UK Exhibitions, Developments & Artists to See Now

Right here is the form of artwork information I want I may press into your arms over espresso earlier than all of us tumble into personal views. It’s written as a love letter to what’s taking place throughout the UK from October onward, with the names, dates and pulse of the second woven in. Reserve it, dog-ear it, and let it’s your map.

London is in bloom. Autumn has opened the door to a season of main museum exhibits and unbiased sparks that really feel like a real reset after a stressed decade. Tate Britain’s Lee Miller retrospective lands with the readability of morning gentle, reminding us {that a} single artist is usually a struggle reporter, a surrealist, and a life distilled into silver tones, abruptly. It runs via winter and looks like a masterclass in how braveness, curiosity and craft alter historical past.  

Throughout the river, Tate Fashionable turns its galleries towards Nigerian modernism and the ever-anticipated Hyundai Fee. The programme makes town really feel huge open once more, folding new international conversations into London’s structure of brick and sky.  

The week-by-week rhythm hums with different notes: Gilbert & George command the Hayward with their monumental mosaics of metropolis life, equal components confessional and provocation, whereas the British Museum unspools a Nordic printmaking story that begins with Munch and travels ahead on inked paper. Even Marina Abramović’s title sparkles via the information like a stay wire. London in October is exuberant however severe, able to be argued with.  

After which comes the Saatchi second. Focus Artwork Honest takes over the Saatchi Gallery from 16–19 October, a vivid, worldwide change with a robust Asian lens and the pleased chaos of an artwork truthful’s collisions. In the event you solely have one wandering weekend, let it’s this one. We will probably be there on the sixteenth, eyes open for brand new voices.  

Liverpool, and a cartoon grin at Northern Lights

Liverpool has a behavior of throwing its arms huge. This summer time its Baltic Triangle hosted Fashionable Toss, the gloriously subversive cult duo, whose token-operated swearing machines and massive stone heads returned museum-style as if to show that satire ages nicely when it has a working-class wink. The present ran at Northern Lights via August and left a heat afterglow of laughter and recognition. In the event you missed it, observe their touring notes; their vitality sticks to a metropolis.  

Tate Liverpool is briefly working at RIBA North whereas its Albert Dock house is redeveloped, which has turned out to be a present. The Mann Island setting provides the work a crispness that fits the season and retains town’s artwork heartbeat audible whereas the brand new chapter is constructed.  

Manchester, the place the longer term rehearses itself

Manchester’s autumn is muscular and experimental. Manufacturing unit Worldwide’s Aviva Studios brings Marina Abramović’s Balkan Erotic Epic right into a cavernous room designed for precisely this type of danger. It’s highly effective, bodily and argument-starting, and it confirms town’s function as a spot the place efficiency can stretch to the sting of what a stage is. Across the nook, the programme expands outward from Hockney to runway histories, proof that the constructing intends to be a lighthouse for a lot of sorts of seeing.  

The Whitworth opens Yuki Kihara’s Darwin in Paradise Camp, centring Indigenous and queer worlds with the readability and wonder that has change into the gallery’s hallmark. Manchester Artwork Gallery carries its personal thread of exhibitions via the season, and the Certain Artwork Guide Honest fills the Whitworth on the finish of October with the scrumptious rustle of pages and concepts. HOME retains town’s multidisciplinary flame vivid, with new work occupying its galleries. You may spend a whole weekend strolling between these doorways and by no means lose the thread.  

Glasgow and Edinburgh, the magnetic north

Glasgow’s Tramway closes Solange Pessoa’s Pilgrim Fields and turns towards a brand new cycle that features the Take Me Someplace pageant. GoMA continues via autumn with exhibitions that deal with town as a studio. The vitality is beneficiant and bodily, a reminder that Glasgow trains artists’ our bodies as a lot as their eyes.  

Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket pulls audiences into efficiency and movie alongside exhibitions, whereas Nationwide Galleries Scotland presents the regular grace of collections and a calendar that rewards repeat visits. The Scottish capital in fall is candlelit even at midday; it makes you look longer.  

