Eight Exhibitions That Make London the Art Capital of Spring 2026
Tracey Emin's career survey, Chiharu Shiota's thread installations, Lucian Freud's drawings, and five more shows that demand your attention.
London's spring exhibition calendar reads like a greatest-hits compilation. Multiple institutions are staging landmark shows simultaneously, creating a density of quality that rewards extended visits. Here are eight worth crossing an ocean for.
Tracey Emin: A Second Life at Tate Modern is the season's main event. The largest survey ever mounted of Emin's work brings together over 90 pieces spanning painting, video, textiles, neon, and sculpture across four decades. The recent paintings made after her cancer diagnosis are reason enough to go. Book ahead.
Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life at the Hayward Gallery runs through May 3. The Berlin-based Japanese artist's first major London solo transforms the gallery's top floor with immersive thread installations that stretch from floor to ceiling. The Hayward's brutalist concrete provides an unexpectedly perfect counterpoint to the thread's fragility.
Lucian Freud: Drawing into Painting at the National Portrait Gallery runs through May 4. Forty-eight sketchbooks and rarely seen preparatory studies are shown alongside finished paintings, making this the most comprehensive museum exhibition ever devoted to Freud's drawings. The creative process behind some of the century's greatest portraits, laid bare.
London's spring 2026 season is so strong that the challenge is not finding good shows but finding enough days to see them all.
Samurai at the British Museum runs through May 4, bringing together 280 objects charting how Japan's warrior class evolved from feudal fighters to pop-culture icons. Highlights include a newly acquired suit of armour and contemporary pieces ranging from Louis Vuitton to Assassin's Creed.
Schiaparelli: Fashion Becomes Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum is the first UK exhibition devoted to Elsa Schiaparelli. The show moves between fashion, sculpture, and design, making a compelling case for the Italian designer's role in shaping twentieth-century visual culture through her collaborations with Dali, Cocteau, and others.
David Hockney at the Serpentine brings his ninety-metre-long frieze A Year in Normandy to London for the first time, alongside recent digital paintings and the immersive Moon Room. Free admission, which given Hockney's drawing power means arriving early.
Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse at the National Gallery (March 12 through May 31) is a focused, elegant show devoted to a single painting and the lifelong obsession that produced it. George Stubbs spent eighteen months dissecting horses in a Lincolnshire barn. The resulting works changed how animals appear in Western art.
The V&A East Museum opens April 18 with The Music is Black: A British Story, celebrating 125 years of Black music in Britain, from jazz and reggae through grime and beyond. The new museum, designed with multiculturalism at its core, is a destination in itself.