Let’s start 2026 with previews of the exhibitions that will take us throughout this new year. From Milan to Venice, from Genoa to Turin to Rome, here are 20 exhibitions announced for a 2026 full of great art.
On the occasion of the Milan Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, the Lombard city offers a program of exhibitions including art, photography, design and international installations, involving prominent museums and exhibition spaces. Notable exhibitions at Palazzo Reale include Anselm Kiefer, the Macchiaioli, Robert Mapplethorpe; Paul Troubetzkoy at GAM, Chiharu Shiota at MUDEC. Click here to learn more.
Palazzo Martinengo in Brescia will host the exhibition LIBERTY. The Art of Modern Italy, entirely dedicated to Art Nouveau, an artistic and cultural period that characterized the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries. Curated by Manuel Carrera, Davide Dotti and Anna Villari, the exhibition will offer a broad overview of the arts between the end of the 19th century and the first fifteen years of the 20th century, highlighting how new European sensibilities influenced painting, sculpture, advertising graphics, fashion, photography and applied arts. With more than 100 works on display, including paintings by Vittorio Matteo Corcos, Gaetano Previati, Plinio Nomellini, Ettore Tito, Amedeo Bocchi, and Cesare Tallone; sculptures by Edoardo Rubino, Leonardo Bistolfi, and Liberto Andreotti; posters by Giovanni Battista Carpanetto, Leonardo Dudovich, and Leopoldo Metlicovitz; ceramics by Galileo Chini; period photographs; and film clips. The aim of the exhibition is to outline the evolution of Art Nouveau taste and analyze how international currents intertwined with Italian artistic production. Click here to learn more.
For the first time in Italy, MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna is dedicating a major retrospective exhibition to John Giorno (New York, 1936 - 2019), a central and cross-cutting figure in contemporary culture. In the Sala delle Ciminiere John Giorno: The Performative Word will span more than sixty years of the artist’s research. The exhibition project is curated by Lorenzo Balbi and is promoted by the Civic Museums Sector of the Municipality of Bologna. It is part of the institutional program of ART CITY Bologna 2026. Click here to learn more.
The Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica of Palazzo Barberini in Rome will host the major exhibition Bernini e i Barberini, curated by Andrea Bacchi and Maurizia Cicconi. The exhibition aims to explore the privileged relationship between Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Maffeo Barberini, his first and most decisive patron, who became pope in 1623 with the name Urban VIII. Produced with the support of Main Partner Intesa Sanpaolo and under the patronage of the Fabbrica di San Pietro in the Vatican, the exhibition will offer an opportunity to reread the origins of the Baroque through the special human and intellectual dialogue between Bernini and Urban VIII. The initiative is part of the celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the consecration of the new St. Peter’s Basilica (1626), the pinnacle of the Roman Baroque and of Bernini’s own production. Click here to learn more.
CAMERA - Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin presents Edward Weston. The Matter of Forms, the first major exhibition in Italy dedicated to the American photographer, organized by Fundación MAPFRE in collaboration with the Turin institution. After stops in Madrid and Barcelona, the exhibition project lands in Italy, offering an articulate reading of one of the central figures of modern American photography. Curated by Sérgio Mah, the exhibition brings together 171 images and takes the form of a true anthology capable of traversing all phases of the production of Edward Weston (Illinois, 1886 - California, 1958), who was active mainly in California until his death in 1958. The exhibition covers a time span from 1903 to 1948, returning a comprehensive view of the artist’s linguistic and conceptual evolution, from his early experiences influenced by pictorialism to the full maturity he reached in the field of direct photography. Click here to read more.
Forlì’s Museo Civico San Domenico will host Baroque. The Grand Theater of Ideas, an exhibition that will feature about 200 masterpieces, from such internationally renowned institutions as the Albertina in Vienna, the Museo del Prado in Madrid, the Vatican Museums, the Gallerie Nazionali di Arte Antica in Rome, the Uffizi in Florence and the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples. The exhibition, organized by the Fondazione Cassa dei Risparmi di Forli, will offer the public an itinerary that connects the 17th century with the 20th century, with works by Bernini, Borromini, Guercino, Rubens, Bacon, Boldini, de Chirico, Fontana and Boccioni. Click here to learn more.