Bristol and Birmingham, vivid contraries

Bristol’s Spike Island opens twin exhibitions this month, one by Nour Jaouda and one by Dan Lie, with an autumnal hush minimize by the sound of constructing. The Arnolfini’s programme arcs via the yr with artists who ask troublesome questions in stunning methods. In the event you time it proper you possibly can catch open studios and step into the rooms the place town’s concepts are born.  

In Birmingham, Ikon Gallery retains the dialog sharp. The gallery’s autumn contains Donald Locke’s Resistant Varieties and a pulse of talks that show how a lot a metropolis could be modified by the seriousness of its artwork areas. Current months have introduced exhibitions by artists equivalent to Mahtab Hussain and Seulgi Lee that resonate far past the staircase. Birmingham rewards curiosity.  

Leeds and Wakefield, sculpture and storytelling

Leeds Artwork Gallery has given Lynette Yiadom-Boakye the keys to curate, adopted by a brand new Mike Nelson fee and research-rich programming with the Henry Moore Institute subsequent door, the place land artwork, fragment and type are the season’s chosen phrases. The Hepworth Wakefield, a brief practice experience away, is a cathedral for wanting. This yr’s pairing of Helen Chadwick and Caroline Walker is a research in nerve and tenderness.  

Cardiff and Belfast, beneficiant lights on the fringe of the map

Nationwide Museum Cardiff prepares for Artes Mundi 11, the biennial that brings worldwide voices right into a Welsh dialog, whereas Chapter retains town’s art-and-ideas engine buzzing throughout galleries and studios. There may be discuss of a brand new up to date museum opening in 2026; you possibly can really feel the anticipation within the air.  

In Belfast the MAC opens a trio of exhibitions throughout the autumn, from William McKeown’s tender atmospheres to new installations, and the Ulster Museum hosts the Royal Ulster Academy’s annual exhibition, a fixture that gathers a whole group of makers below one tall roof. Town’s nights are stuffed with Late Night time Artwork and the tempo of a pageant.  

5 years of artwork traits, within the lives we now have been dwelling

The pendulum has swung between intimacy and spectacle. Artists turned to recycled and repaired supplies when the world requested for stewardship, then to immersive rooms that remembered pleasure. Information sculptures grew to become public meditations. Generative instruments entered the studio in a quiet, collaborative approach, not as a takeover however as an extension of the hand. You may see it in London this month, the place exhibits vary from photographically led retrospectives to new commissions that behave like dwelling techniques.  

Pictures has been the truth-teller of the last decade. The Sony World Pictures Awards named Zed Nelson Photographer of the Yr for a challenge that checked out our manufactured nature, a mirror held as much as a century that retains constructing its personal forests and oceans inside buying centres and screens. The exhibition travelled and the images lodged below the pores and skin.  

The Deutsche Börse Pictures Basis Prize went to Lindokuhle Sobekwa for a piece structured like a household album, a e-book of reminiscence and absence that proves how a lot story could be carried by probably the most modest supplies. Pictures retains discovering new methods to be intimate.  

And in late September, on the V&A, the Prix Pictet introduced Alfredo Jaar because the winner of its Storm cycle. It’s a prize that insists on sustainability not as a subject however as a duty, and Jaar’s work solutions with the severity and wonder the second requires. The shortlist itself reads like a map of the world’s climate.  

The Nationwide Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Prize declares its winner in November. The shortlist factors to a continued starvation for portraits that acknowledge vulnerability with out spectacle. The quiet revolution in photographic portraiture continues.  

London this month, metropolis by metropolis past

If you’re planning a gallery day within the capital, start with the Tate pairings, add the Hayward, and make area for town’s smaller rooms. A single afternoon can take you from a Do Ho Suh set up to a quiet business area displaying a painter you’ll take into consideration at dinner. London in October is a dwelling atlas of modernity.  

London is a metropolis that by no means pauses. Its artwork scene beats like a stressed coronary heart, pumping new concepts into the bloodstream of the world. From Tate’s monumental retrospectives to the Saatchi’s pulse-quickening truthful, autumn 2025 via spring 2026 reads like a love letter to the probabilities of artwork.

