12 Unmissable Museum Shows to See Across Europe in 2026

From canonical figures to underrepresented voices, here are some of the biggest exhibitions kicking off at the start of 2026.

“Cézanne” at Fondation Beyeler
January 25–May 25, 2026

Paul Cézanne, a permanent fixture in art history textbooks, has been gaining more attention from institutions in recent years as major exhibitions dedicated to the Modern art pioneer continue to appear. Following at Tate Modern, which opened in 2022, and , which opened this summer in the artist’s hometown of Aix-en-Provence, France, Basel’s Fondation Beyeler will stage a monographic exhibition on the French master in 2026. Featuring around 80 oil paintings and watercolors from private and institutional collections, the show focuses on the last phase of Cézanne’s career, when his artistic power culminated in the work he created in his South of France studio, including the landscapes of Provence and the Montagne Sainte-Victoire.

“Yellow. Beyond Van Gogh’s Favourite Colour” at Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
February 13–May 17, 2026

The color yellow holds a special place in late-19th-century aesthetics. In Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel , a yellow book leads the eponymous protagonist into aesthetic decadence. Wilde’s contemporaries published an illustrated quarterly, , which featured risqué material for their repressive Victorian era. Across the pond, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” highlighted the trappings of domestic life.

In the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, Vincent van Gogh developed his own fixation with yellow. His iconic series of celebrates its varied appearance in nature. In canvas after canvas, Van Gogh captured the alternately spiky and celestial flowers in gold and mustard hues. According to his artist friend Emile Bernard, yellow was his favorite color, “the symbol of the light that he sought in people’s hearts as well as in works of art.”

uses Van Gogh’s sunflowers as a starting point to consider the very essence of yellow. The show explores art, fashion, music, and literature from around 1900 and includes a light installation by contemporary artist Olafur Eliasson.

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Danh Vo at Stedelijk Museum
February 14–August 2, 2026

History, religion, freedom, and eroticism are at the heart of Danh Vo’s forthcoming exhibition at the Stedelijk, which gave the artist one of his first solo museum shows back in 2008. If that sounds like a lot of ground to cover, Vo is known for the capaciousness of his conceptual, multidisciplinary exhibitions. They link objects and ideas from across disparate places and times.

This globe-hopping is key to Vo’s biography as well. The artist himself, born in Vietnam in 1975, left with his family in 1979 via a large boat his father bought, emigrated to Denmark, studied in Germany, and now lives between Mexico City and a farm just north of Berlin. Histories linked to the Vietnam War, his family, and his own art school days play out across found objects, archival photographs, letters, sculpture, and more. One of his most celebrated pieces, (2010–14), features a full-scale replica of the Statue of Liberty, broken into and exhibited in hundreds of parts.

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“The First Homosexuals” at Kunstmuseum Basel
March 7–August 2, 2026

Homosexuality, as we understand it today, was only beginning to be defined in the late 19th century, and this emerging identity was inevitably explored and expressed through the arts. Artists often congregated at the bohemian fringe of fast-modernizing cities, experimenting with gender and same-sex relationships—realities openly reflected in their work.

Adapted from a 2025 exhibition at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago, in Basel will feature around 100 works—including paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and photographs—tracing the period between the 1860s, when the term “homosexual” first appeared in the German-speaking world, and the 1930s, when vibrant queer subcultures of Weimar Germany were stamped out by the Third Reich. While little has been revealed about the Basel version, the Chicago show highlighted overlooked queer artists such as Romaine Brooks, Marie Laurencin, Gerda Wegener, Hans von Marées, and Rupert Bunny.

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“Rothko in Florence” at Palazzo Strozzi
March 14–August 23, 2026

In 1950, Mark Rothko traveled to Florence with his wife, Mell, for the first time during a trip to Italy. There, he encountered Fra Angelico’s frescoes at San Marco and Michelangelo’s vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Rothko was captivated by these masterpieces, with the latter inspiring his creation of the Seagram Murals in the late 1950s. He returned to Florence for a second visit in 1966.

Rothko’s intimate relationship with Florence and the influence of Italian art traditions on his practice will be highlighted in the blockbuster show at Palazzo Strozzi. Billed as one of the most significant exhibitions of the iconic Abstract Expressionist artist held in Italy, the show is curated by his son, Christopher Rothko, and Elena Geuna. The retrospective retraces Rothko’s career through more than 70 works from the 1930s to the 1960s, examining the influence of Italian art across different periods—from Renaissance spatial construction and figurative approaches in his early works to the ethereal color field paintings that evoke a sense of transcendence reminiscent of Italian masters’ depictions of the divine. The show also includes two satellite projects at the Museo di San Marco and the vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana to honor the city’s unique connection with one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

“Simon Fujiwara: A Whole New World” at Mudam Luxembourg
March 20–August 23, 2026

In Disney’s classic , the title character and Princess Jasmine sing about their desire for eye-opening adventures to wondrous places in the theme song as they bond over a magic carpet ride. Simon Fujiwara once played Aladdin himself, performing the musical’s title role at school. This early experience laid the groundwork for the London-born, Berlin-based artist’s mid-career survey show at Mudam Luxembourg, where he takes audiences on a journey through his own worlds of wonder while reflecting on contemporary issues related to selfhood, the commodification of experiences, and trauma amid the ever-changing media landscape.