Palazzo Roverella in Rovigo will host the exhibition Zandomeneghi and Degas. Impressionism between Florence and Paris, an exhibition that offers an organic comparison between Italian painter Federico Zandomeneghi (Venice, 1841 - Paris, 1917) and French artist Edgar Degas (Paris, 1834 - 1917). Curated by art historian Francesca Dini, the exhibition aims to offer an in-depth reading of the relationship between the two artists, based on a long friendship in Paris. The exhibition will analyze the mutual influences and stylistic convergences between two artists who made important contributions to the definition of the modern gaze in painting. Click here to learn more.
Milan’s GAM will host the exhibition Paul Troubetzkoy. The Sculptor of the Belle Époque, a retrospective dedicated to one of the most important sculptors between the 19th and 20th centuries. Inaugurated at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris where it can be visited until Jan. 11, 2026, it represents a co-production between GAM, the Paris museum and CMS.Cultura srl, with the collaboration of the Museo del Paesaggio in Verbania, which preserves a substantial part of the artist’s legacy. The Milan stage, curated by Omar Cucciniello, will offer an international survey of the work of Paul Troubetzkoy (Intra, 1866 - Pallanza, 1938), cosmopolitan sculptor, the son of a Russian diplomatic prince and an American opera singer, who was born on the shores of Lake Maggiore, trained in Italy and then moved to Paris, where he consolidated his international reputation, establishing himself as a leading portrait painter for Belle Époque high society. Click here to learn more.
The Carrara Academy in Bergamo will host Tarot. The Origins, the Cards, the Fortune, an exhibition curated by Paolo Plebani that will address the history of tarot along a time span of about seven centuries. The project stems from a major exhibition event: the reunion, after more than a century, of the 74 cards of the Colleoni deck, considered the most complete in the world. The cards, now held between the Carrara Academy, New York’s Morgan Library and a private collection, temporarily come back together, providing an opportunity for a broader historical, artistic and cultural reflection. Click here to learn more.
The Ragghianti Foundation will host the first major modern retrospective devoted to Emilio Malerba (Milan, 1878-1926), tracing his career from his beginnings in Scapigliatura to Novecento Italiano and Magic Realism. Emilio Malerba (1878-1926). From the Beginnings to the Novecento Italiano was created in collaboration with the Malerba Archive in Monza and with the support of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca. Curated by Paolo Bolpagni and Elena Pontiggia, the exhibition presents a wide selection of works, original posters and documents to offer an organic picture of Malerba’s artistic career on the centenary of his death and almost a century after the last retrospective dedicated to him, dating back to 1931. Click here to learn more.
The Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence dedicates to Mark Rothko one of the largest retrospectives ever organized in Italy on the master of American modern art. Curated by Christopher Rothko and Elena Geuna, the exhibition will investigate the influence of Renaissance art on the artist’s vision. The exhibition will offer an unprecedented journey with the intention of highlighting the deep connection between Rothko and Florence, which will unfold not only in the rooms of Palazzo Strozzi, but also in two symbolic places of the Renaissance: the Museum of San Marco and the vestibule of the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. A wide selection of Rothko’s works, from the 1930s to 1970, will be on display, with numerous large-format paintings, many of which have never before been exhibited in Italy. Click here to learn more.
In spring 2026, Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara will present the exhibition Ladies and Gentlemen (1975-76), which will trace the period when Andy Warhol first introduced his innovative vision of portraiture to Italy. Curated by Chiara Vorrasi and organized by Fondazione Ferrara Arte and Gallerie d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Ferrara, with the support of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the exhibition reproposes the original configuration of the event. Featuring more than 150 portraits including acrylics, drawings, silkscreens and Polaroids from public and private, European and American collections, the exhibition will offer a journey through Warhol’s artistic production. Click here to learn more.
