the Cour des Loges hotel in Old Lyon has turned its Florentine courtyard into a venue. One Biennale Pass covers all eleven. Then go for quenelles. It’s a tough job, etc.
11. Picasso – Bacon: What It Feels Like to Be Human, Albertina, Vienna
Best for: A pre-Christmas markets cultural fix
Dates: Until 31 January 2027
Address: Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Vienna
Why we love it: Pairing Picasso with Francis Bacon is the kind of dinner party we’d kill to attend (what an interesting dinner party that would have been!). Two artists who pulled the human body apart and reassembled it, hung side by side in the Habsburgs’ former palace for the Albertina’s 250th birthday. It’s raw, unsettling and impossible to look away from.
Stay for Women Artists of the Albertina (30 October to 17 January), the museum’s first-ever show devoted to the women in its collection, spanning the 15th century to the 1970s. Then go for Sachertorte. Obviously.
12. Faro Santander, Santander, Spain
Best for: Getting there before everyone else does
Dates: Opened 8 September 2026; Modern Mexico runs until 10 January 2027
Address: Edificio Pereda, Santander, Cantabria
Why we love it: Europe’s newest museum is also one of its most beautiful. David Chipperfield has transformed Banco Santander’s 1795 former headquarters, overlooking the bay, into a ten-storey art centre, his first museum in Spain. One whole floor is given over to the bank’s collection, and we’re talking Velázquez, Titian, Goya, Zurbarán, El Greco, Sorolla and Picasso.
The opening shows are just as strong. Modern Mexico brings Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera from the Gelman Santander Collection, and The Symptomatic Surreal explores Leonora Carrington’s wartime connection to the city. Finish on the Los Jardines de Faro terrace with a glass of something cold and a view across the bay. Stunning.
Can’t make it abroad? Frida: The Making of an Icon is at Tate Modern until 3 January 2027, and it’s broken every pre-sale record in Tate’s history. Consider your Christmas list sorte