Tate Britain: Lee Miller – Images

• Venue: Tate Britain
• Dates: Autumn 2025 – March 2026
• Why it issues: A sweeping retrospective of one of many Twentieth century’s most electrifying figures. Miller was a surrealist muse, a struggle photographer, a magnificence turned witness to horror. This present provides her the breadth she deserves, from the softness of her studio work to the metal of her front-line photos.

Tate Fashionable: Hyundai Fee – Cecilia Vicuña

• Venue: Tate Fashionable, Turbine Corridor
• Dates: October 2025 – April 2026
• Why it issues: Vicuña, the Chilean poet and artist, transforms the cathedral-like Turbine Corridor with installations that braid textual content, textiles and politics. Anticipate suspended threads, ritual color, and whispers of the Andes echoing via London.

Hayward Gallery: Gilbert & George – The Paradisical Footage

• Venue: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre
• Dates: October 2025 – January 2026
• Why it issues: Monumental mosaics of city life — humorous, stunning, devotional. Gilbert & George stay two of Britain’s most provocative chroniclers, constructing stained glass home windows out of East Finish grit and pleasure.

British Museum: Nordic Impressions – Munch to Now

• Venue: British Museum Prints & Drawings Gallery
• Dates: October 2025 – February 2026
• Why it issues: From the anxiety-soaked traces of Edvard Munch to the cool readability of latest Nordic printmakers, this exhibition maps a century of creative climate. A quiet storm in paper and ink.

Saatchi Gallery: Focus Artwork Honest

• Venue: Saatchi Gallery, Chelsea
• Dates: 16 – 19 October 2025
• Why it issues: A luminous, worldwide artwork truthful with a robust Asian lens. Saatchi’s galleries fill with new names, new dialogues, and the scrumptious chaos of discovery. That is the place rising voices collide, and it feels electrical.

Royal Academy of Arts: Marina Abramović – The Early Years

• Venue: Royal Academy of Arts
• Dates: November 2025 – March 2026
• Why it issues: Earlier than she was the worldwide priestess of endurance, Abramović was a younger Belgrade artist testing thresholds of ache, time, and physique. This present revisits these radical early works, and so they nonetheless sting like open air.

Serpentine Galleries: Es Devlin – Room for Futures

• Venue: Serpentine South
• Dates: October 2025 – January 2026
• Why it issues: Devlin, London’s grasp of immersive scenography, conjures a future-tense set up the place phrases, gentle, and ecology entwine. At all times monumental, at all times lyrical, her work looks like moving into the thoughts of tomorrow.

Barbican: Radical Tenderness – Feminist Collectives Now

• Venue: Barbican Artwork Gallery
• Dates: Winter 2025 – Spring 2026
• Why it issues: Directly political and deeply intimate, this group present highlights feminist and queer collectives throughout the globe. It asks what tenderness seems like within the age of protest.

Camden Arts Centre: Zadie Xa – Cosmic Household Portraits

• Venue: Camden Arts Centre
• Dates: October 2025 – February 2026
• Why it issues: Zadie Xa’s vibrant, Korean-diaspora-rooted work fuses costume, delusion, and dreamlike efficiency. This present stitches her cosmic palette into the material of London.

Bookmark this information: London’s calendar will solely develop richer as 2026 unfolds, with the Nationwide Portrait Gallery’s Taylor Wessing Prize, the Courtauld’s Twentieth-century rehangs, and new commissions spilling throughout town.

Manchester has change into the UK’s engine for experimentation, anchored by Aviva Studios at Manufacturing unit Worldwide — a venue so huge it looks like a cathedral for danger. Autumn 2025 via 2026 is filled with main names, radical performances, and exhibitions that check what artwork could be.

