From 9 to 13 September 2026, Berlin Art Week will celebrate its 15th anniversary and, in collaboration with around 120 museums, private collections, project spaces, galleries and the Positions Berlin Art Fair, will present an extensive programme across the whole city. This year, the Berlin Art Week Garden at the Kulturforum, alongside the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Gemäldegalerie, will serve as the festival’s central meeting place.
Image above: Berlin Art Week 2026, ChertLüdde, Stephanie Comilang, Installation view of ›Coordinates at Dawn‹, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, 2025 – 2026.
Several recurring themes run through this year’s programme: perspectives on the present and the future steeped in history—in particular, the view from Berlin towards the East and beyond—on shared history, migration, relations with neighbouring regions and decolonial perspectives. Powerful political statements—ranging from feminist resistance to ecological and geopolitical urgency—also feature prominently in an extensive programme of performance, sound and theatre, including several eagerly anticipated premieres. The dialogue between established institutions, international names and grassroots initiatives from the independent arts scene is particularly evident: with the ‘Featured’ section, Berlin Art Week 2026 once again shines a spotlight on around 30 special projects and off-spaces selected by a jury.
Berlin, local, global: New perspectives
With ‘Kreuzberg: Art and Migration since 1960’, the Gropius Bau explores the history of migrant communities in the neighbourhood, featuring works by Mehmet Aksoy, Nuray Demir and Pınar Öğrenci, amongst others. The Neue Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and the Schinkel Pavillon are launching a joint exhibition project entitled ‘Projections onto the East’; the façade of the n.b.k. also features a work by the Guerrilla Girls, conceived specifically for the site. At the Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, the ‘Hamburger Bahnhof Art Week Talks’, under the title ‘Kunsträume Ost’, will discuss the role of museums in the eastern German federal states. The ifa-Galerie Berlin is presenting lecture performances on the international role of art in the GDR.
Further perspectives on the legacy of the GDR and the translocal experiences of Berlin’s diasporic communities are presented by the Kunstforum Berliner Volksbank Foundation with ‘Vietnam. Art. GDR. Reclaiming Solidarity’, the Kvost—Kunstverein Ost (Featured Section) with ‘Izabella Gustowska: Home’s Shadows‹, and the nGbK—station urbaner kulturen, which focuses on architecture and ‘serious’ postmodernism in the GDR. In ›Metaxy: Between Destruction and Reconstruction‹, the Academy of Arts turns its attention to that social liminal moment produced by wars and crises.
The São Paulo Biennial at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt explores the question of place: founded in 1951, it is being presented in Germany for the first time with the Berlin edition ‘Not All Travellers Follow Paths—Humanity as Practice’, featuring works by Forensic Architecture, Cevdet Erek, Leiko Ikemura, Emeka Ogboh and Wolfgang Tillmans, amongst others. In parallel, Savvy Contemporary presents ‘Vilanismo: Architectural Echotones—A Poetics Of The Surrounds’, offering its own perspective on the 36th Biennial as a curatorial bridge between Berlin and São Paulo.
Performance, Theatre and Sound
Performance has become a cornerstone of Berlin Art Week. The Neue Nationalgalerie is hosting the fifth edition of ‘Perform!’ featuring Trisha Brown’s ‘Walking on the Wall’ (1971) and a new presentation by Kiani del Valle; at the same time, the gallery is presenting the exhibition for the 2026 Nationalgalerie Prize with Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Night’. At KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Labour (Farahnaz Hatam and Colin Hacklander) will present the performance ‘soft thought’. In the Residency Space at Between Bridges (Featured section), caner teker will present ‘b2b / nothing new’, a performance programme featuring Space Afrika, Rayne, Emil Ertl and Martin Hansen. The Georg Kolbe Museum invites visitors to the performance festival ‘everybody’, in which the exhibition themes centred on body politics are expanded to include a live programme. And for just one evening as part of Featured Night, the Hotel Adlon Kempinski (Featured section) becomes a stage: in ‘Ordinary Tales of City Madness’, Sunny Pudert transforms it into a suite for readings and performances.
Berlin Art Week is celebrating several premieres in the theatre: to mark the festival week, the Berliner Ensemble, in collaboration with the Gemäldegalerie, is performing in the gallery’s premises for the first time: Ersan Mondtag and Nadim Samman are staging the premiere of ‘Alternde Meister’ there. At the HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Sophia Süßmilch opens with *Something Terrible Is Going to Happen: The Man-Eater* and Theresa Reiwer with *Internet Explorer*. At the Gorki, a new wall on Platz der Märzrevolution will be used for the first time as a public exhibition and performance space, marking the start of Çağla Ilk’s new tenure as artistic director.
In terms of sound, this year’s Berlin Art Week is particularly diverse, taking visitors to every corner of the city through a wide variety of artistic expressions: the Hamburger Bahnhof—Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart is presenting ‘Ryuichi Sakamoto: seeing sound, hearing time’, a major retrospective of the Japanese composer. The Reethaus (Featured section) invites visitors to ‘The Ear is the Eye of the Soul’, a listening experience curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective, featuring contributions from Brian Eno, FKA twigs, Patti Smith and Kali Malone, amongst others. At the Konzerthaus Berlin (Featured section), Leyla Yenirce performs alongside Solomon Garçon, weaving together spoken word, field recordings, noise, ambient and techno into a powerful political statement of feminist resistance. Community radio stations will take over the airwaves as part of the Berlin Radio Play Festival (Featured section), including a broadcast on Cashmere Radio. Also featuring sound performances: JJJJJerome Ellis, who weaves stuttering, the voice and Black musical traditions into a performance at the Haus am Waldsee; Wadada Leo Smith in a shop window at MALA (Music Art Life And… ) (Featured section); the LAS Art Foundation, featuring a live sound piece by Tati au Miel and a soundwalk by Omsk Social Club; and the activation of Nevin Aladağ’s sculpture ‘Public Resonator’ at the PalaisPopulaire, which is presenting the exhibition for the Deutsche Bank ‘Artist of the Year’ 2026, Lucia Tallová, alongside ‘Moving Clouds’.
Art market
Berlin’s art market is a diverse affair: at Gallery Night, organised in collaboration with Gallery Weekend Berlin, around 50 Berlin galleries are opening their doors to showcase new exhibitions, including Wu Tsang at Isabella Bortolozzi, Kerstin Brätsch and Katharina Sieverding at Galerie Thomas Schulte, Jeremy Shaw at Galeria Plan B, and David Horvitz, Alfredo Jaar and Zhang Peili at Hua International.
The Positions Berlin Art Fair brings together over 90 international galleries from around 20 countries in the hangars of the former Tempelhof Airport. This year, there is a particular focus on galleries from Turkey.
In the Wilhelm Hallen in Reinickendorf, Berlin galleries and institutions are presenting ‘Hallen 07’, a 9,000 square metre group exhibition, featuring, amongst others, ChertLüdde, Esther Schipper and Robert Grunenberg.
The VBKI Berlin Galleries Prize, awarded as part of Berlin Art Week, honours young Berlin galleries—this year’s shortlist includes galerie burster, Gallery Gudmundsdottir and Super Super Markt.
Private Collections
As part of the Open Houses, private collections are opening their doors with new curated exhibitions or special access opportunities—including the Boros Collection, Fluentum, the Kienzle Art Foundation, the Miettinen Collection, the Hackelsberger Collection and the Achim Freyer Kunsthaus. The Julia Stoschek Foundation is bidding farewell to its Berlin location with a Closing Week. In the ‘Meet the Artist’ programme, artists will offer first-hand insights into their works in conversation with collectors, including at the Ivo Wessel Collection in the Taut-Haus am Engelbecken. At ‘Discovering Collections!’, a joint initiative by Berlin Art Week and Collection Night, visitors who have registered will, for the first time, gain access to five private collections that have not previously been open to the public. The haubrok foundation is opening its doors for a day with ‘Another Sunday Afternoon for Berlin Art Week’, featuring new exhibitions, open studios and live events; to mark the publication of the book of the same name, ‘Hardcore. The Exhibition Accompanying the Book’ showcases works by artists including Karin Sander and Heimo Zobernig, whilst ‘HAR I’ presents the first final exhibition of the Haubrok Artist Residency, featuring Seongwon Park.
Further highlights
The focus is on major awards, extensive solo exhibitions and thematic group presentations: The Berlinische Galerie is presenting Jeewi Lee’s ‘Residual Memories’ as its entry for the 2026 Gasag Art Prize, whilst the Kindl—Centre for Contemporary Art is hosting four exhibitions: Kira Freije (‘Between Sunlight’), Mischa Kuball (‘boiler house’), Thu-Van Tran (‘Write As Beasts Scream at Night’) and the artist duo Neozoon (‘together’). At C/O Berlin, a solo exhibition features Carrie Mae Weems (‘The Heart of the Matter’), running alongside ‘After Nature’ with works by Stelios Kallinikou and Susanne Kriemann as part of the Ulrike Crespo Photography Prize 26, whilst the Schering Foundation is hosting ