Exhibitions to Watch in 2026

Which exhibitions should be on your radar in 2026?

We’ve gathered a selection of museum and institutional shows worth marking in your calendar – from major international figures to voices shaping the contemporary landscape closer to home.

Exhibitions to Watch in 2026

Which exhibitions should be on your radar in 2026? We’ve gathered a selection of museum and institutional shows worth marking in your calendar – from major international figures to voices shaping the contemporary landscape closer to home.

James Turrell – As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell. Photo: Mads Smidstrup © ARoS, 2025. From James Turrell’s visit in As Seen Below, June 2025.

As a new year brings new exhibitions to look forward to, we’ve gathered a selection of museum and institutional shows worth marking in your calendar. From major international figures to voices shaping the contemporary landscape closer to home, these are the exhibitions we’ll be paying attention to in the year ahead.

Nivaagaards Malerisamling
Group exhibition | The Forest, 17.01.26 – 19.04.26
Bringing together historical works from the museum’s collection and contemporary positions, The Forest examines the shifting role of the forest in Danish culture, politics, and imagination. Against the backdrop of current ambitions to expand forested areas in Denmark, the exhibition considers how forests have been understood as sites of myth, national identity, resource, and ecological responsibility. Through painting, sculpture, film, and research-based practices, the exhibition opens a dialogue between past and present perspectives on nature, rewilding, and our evolving relationship with the landscape.

Den Frie Udstillingsbygning
Eliyah Mesayer | The Speaker’s Room, 23.01.26 – 03.05.26
In The Speaker’s Room, Eliyah Mesayer returns to Den Frie with a new chapter of her ongoing fictional project Illiyeen – here unfolding as a shadow version of a state office, where the architecture of power is shifted from the political to the poetic. Through installation, text, and spatial absence, Mesayer explores how authority, nationhood, and collective identity can be reimagined beyond fixed borders and symbols. Presented in Den Frie’s OSLO space, the exhibition continues the institution’s commitment to long-term, returning collaborations with artists.

From left: Emmarosa Liebgen, Roden, 2025. Emmarosa Liebgen and Galleri Maria Friis. Photo: Emmarosa Liebgen. | Den Frie, Eliyah Mesayer. Credit: Eliyah Mesayer & Joakim Wei Bernild.

Gammel Strand, Dennis Oppenheim, 2 Stage Transfer Drawing (Returning to a Past State), 1971. © Dennis Oppenheim Estate.

Gammel Strand
Group exhibition | Daddy Issues, 29.01.26 – 03.05.26
Daddy Issues turns its attention to the figure of the father – a role that has long occupied public debate, literature, and popular culture, yet has been comparatively underexplored in the visual arts. Bringing together works by 25 Danish and international artists, the exhibition examines fatherhood across generations, addressing themes of authority, absence, care, conflict, and inheritance. Through painting, sculpture, film, photography, and installation, Daddy Issues opens a space for personal reflection and collective reconsideration of the father-child relationship in all its contradictions.

Cisternerne
Marina Abramović | Seven Deaths, 14.03.26 – 30.11.26
In Seven Deaths, Marina Abramović presents a cinematic opera installation staged within the subterranean architecture of Cisternerne. Drawing on seven iconic female roles from opera history and set to arias famously performed by Maria Callas, the work unfolds as a sequence of films in which Abramović herself appears opposite actor Willem Dafoe. Shown here in a fully immersive, hour-long presentation, Seven Deaths explores themes of love, loss, mortality, and endurance – marking a major institutional presentation by one of the most influential artists of our time.

Courtesy of Cisternerne, Still from Marina Abramović: Seven Deaths.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Sophie Calle, 26.03.26 – 23.08.26
Louisiana presents a major exhibition with Sophie Calle, one of the most influential figures in contemporary art, known for her distinctive interplay between fact and fiction, image and text, distance and intimacy. Drawing on several decades of practice, the exhibition brings together recent works alongside key pieces that explore themes of love, loss, vulnerability, and perception. Created in close collaboration with the artist, the presentation reflects Calle’s enduring interest in how personal narratives unfold within public and institutional frameworks.