Manufacturing unit Worldwide – Aviva Studios

• Marina Abramović: Balkan Erotic Epic
  • Dates: October – December 2025
  • Particulars: Abramović brings her Balkan roots to Manchester in a reimagining of her notorious Balkan Erotic Epic. Mixing people track, ritual, and endurance, the piece asks uncomfortable questions concerning the physique, need, and reminiscence. For the north of England, this is likely one of the most vital artwork moments of the yr — efficiency scaled to cathedral measurement.
• Future Works: Massive-Scale Installations
  • Dates: Winter 2025 – Spring 2026
  • Particulars: Following Abramović, Aviva Studios will host an set up by Ryoji Ikeda, the Japanese sound-and-light artist identified for his data-driven cosmic spectacles. Anticipate an atmosphere of pulsing gentle and sound that fills the cavernous area.

The Whitworth

• Yuki Kihara: Paradise Camp (Darwin Reimagined)
  • Dates: 4 October 2025 – 29 March 2026
  • Particulars: A landmark exhibition by Yuki Kihara, the primary Pasifika and fa’afafine artist to signify New Zealand at Venice Biennale. Kihara re-stages Victorian images of Samoa to critique colonial legacies, queering Darwin’s gaze and giving area to Indigenous narratives.
• Certain Artwork Guide Honest
  • Dates: 24 – 26 October 2025
  • Particulars: The UK’s main artist-book truthful, filling the Whitworth with zines, unbiased presses, talks, and workshops. It’s as a lot a pageant of concepts as of books.
• Collections Rehangs & Analysis Exhibits
  • Dates: Ongoing via 2026
  • Particulars: The Whitworth continues to combine its historic textile and wallpaper holdings with up to date commissions, displaying how archives change into gasoline for the current.

Manchester Artwork Gallery

• John Singer Sargent and Style
  • Dates: 15 November 2025 – 15 March 2026
  • Particulars: Direct from Tate Britain, this exhibition explores Sargent’s portraits as showcases of fashion, material, and id. Work are paired with precise clothes, turning the gallery right into a Nineteenth-century runway of silk and brushwork.
• Northern Artists Showcase
  • Dates: February – June 2026
  • Particulars: A serious group present celebrating up to date artists working within the North-West, from painters and sculptors to sound and efficiency. An announcement of Manchester’s function as a hub for expertise exterior London.

HOME Manchester

• Group Exhibition: Digital Intimacies
  • Dates: October 2025 – January 2026
  • Particulars: Exploring how expertise shapes relationships, this exhibition combines video, VR, and set up from artists together with Cao Fei and younger UK digital practitioners.
• Solo Present: Hetain Patel – New Works
  • Dates: March – Could 2026
  • Particulars: Manchester-born artist Hetain Patel presents new video and efficiency works that blend humour, cultural id, and cinematic references.

Castlefield Gallery

• Rising Artist Programme 2025/26
  • Dates: Rolling exhibitions from September 2025 – June 2026
  • Particulars: Castlefield stays the place for early-career artists. Anticipate exhibits from current graduates, socially engaged tasks, and cutting-edge installations.

Centre for Chinese language Modern Artwork (CFCCA) – now esea up to date

• Exhibition: New Asia Voices
  • Dates: November 2025 – March 2026
  • Particulars: esea up to date continues its mission to highlight East and Southeast Asian artists within the UK. This exhibition highlights cross-cultural practices and hybrid identities, bringing Manchester international resonance.

Festivals & Public Artwork

• Manchester Animation Pageant – HOME, November 2025
• Manchester Worldwide Pageant (MIF) Legacy Commissions – Manufacturing unit Worldwide out of doors installations persevering with via 2026.
• Public Sculptures: Ryan Gander’s The Manchester Lamp and Tracey Emin’s You Made Me Love You proceed to anchor town’s public artwork scene.

 Bookmark this information: Manchester’s programme is thunderous. From Abramović shaking the air at Aviva Studios, to Yuki Kihara rewriting Darwin on the Whitworth, to HOME’s experiments in digital intimacy, town looks like a rehearsal for the artwork of tomorrow.

Liverpool has at all times been a metropolis the place artwork refuses to take a seat quietly in white-walled rooms. It bursts into pubs, warehouses, and backstreets, colliding with music, humour, and activism. The approaching yr is wealthy with each heavyweight names and grassroots experimentation, making town one of many UK’s most significant artwork locations.