In (2020–ongoing), Fujiwara’s cartoon character searches for an authentic self in the age of social media; the distorted image of self is examined in works such as (2016), (2015–2016), and (2009–2013). The consumption of historical trauma is explored in (2017–2020), in which the artist reconstructs Anne Frank’s history after the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Fujiwara’s worlds of wonder may not be as shining, shimmering, and splendid as Aladdin sings, but they nonetheless offer a positive energy boost to confront the absurd realities of contemporary life.

“Matisse: 1941–1954” at Grand Palais
March 24–July 26, 2026

In the early 1940s, Henri Matisse was diagnosed with intestinal cancer and underwent surgery that left him weak and at times wheelchair-bound. The artist was already in his 70s and had several decades of successful art-making behind him. Instead of quitting while he was ahead, Matisse used his significant new constraints to find new ways of making. He famously landed on cut-out gouaches, which retained the color, energy, and decorative elements of his earlier work. When Matisse died in 1954, in his eighties, he left behind a final chapter that also included paintings, drawings, illustrated books, textiles, and stained glass.

The Grand Palais, in collaboration with the Centre Pompidou, will mount over 230 of these works, which Matisse executed between 1941 and 1954. Standouts, according to the press materials, include monumental panels, brush-and-ink drawings, Matisse’s Jazz artist’s book, and some of his most exceptional cut-outs: La Tristesse du roi, Zulma, La Danseuse créole, and Nus bleus. The presentation maintains that throughout all of Matisse’s final work, painting remained “at the heart of his approach.”

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“Maria Lassnig and Edvard Munch: Painting Flow = Life Flow” at Hamburger Kunsthalle
March 27–August 30, 2026

Hamburger Kunsthalle is mounting the first major two-person exhibition of work by painters Maria Lassnig and Edvard Munch. The pair were born more than half a century apart—Lassnig in Germany in 1919 and Munch in Norway in 1863—yet they’re united in their wildly expressive approaches to their medium. Munch’s most famous images are iconic depictions of loneliness and existential angst, while Lassnig’s figures often suggest deep discomfort with their own bodies. Both artists manipulated color to convey feeling and privileged the depiction of sensation over any kind of realism.

The show’s title, “Painting Flow = Life Flow,” derives from a Lassnig painting and indicates, according to the press materials, “the inseparable connection between art and life.” As such, the museum aims to weave these artists’ dramatic biographies into the presentation. Neither ever married, and their practices demonstrate both deep, inward-looking reflection and a tension between independence and a desire to connect.

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Lee Miller at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
April 3–July 26, 2026

Photographer Lee Miller‘s work resists simple categorization. Over a lifetime, she embraced new challenges, including the initial hurdle of getting behind the camera after beginning her career as a model. Her Vogue years were soon replaced by surreal explorations of the body in collaboration with then-lover Man Ray. Miller went on to produce wry street photography in Paris and documented Egypt and Syria’s timeless beauty. Just as she was gaining recognition as an acclaimed artist, she pivoted, defying gendered expectations to become a frontline photojournalist during WWII. Her devastating images of Nazi concentration camps remain crucial historical records.

This long-overdue retrospective debuted at Tate Britain, earning a rare fleet of five-star reviews, before traveling to the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris.

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“Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style” at King’s Gallery
April 10–October 18, 2026

Though less of an obvious style icon than her sister Princess Margaret or her daughter-in-law Princess Diana, the late Queen certainly had a trademark look that carried her through her 70-year reign. Her clothes, often characterized by a bold splash of color, served as inspiration for a host of international designers, including Erdem Moralioglu, Richard Quinn, and Christopher Kane. Each contributed one example from a past collection to the first comprehensive exhibition of the monarch’s wardrobe, which brings together 200 pieces ranging from couture to tailored casual wear. Their picks will be paired with a complementary item from the Queen’s fashion archive.

“From the decline of the court dressmaker to the rise of couturiers like Hartnell and Hardy Amies, her garments tell the story of Britain and its changing identity through fashion,” Kane said, as part of a broader reflection on the Queen’s fashion legacy. “For designers and students, it offers a masterclass in silhouette, construction, repetition, symbolism and, perhaps most importantly, restraint.”

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Cao Fei’s “Dash” at Fondazione Prada, Milan
9 April – 28 September 2026

Helen Frankenthaler at Kunstmuseum Basel | Neubau
April 18–August 23, 2026

This spring, the Kunstmuseum Basel will present the largest European exhibition to date of work by Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler. This is the first solo outing for her paintings at a Swiss museum.

Frankenthaler is best known for her groundbreaking “soak-stain” technique: the artist applied diluted paint to unprimed canvas, creating watery, rippling fields of color. As a “Second Generation” abstract expressionist, she looked toward artists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, then found ways to push the movement forward via both technique and content. Frankenthaler distilled her experience of mid-century femininity, among many other aspects of her life, into her profound canvases. She laid the groundwork for the “Color Field” painters, like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, who came after. The press materials cite varied influences on Frankenthaler’s work, from Pablo Picasso’s Cubism to Wassily Kandinsky, Titian, and Claude Monet. The museum plans to integrate paintings “to which Frankenthaler makes explicit reference,” in order to frame “a novel perspective on her oeuvre.”

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