Umbria celebrates the eighth centenary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi with the exhibition Giotto and St. Francis. A Revolution in Fourteenth-Century Umbria, at the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia. Curated by Veruska Picchiarelli and Emanuele Zappasodi, the exhibition focuses on the epochal moment when the charisma of Francis met the genius of Giotto to give rise to a revolution that marks the birth of modern art. Through more than sixty works, created by masters such as Giotto, Simone Martini and Pietro Lorenzetti, during the years when they were active on the scaffolding of the Franciscan Basilica.
Palazzo Ducale in Genoa will host an exhibition dedicated to Anton van Dyck, entitled Van Dyck the European. The Journey of a Genius from Antwerp to Genoa and London, set up in the rooms of the Doge’s Apartment and the Doge’s Chapel. The exhibition aims to be the most relevant retrospective of the Flemish painter in the last twenty-five years, after the international exhibitions dedicated to Van Dyck in the 1990s, and presents a broad overview of the career of one of the most important artists in the history of European art. The exhibition is curated by Anna Orlando and Katlijne Van der Stighelen, assisted by an international committee of scholars. Click here to learn more.
Starting in spring 2026, the Venetian spaces of the Pinault Collection will host four major solo exhibitions dedicated to leading artists of the contemporary scene, from Michael Armitage to Lorna Simpson, set up between Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana. Click here to learn more.
The Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea has unveiled its exhibition program for 2026, consisting of a series of exhibitions and projects that combine commissions, historical reinterpretations, and contemporary practices. The program includes the second edition of Advertisement, a commission project that introduces site-specific interventions within the rooms dedicated to the Collection, two monographic exhibitions dedicated to Cecilia Vicuña and Marisa Merz, and a new version of the participatory project for non-adults The Enchanted Castle. The various initiatives are developed throughout the year, involving multiple Museum spaces and a wide group of curators and partner institutions. Click here to learn more.
Twenty years after the death of Mimmo Rotella (Catanzaro, 1918 - Milan, 2006), the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa is dedicating a major retrospective to one of the most influential protagonists of 20th-century Italian and international art. The exhibition Mimmo Rotella. 1945-2005, curated by Alberto Fiz and realized in collaboration with the Mimmo Rotella Foundation, will offer a broad rereading of the artist’s entire creative path. It will retrace through more than one hundred works from museums, foundations and international public and private collections, more than sixty years of his activity, from the first post-World War II experiments to the works of his last years, highlighting Rotella’s ability to intercept and interpret in a radical way the transformations of the image society. Click here to learn more.
In 2026 Marina Abramović will be the first living woman artist to be featured in a major exhibition at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice. The exhibition, titled Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy, will open to the public on the occasion of the 61st. Venice Biennale. The event coincides with the artist’s 80th birthday and will create an intense confrontation between her innovative performance art and the Renaissance masterpieces that helped define the cultural identity of the lagoon city. Curated by Shai Baitel, Artistic Director of Shanghai’s Modern Art Museum (MAM), in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will involve both the rooms of the permanent collection and the spaces designated for temporary exhibitions-a first in the museum’s history. Click here to learn more.
This fall 2026 the Uffizi Galleries will present Magnifico 1492, a major exhibition dedicated to Lorenzo the Magnificent, the most famous figure of the Medici dynasty. The exhibition aims to be an authentic and detailed reconstruction, the most extensive yet, of the extraordinary Medici collection as described and inventoried in 1492, at Lorenzo’s death. The exhibition will bring together a wide selection of paintings and sculptures, with masterpieces alongside objects as varied as vases, gems, cameos, coins, illuminated manuscripts and maps. It will also be complemented by the recomposition of one of the most important cycles in Western art history. Click here to learn more.
The Naves of Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan will host the exhibition Luciano Fabro, curated by Fiammetta Griccioli, Roberta Tenconi and Vicente Todolí. This is the first museum retrospective dedicated to Luciano Fabro in Italy since his death in 2007. The exhibition will bring together a wide selection of the most significant sculptures and installations from his entire artistic career. Produced in collaboration with the Luciano and Carla Fabro Archive, the exhibition will explore the artist’s conceptual and formal research in relation to space, analyzing the dialogue that his works establish with the perception of those who inhabit it. Click here to learn more.
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| Exhibitions 2026: all the previews of the announced exhibitions |
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