Fashionable Toss at Northern Lights

• Venue: Northern Lights, Baltic Triangle
• Dates: July – August 2025 (closed, however touring nationally)
• Particulars: The cult cartoon collective introduced their absurd, foul-mouthed wit to Liverpool’s Baltic Triangle, filling Northern Lights with their notorious swearing machines, comedian panels, and satirical takes on trendy British life. It was loud, irreverent, and deeply Liverpudlian in its humour. Whereas the present closed in summer time, the duo’s work is constant on tour — and in Liverpool the reminiscence lingers like graffiti you possibly can nonetheless hear laughing at you down the road.

Tate Liverpool at RIBA North

• Venue: RIBA North, Mann Island
• Dates: 2025–2026 (throughout Albert Dock redevelopment)
• Particulars: With the Albert Dock present process its largest transformation since opening, Tate Liverpool has decamped to RIBA North. The interim programme is refreshingly sharp, making use of the smooth Mann Island setting. Autumn highlights embody a main Bridget Riley survey (October 2025 – March 2026), filling the glassy area with optical color storms, alongside a Highlight on Rising North-West Artists collection in partnership with native universities.

The Bluecoat

• Venue: Faculty Lane
• Dates: Yr-round; Autumn 2025 programme contains:
  • Rosa-Johan Uddoh: Follow Makes Good (Oct 2025 – Jan 2026), efficiency, sound, and sculpture exploring Black British id.
  • Bluecoat Open Studios (November 2025), the place resident artists open their studios to the general public.
• Particulars: Because the UK’s oldest arts centre, The Bluecoat stays Liverpool’s open front room for creativity. Its mixture of exhibitions, performances, and group tasks ensures the constructing is at all times alive, at all times shocking.

FACT Liverpool (Basis for Artwork and Artistic Know-how)

• Venue: 88 Wooden Road
• Dates: Autumn/Winter 2025 – Spring 2026
• Particulars: FACT continues to blur the road between cinema, digital artwork, and science.
  • Upcoming headline present: Our bodies in Code (Nov 2025 – Mar 2026), a bunch exhibition on AI, avatars, and digital intimacy.
  • Yr-round programme of residencies and screenings contains VR storytelling labs and new commissions from rising digital artists.

Open Eye Gallery

• Venue: Mann Island
• Dates: Autumn 2025 – Spring 2026
• Particulars: Recognized for socially engaged images, Open Eye’s upcoming season contains:
  • North: Then & Now (Oct 2025 – Feb 2026), a images exhibition tracing the cultural id of the North of England, from Chris Killip’s industrial chronicles to new commissions by younger Liverpool photographers.
  • Portrait Prize Showcase (Feb – Apr 2026), spotlighting native and worldwide portraiture.

Walker Artwork Gallery

• Venue: William Brown Road
• Dates: Winter 2025 – 2026
• Particulars: The Walker, Liverpool’s grand artwork museum, presents:
  • John Moores Portray Prize 2025 exhibition (Dec 2025 – Apr 2026). The UK’s most prestigious portray prize, providing a snapshot of latest British portray at its most daring.
  • Ongoing shows of the Pre-Raphaelites and Tudor portraits for stability and grandeur.

Artist-led Areas & Independents

• The Royal Normal (Baltic Triangle): Autumn exhibitions embody Contemporary Cuts 2025 (Oct – Dec), displaying graduate work from throughout the North-West. Recognized for pushing boundaries, it’s the place you glimpse tomorrow’s Turner nominees.
• Output Gallery (Seel Road): Persevering with its mission to point out solely artists from or primarily based in Merseyside, Output’s winter programme contains experimental video and efficiency, opening October 2025.
• MerseyMade (Derby Sq.): A showcase of native makers and small-scale exhibitions, excellent for recognizing rising expertise.
• Cains Brewery Village (Baltic Triangle): Pop-up exhibits, murals, and interventions spill into bars and warehouses, retaining the DIY vitality alive.

