The National Gallery has announced a landmark line-up of exhibitions for 2026, spanning five centuries of European art and bringing together rare loans, first-ever UK presentations, and iconic
masterpieces. From Neo-Impressionism and Spanish Baroque to Impressionism, Austrian realism and early Netherlandish portraiture, the programme promises one of the Gallery’s most ambitious years to date.
Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists
Until 8 February 2026
Opening the programme is the National Gallery’s first-ever exhibition devoted to Neo-Impressionism, drawn largely from the celebrated Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands. Featuring groundbreaking works by Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Anna Boch, Jan Toorop and Théo van Rysselberghe, the exhibition highlights the visionary collecting of Helene Kröller-Müller (1869–1939), one of the 20th century’s greatest patrons of modern art. Assembled within just two decades of the movement’s emergence, her collection is considered the most comprehensive in the world.
Edwin Austin Abbey: ‘By the Dawn’s Early Light’
Until 15 February 2026
A monumental half-scale design for the ceiling of the Pennsylvania State Capitol will take centre stage in the first UK exhibition of Edwin Austin Abbey in over 100 years. Newly conserved by Yale University Art Gallery, the 12-foot-wide work, *The Hours*, depicts 24 female figures representing the hours of the day. The exhibition restores the reputation of Abbey (1852–1911) as one of the most ambitious mural painters of his generation.
Ming Wong: National Gallery Artist in Residence 2025
15 January – 5 April 2026
Singaporean artist Ming Wong presents a newly commissioned film and installation responding to the figure of Saint Sebastian in the Gallery’s collection and the legacy of filmmaker Derek Jarman. Wong’s short film, Dance of the sun on the water | Saltatio solis in aqua, reimagines Jarman’s 1976 film Sebastiane within the setting of the National Gallery, placing Renaissance and Baroque paintings into dialogue with queer cinema and performance.
Stubbs: Portrait of a Horse
12 March – 31 May 2026
Next spring, the National Gallery turns its attention to one of the most celebrated animal paintings in British art: George Stubbs’s 'Scrub, a bay horse belonging to the Marquess of Rockingham' (c.1762). The exhibition explores Stubbs’s obsessive anatomical studies of horses—carried out in rural Lincolnshire in the 1750s—and his later racing portraits in 'The Turf Review'. Together, they reveal the scientific precision behind his art.
Zurbarán
2 May – 23 August 2026
The first major UK monographic exhibition of Francisco de Zurbarán will open in May, bringing together nearly 50 works by the Spanish Baroque master. Spanning his full career, the exhibition reunites paintings from the National Gallery with key loans from the Louvre and the Art Institute of Chicago. It marks the Gallery’s first full presentation of Zurbarán since 1994 and will later tour to Paris and Chicago.
Waldmüller: Landscapes
2 July – 20 September 2026
In collaboration with Vienna’s Belvedere Museum, the National Gallery will host the first UK exhibition of Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, one of Austria’s most important 19th-century artists. Dedicated solely to his landscape painting, the show reveals Waldmüller’s intense commitment to truth, light and natural detail—qualities that influenced generations of Central European artists.
Renoir and Love
3 October 2026 – 31 January 2027
One of the year’s biggest blockbusters will be the most important UK exhibition of Pierre-Auguste Renoir in two decades. The show includes the enduring masterpiece Bal au Moulin de la Galette on loan from the Musée d’Orsay—the painting’s first appearance in the UK since 1985. Focusing on the crucial years between the mid-1860s and mid-1880s, the exhibition explores how Renoir captured affection, seduction, friendship, leisure and family life at the heart of modern Paris.
Van Eyck: The Portraits
21 November 2026 – 11 April 2027
Closing the programme is a once-in-a-generation exhibition devoted to the portraits of Jan van Eyck, the artist who revolutionised European portraiture. Historic reunions will include the National Gallery’s Arnolfini Portrait displayed for the first time alongside a later portrait of the same sitter from Berlin. Van Eyck’s newly conserved self-portrait will also be shown next to the portrait of his wife, Margaret—the earliest known portrait of a non-aristocratic woman in Western art. Photo by Tiia Monto, Wikimedia commons.