Summer has come to a close, and with the shorter days comes a rich prospectus of London exhibitions.
Major figures in European painting, contemporary sculpture, fashion, design and photography will ring in the new season. These are six exhibitions worth knowing about.
Van Eyck: The Portraits
21st November 2026 to 11th April 2027
Van Eyck helped redefine European portraiture, not least by turning his attention away from royalty and towards merchants, craftsmen and members of his own circle. Seen together, the paintings offer a uniquely (for the time) intimate glimpse into the anonymous, everyday people who coloured his world.
Jan van Eyck’s portraits are defined by their immediacy. His sitters lived six centuries ago, yet the smallest details of their faces, from a hint of stubble to a flushed cheek or watchful expression, make them feel uncannily present.
The National Gallery will bring together all nine of Van Eyck’s known painted portraits for the first and only time, alongside his surviving portrait drawing. The exhibition includes the Arnolfini Portrait, as well as works travelling from collections across Europe.
Jan van Eyck (1390-1441), Portrait of a Man (Giovanni Arnolfini?), circa 1435-38. Oil on wood. 30 x 21.6 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Photo: Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / Christoph Schmidt
National Gallery
Es Devlin: Other Worlds
2nd October 2026 to 4th April 2027
Es Devlin has spent three decades defying the pigeon hole. Her practice has moved between theatre, music, architecture, sculpture and design, encompassing opera sets, monumental public installations and stages for some of the biggest names in popular culture.
Other Worlds is the first European retrospective of her 30-year practice. Alongside installations, films and artworks, the exhibition will include the largest presentation of Devlin’s archive to date and a detailed recreation of her London studio.
Model of Mirror Maze by Es Devlin. Photo: Richard Round-Turner for the Design Museum
Design Museum
The 90s: Art and Fashion
8th October 2026 to 14th February 2027
The 1990s was arguably mankind’s creative zenith. It was a time before the mass humanisation of internet 2.0, where cultures were overlapping but not consuming one another. Magazines and nightclubs became as influential as galleries and museums; art, fashion, music and photography of all creeds was at its coolest. And nowhere was coolest than Cool Britannia.
Curated by Edward Enninful, The 90s: Art and Fashion brings together photography, painting, installation and couture, with work by Alexander McQueen, Corinne Day, Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Vivienne Westwood, Chris Ofili, David Sims, Tracey Emin and Juergen Teller.
Chris Ofili (b. 1968), No Woman No Cry, 1998. Oil paint, acrylic paint, graphite, polyester resin, printed paper, glitter, map pins and elephant dung on canvas. Tate. © Chris Ofili, courtesy Victoria Miro, London
Tate Britain
Robert Ryman: The Real Thing
8th October 2026 to 28th February 2027
Robert Ryman made a career out of asking how little a painting needs in order to remain a painting. His works are often white, square and, at first glance, remarkably sparse. Look closer and a nuanced brilliance emerges: the texture of the paint, the brushwork, the surface beneath it and the way the work interacts with the wall and the light.
The Real Thing brings more than 60 works together, spanning Ryman’s career from the mid-1950s to the early 2010s. It is his first major UK presentation in more than 30 years.
A show that requires (and most certainly inspires) quietude; Ryman’s paintings are designed to draw you in. And any excuse to spend a tranquil afternoon at The Barbican must be jumped on.
Robert Ryman (1930-2019), Untitled (Background Music), circa 1962. The Greenwich Collection, New York. Photo: © The Greenwich Collection, New York / Bill Jacobson Studio. © 2026 Robert Ryman / DACS, London
Barbican
Salman Toor: Someone Like You
2nd October 2026 to 10th January 2027
Salman Toor’s paintings inhabit a world of bars, bedrooms, parties and city streets. His figures’ imagined lives, both charged and mundane, are shaped by the artist’s own frenetic cultural voyages.
The Courtauld’s exhibition is Toor’s first solo show in Europe, bringing together 19 paintings made since 2019. The works centre around the desire to find somewhere to belong, while often retaining a sense of playfulness.
Born in Lahore and now based in New York, Toor draws on both South Asian and Western art histories.
Salman Toor (b.1983), The Bar on East 13th, 2019, Oil on panel, 36 x 48 inches (91.4 x 121.9 cm) © Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York, and Thomas Dane Gallery. Photo: Genevieve Hanson
Courtauld
Liz Larner: A Hard Line to Bend
11th September 2026 to 17th January 2027
Liz Larner is one of the most adventurous sculptors working today, and her first exhibition at a major UK institution arrives at Camden Art Centre this autumn.
A Hard Line to Bend brings together work made primarily over the past decade, with Larner moving between clay, metal, wood and discarded plastic. Her sculptures explore the changing relationship between humans and the material world, drawing on ancient mythology and outer space.
Among the central works is a new sculpture inspired by Lilith, incorporating a bronze human hand and owl foot alongside a branch from the artist’s studio. It is an appropriately strange conclusion to a show concerned with what happens when familiar ideas are pushed into unfamiliar forms, by way of classical stylistic choices.
The exhibition is free to attend.
Installation view, Liz Larner, A hard line to bend. Camden Art Centre, 2026. Photo Rob Harris.