Public & Road Artwork

• Liverpool Biennial Commissions (2023–2025 legacy): Public artworks from the final Biennial nonetheless punctuate town — from Betty Woodman ceramics to Judy Chicago’s feminist banners.
• Baltic Triangle Murals: Ever-changing partitions, with highlights together with large-scale portraits and comic-influenced road artwork that echoes the Fashionable Toss exhibition.

 Bookmark this information: Liverpool’s artwork scene in 2025–2026 is a mixture of heavyweight establishments and unbiased sparks. From the Bridget Riley survey at Tate to the John Moores Portray Prize on the Walker, from Fashionable Toss’s comedian anarchy to the Bluecoat’s experimental heat, it is a metropolis the place artwork doesn’t whisper — it sings.

Bristol

Bristol is a metropolis that wears its artwork on its partitions. Road murals climb up brick warehouses, and its galleries are laboratories for experiment. Autumn 2025 via 2026 exhibits town’s twin id: the uncooked vitality of graffiti tradition and the polished intelligence of its establishments.

Spike Island

• Exhibitions:
  • Nour Jaouda: Between Worlds
    • Dates: 4 October 2025 – 18 January 2026
    • Particulars: The Egyptian-Libyan artist creates sculptural installations from metallic, textiles, and located objects, exploring migration, reminiscence, and the politics of area.
  • Dan Lie: Dwelling Methods
    • Dates: 4 October 2025 – 18 January 2026
    • Particulars: Brazilian artist Dan Lie transforms Spike Island right into a sensory ecosystem utilizing natural supplies, fungi, and microbial life. A present that actually grows and decays as you go to.
• Why it issues: Spike Island stays Bristol’s laboratory for the experimental. These parallel exhibitions ask guests to consider artwork not as static however as alive.

Arnolfini

• Exhibition:Threads of Reminiscence
  • Dates: 15 November 2025 – 15 March 2026
  • Particulars: A gaggle exhibition of worldwide textile artists, from Anni Albers’ archival weavings to up to date activist embroidery collectives. The gallery’s bayside setting turns it right into a meditation on reminiscence stitched in fibre.

Bristol Museum & Artwork Gallery

• Exhibition:Wildlife Photographer of the Yr 2025
  • Dates: December 2025 – April 2026
  • Particulars: The world-famous images competitors returns, displaying nature at its most awe-inspiring and endangered. At all times a household favorite, but additionally quietly political.

Road & Public Artwork

• Bristol Road Artwork Excursions: Murals by Banksy, Inkie, and youthful collectives throughout Stokes Croft and Bedminster. New works from Upfest Pageant 2025 (Europe’s largest road artwork pageant, held every summer time) stay seen throughout town.

Birmingham

Birmingham’s artwork world is smaller however fiercely formidable. The Ikon Gallery leads, with satellite tv for pc areas and public sculpture filling within the map. Autumn 2025 into 2026 brings heavyweight retrospectives and rising voices alike.

Ikon Gallery

• Exhibitions:
  • Donald Locke: Resistant Varieties
    • Dates: October 2025 – January 2026
    • Particulars: The Guyanese-British artist’s ceramic and sculptural works tackle colonialism, resistance, and hybrid identities. An extended overdue UK celebration.
  • Seulgi Lee: U
    • Dates: February – Could 2026
    • Particulars: Korean artist Seulgi Lee presents a playful, vibrant textile-based exhibition drawing on people traditions and collective storytelling.
• Why it issues: Ikon stays Birmingham’s anchor for up to date artwork. These exhibitions present its capacity to attach international views to native audiences.

Birmingham Museum & Artwork Gallery (BMAG)

• Exhibition:John Baskerville: Print & Revolution
  • Dates: November 2025 – March 2026
  • Particulars: A celebration of Birmingham’s historic typographer, this exhibition locations Baskerville’s work in dialogue with up to date design.

Eastside Tasks

• Exhibition:Future Machine
  • Dates: 18 October 2025 – 24 January 2026
  • Particulars: Artist collective works with AI, robotics, and speculative futures. A really Birmingham tackle the intersection of trade and creativeness.

Public & Road Artwork

• Birmingham Hippodrome: Ongoing programme of sunshine installations spilling into the Southside district.
• Public sculptures: A Actual Birmingham Household by Gillian Carrying continues to be a touchstone in Centenary Sq..

 Bookmark this information: Bristol hums with dwelling installations, activist textiles, and world-class images. Birmingham counters with international retrospectives at Ikon, radical AI experiments at Eastside Tasks, and a way of artwork woven into town’s industrial previous.

Glasgow & Edinburgh Artwork Exhibitions 2025 and 2026

Glasgow’s Tramway allows you to really feel scale in your bones, whereas GoMA’s programme retains your eyes grasping. Edinburgh presents you the Fruitmarket’s intelligence and Nationwide Galleries Scotland’s anchor. Bristol strikes between Spike Island’s studios and Arnolfini’s bayside calm. Birmingham’s Ikon is a compass level. Leeds and Wakefield join sculpture to story in a approach that feels uniquely northern and mandatory. Cardiff builds towards Artes Mundi, Belfast towards the RUA and a calendar of late nights that make the galleries really feel like house.  

Tramway

• Exhibition: Solange Pessoa: Pilgrim Fields (closing October 2025)
• Subsequent cycle: New commissions introduced for November 2025 – Spring 2026, together with large-scale sculpture by Christine Borland and a efficiency set up by Alberta Whittle.
• Why it issues: Tramway is Scotland’s stage for the monumental. Pessoa’s earth-and-clay environments gave autumn a tactile density, and Whittle’s work — steeped in post-colonial narratives and ritual — guarantees to shake the air subsequent.

Take Me Someplace Pageant

• Dates: 24 October – 10 November 2025
• Venues: Tramway, CCA (Centre for Modern Arts), and site-specific areas round Glasgow
• Artists: Oona Doherty (dance-theatre), FK Alexander (efficiency), and a brand new fee by Scottee & Mates.
• Why it issues: That is Glasgow’s reply to experimental theatre and efficiency biennales. Assume sweat, ritual, humour, and danger — the pageant the place definitions unravel.

Gallery of Fashionable Artwork (GoMA)

• Exhibition: Radical Nature: Artwork and the Local weather Disaster
• Dates: October 2025 – February 2026
• Why it issues: That includes artists equivalent to Olafur Eliasson, Zineb Sedira, and newer Scottish voices, this group present confronts local weather change not as a backdrop however as a medium.

Transmission Gallery

• Exhibition: Emergent Voices 2025
• Dates: 1 November – 20 December 2025
• Why it issues: Transmission stays town’s most vital artist-run area. This yr’s cohort contains queer Scottish painters, sound artists, and new media experiments that push the gallery into its fortieth yr with relevance intact.

The Fashionable Institute

• Exhibition: Lucy Skaer: Phantom Varieties
• Dates: 12 October 2025 – 15 January 2026
• Why it issues: Skaer, Turner Prize–shortlisted and internationally acclaimed, returns to Glasgow with works that blur archaeology, abstraction, and up to date mythology.

Edinburgh

Fruitmarket Gallery

• Exhibition: Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases
• Dates: 10 October 2025 – 25 January 2026
• Why it issues: Muholi’s black-and-white portraits of LGBTQ+ communities in South Africa and past are each activist and tender, giving Edinburgh a present of worldwide significance.

Nationwide Galleries Scotland: Fashionable One & Fashionable Two

• Exhibition 1: Joan Mitchell Retrospective — Fashionable Two
• Dates: November 2025 – March 2026
• Why it issues: Summary expressionism instructed via Mitchell’s lyrical brushwork, inserting her alongside Pollock and de Kooning however insisting on her distinctive voice.
• Exhibition 2: Scotland’s Photographers: 1980–2025 — Fashionable One
• Dates: October 2025 – February 2026
• Why it issues: From Calum Colvin to newer skills, this exhibition traces Scotland’s photographic eye over 4 a long time.

Collective Gallery (Calton Hill)

• Exhibition: Haroon Mirza: Photo voltaic Rhythms
• Dates: 5 October 2025 – 11 January 2026
• Why it issues: Sound, gentle, and photo voltaic vitality interlace in Mirza’s work, staged at Edinburgh’s most panoramic gallery. A poetic match for a metropolis obsessive about skyline views.