ARKEN Museum of Contemporary Art
SUPERFLEX | Come Hell or High Water, 07.05.26 – 03.01.27
In Come Hell or High Water, SUPERFLEX transforms ARKEN into a speculative future landscape shaped by rising sea levels and ecological uncertainty. Drawing on the collective’s long-standing engagement with climate, power, and systems of survival, the exhibition stages the museum as a submerged ark – a space for reflection on coexistence, adaptation, and responsibility. Combining a new large-scale project with works spanning more than three decades, the exhibition offers a timely and immersive perspective on the futures we are already moving toward.

From left: 1. Sophie Calle, Ma mère, mon chat, mon père, 2017 © Sophie Calle / ADAGP, Paris, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. 2. SUPERFLEX, 2023. Photo: Daniel Stjerne.

James Turrell – As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell. Photo: Mads Smidstrup © ARoS, 2025. From James Turrell’s visit in As Seen Below, June 2025.

James Turrell – As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace by James Turrell. Photo: Mads Smidstrup © ARoS, 2025. From James Turrell’s visit in As Seen Below, June 2025.

ARoS Aarhus Art Museum
James Turrell | As Seen Below – The Dome, a Skyspace, Opening 19.06.26
In June 2026, ARoS opens As Seen Below – The Dome, James Turrell’s largest Skyspace to date in a museum context. Conceived as a monumental, domed environment where light, colour, and perception become the work itself, the installation invites visitors into a heightened experience of seeing. The opening marks the culmination of ARoS’s long-term architectural and artistic vision The Next Level, positioning the Skyspace as both a major artwork and a new cultural landmark for Aarhus.

Statens Museum for Kunst
Bank & Rau, Randi & Katrine, Hesselholdt & Mejlvang, J&K | Couples Therapy, 29.08.26 – 24.01.27
In Couples Therapy, four Danish artist duos examine collaboration as both artistic method and social structure. Through sculpture, installation, performance, and participatory formats, the exhibition explores what it means to create collectively – navigating intimacy, negotiation, conflict, and care. Staged as an immersive installation that weaves through the museum’s public and hidden spaces, Couples Therapy brings together works spanning the artists’ practices alongside new commissions, offering a reflective and critical look at togetherness in a time that calls for collective action.

Bank & Rau, Hesselholdt & Mejlvang, J&K / Janne Schäfer and Kristine Agergaard and Randi & Katrine. Photo: Natascha Thiara Rydvald ©SMK

Kunstmuseum Brandts
Tau Lewis, 19.09.26 – 02.05.27
Kunstmuseum Brandts presents the first Scandinavian solo exhibition by Tau Lewis, whose hand-sewn textile sculptures draw on diasporic histories, ritual, and collective memory. Working with recycled materials and found natural elements, Lewis creates immersive sculptural environments where myth, spirituality, and lived experience intertwine. Unfolding as a total installation, the exhibition brings forward alternative worlds shaped by care, transformation, and the persistence of ancestral narratives across time.

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Tracey Emin | A Second Life, 07.10.26 – 28.02.27
A Second Life presents a major exhibition by Tracey Emin, tracing nearly four decades of a practice in which autobiography, vulnerability, and artistic conviction are inseparable. Created in close collaboration with the artist and including previously unseen works, the exhibition spans painting, drawing, sculpture, textile, film, and installation. With a particular focus on Emin’s sustained commitment to painting, the presentation reflects on survival, transformation, and the ways in which life experiences are continually reshaped through art.

Brandts, Tau Lewis, Dawn, 2025. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: Chase Barnes

Together, these exhibitions reflect the breadth and complexity of contemporary artistic practice today – from large-scale institutional commissions to more intimate, research-driven projects. Across different formats and geographies, they point to ongoing conversations around perception, power, ecology, collaboration, and lived experience.

As 2026 unfolds, these are among the exhibitions we’ll be following closely – and returning to – as part of a year shaped by strong artistic positions and sustained institutional ambition.