The GrandPalaisRmn has unveiled its programming for the period from December 2025 to summer 2026, outlining a rich and multidisciplinary cultural itinerary that will unfold within the renovated Grand Palais and also in other prestigious Parisian and national museum venues. The offerings range from major retrospectives dedicated to 20th-century masters to forays into contemporary creation, from photography to performance, passing through historical exhibition events and programs dedicated to families and the youngest. The season will open on December 10, 2025 with a double date featuring two contemporary artists, Eva Jospin and Claire Tabouret, to whom the Grand Palais has entrusted two separate galleries.
In Galerie 9, Eva Jospin will present Grotesque, an exhibition featuring more than fifteen works, some of them previously unseen. The itinerary, inspired by the legend of the discovery of Nero’s Domus Aurea, explores themes dear to the artist such as the forest, the cave and imaginary architecture. Visitors will be invited to an experience through sculpted landscapes, ruins, and installations that blend different materials, from minerals to textiles, as evidenced by a new series of embroidered bas-reliefs. The installation, curated by Jean-Paul Camargo, will guide the public into a world where perception is constantly transformed, revealing the wilderness that envelops architectural structures.
In parallel, in Galerie 10.2, Claire Tabouret will reveal the background of a project of historic significance with her exhibition D’un seul souffle. The artist, designated in December 2024 to create the new six contemporary vitraux (contemporary stained glass windows) for the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral, will exhibit for the first time the preparatory cartoons, life-size maquettes and sketches of this monumental work. The exhibition will offer a privileged look at the creative process, recreating the atmosphere of the Simon-Marq atelier where the glass is being made. The works, created using the monotype technique, reflect the Pentecost theme chosen by the Archbishopric of Paris, a symbol of unity and harmony.
A few days later, from Dec. 16, 2025, Galerie 8 will host Dessins sans limite, an extensive exploration of the collection of the Cabinet d’art graphique of the Centre Pompidou. Featuring nearly 400 works by 120 artists, the exhibition will highlight the richness of a collection of more than 35,000 drawings. The path, not chronological but thematic, will be divided into four sections, study, narrate, trace and animate, to show how drawing in the 20th and 21st centuries has transcended its traditional boundaries, investing space, installation and dialoguing with cinema, photography and digital. Rarely shown works by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, Kandinsky, as well as Basquiat, William Kentridge and Kiki Smith will be on display.
The month of December will also feature two performance events in collaboration with the Festival d’Automne. On Dec. 17 and 18, Cecilia Bengolea and François Chaignaud will present Sylphides, a re-creation of a 2009 piece. In an itinerant performance, the artists’ bodies, vacuum-sucked into black latex bags, will evoke an imagery straddling ancient statuary and body art. On Dec. 20, closing the festival, François Chaignaud and GeoffroyJourdain will stage Revue des Tumerels, a creation that mixes polyphonic song, dance and cabaret codes, involving a collective of performers in an interactive performance.
The beginning of 2026 will be marked by an exceptional event: from February 1 to 8, the Nef of the Grand Palais will host Le Trésor retrouvé du Roi Soleil. For the first time, some 30 of the 92 monumental carpets commissioned by Louis XIV for the Louvre’s Grande Galerie will be on public display. Woven by the prestigious Savonnerie manufactory between 1668 and 1688 from designs by Charles Le Brun, the masterpieces were never installed. Misplaced during the Revolution and partially recovered over the centuries, they represent a priceless artistic heritage, which the exhibition will allow to be admired in a space appropriate to their monumentality.
The spring will see the opening of three major retrospectives. From March 18 to June 21, 2026, the Salon d’honneurswill bededicated to Nan Goldin with This Will Not End Well, the first exhibition in France to organically explore her work as a filmmaker through slides and video. The itinerary, set up in pavilions designed by architect Hala Wardé, will feature seminal works such as The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, as well as more recent works that address themes such as trauma, addiction and the struggle with the Sackler family. A section of the exhibition will also be mounted at the Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière Chapel.
Then, from March 24 to July 26, 2026, the Grand Palais, in co-production with the Centre Pompidou, will celebrate the last years of Henri Matisse with the exhibition Matisse. 1941-1954. The exhibition will bring together more than 230 works including paintings, drawings, illustrated books and stained glass, with an exceptional focus on gouaches découpées, the famous cut-out collages. It will highlight the artist’s extraordinary prolificity and ability to reinvent himself in later life, bringing together masterpieces such as the Jazz album, the Nus bleus series, and monumental panels such as La Gerbe, from international collections and rarely seen in France.
From May 6 to August 30, 2026, it will be the turn of Hilma af Klint, a Swedish artist who pioneered abstractionism. The exhibition, also co-produced with the Centre Pompidou, will present for the first time in France her most important cycle, the Peintures du Temple (1906-1915), including the monumental series Les Dix Plus Grands. The exhibition aims to reconsider the artist’s role in the chronology of modern art, highlighting how his abstract works, nourished by theosophy and spiritualism, anticipated those of Kandinsky and Malevitch.
Programming extends to other institutions as well. At the Musée du Luxembourg, from Feb. 18 to July 19, 2026, a major exhibition will be dedicated to Leonora Carrington, a leading figure in surrealism. It will explore the artist’s visionary universe, her life between Europe and Mexico, and her legacy as an avant-garde feminist and ecologist figure.
The Musée de Cluny, from March 13 to July 12, 2026, will present Licornes !, an exhibition that investigates the figure of the mythical creature through one hundred works, from antiquity to contemporary art, dialoguing with the famous tapestry of the Lady and the Unicorn. The Musée national de Préhistoire at Eyzies de Tayac, from April 3 to November 8, 2026, will address with Gestes d’éternité the theme of mortuary practices and the emergence of symbolic thought by Neanderthals and early modern humans. Finally, the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, from May 20, 2026 to January 10, 2027, will propose Patrimoines en résistance. De Tombouctou à Odessa, a reflection on the destruction of cultural heritage in armed conflicts and the forms of resistance put in place to protect it.
Special attention will be paid to young audiences and families, with the free-access Salon Seine offering fun activities and workshops. Thematic weekends are also planned, such as one dedicated to magic in December 2025 and Nuits de la lecture in January 2026. The offer is rounded out with Grand Palais d’été summer programming and exhibitions still in progress, such as the one on Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely, which can be seen until January 4, 2026.
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| Grand Palais: from Matisse to Nan Goldin, a 2026 among exhibitions, performances and rediscovered treasures |
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