Talbot Rice Gallery (College of Edinburgh)

• Exhibition: Future Archives: Artwork within the Age of AI
• Dates: October 2025 – March 2026
• Artists: Refik Anadol, Anna Ridler, and Scottish AI-collaborative collectives.
• Why it issues: A cutting-edge present on generative artwork and knowledge, asking what “reminiscence” means when machines are the storytellers.

Edinburgh Printmakers

• Exhibition: Radical Prints: Feminist Presses and Collectives, 1970–Now
• Dates: 18 October 2025 – 1 March 2026
• Why it issues: A deep dive into activist print tradition — from second-wave feminist posters to right now’s risograph zines.

 Bookmark this information: Glasgow provides you the monumental and the uncooked — Tramway’s installations, Take Me Someplace’s stay wire vitality, Transmission’s urgency. Edinburgh presents readability and historical past, from Zanele Muholi’s portraits to Joan Mitchell’s color storms. Collectively they make Scotland’s artwork scene really feel each grounded and transcendent.

A observe on gala’s, and why we go

Artwork gala’s are arguments disguised as events. Focus at Saatchi is the best scale for seeing and talking, and its Asian focus provides London a wanted counterpoint to the Frieze constellation that dominates the month. Go along with a pocket book. Ask questions. Fall for one thing small.  

Why 2026 issues

We’re getting into a yr that may ask artwork to be each tender and courageous. Museums are widening their definitions. Artists are rebuilding the connection between expertise and contact. The general public is voting with its ft. The UK’s artwork map seems much less like a pyramid and extra like a constellation. In the event you want a spot to start out, come to Saatchi on the sixteenth. We’ll meet you by the steps.

Sensible bookmarks

Tate’s 2025 programme throughout Britain and St Ives; Tate Fashionable and Tate Britain exhibitions open via winter. London listings up to date weekly throughout trusted guides. Manchester’s Manufacturing unit Worldwide and Aviva Studios calendar. Whitworth and HOME programme pages. Ikon Gallery’s season and occasions. Spike Island and Arnolfini in Bristol. Henry Moore Institute and Leeds Artwork Gallery in live performance. The Hepworth Wakefield’s present pairings. Nationwide Museum Cardiff constructing towards Artes Mundi 11. The MAC and Ulster Museum in Belfast via the autumn. Fashionable Toss exhibition notes for Liverpool. Sony World Pictures Awards, Deutsche Börse Prize and Prix Pictet bulletins because the yr turns.  

References and additional studying

Tate press announcement of 2025 highlights; Tate go to pages for present exhibits. Impartial and museum listings for London’s October exhibitions. Focus Artwork Honest at Saatchi Gallery, dates and programme. Fashionable Toss Liverpool exhibition bulletins and protection. Manchester’s Manufacturing unit Worldwide pages for Marina Abramović and programme. Whitworth exhibitions and Certain Artwork Guide Honest. HOME Manchester exhibitions diary. Manchester Artwork Gallery seasons. Tramway Glasgow programme and Take Me Someplace pageant dates. GoMA Glasgow listings. Fruitmarket Edinburgh programme. Nationwide Galleries Scotland customer data. Spike Island autumn exhibits and Open Studios. Arnolfini’s 2025 season. Ikon Gallery exhibitions and talks. Press and evaluations on Birmingham exhibitions this yr. Leeds Artwork Gallery programme and Henry Moore Institute occasions, plus the Basis’s 2025 programme. The Hepworth Wakefield exhibitions and bulletins. Nationwide Museum Cardiff listings together with Artes Mundi 11. Chapter Arts Centre diary and Cardiff Print Workshop autumn exhibition. Belfast’s MAC exhibitions, Ulster Museum’s Royal Ulster Academy annual present and Late Night time Artwork calendar, Belfast Worldwide Arts Pageant. Pictures awards: Sony World Pictures Awards 2025 winners, Deutsche Börse Pictures Basis Prize 2025, and Prix Pictet 2025 winner and shortlist protection throughout official websites and press.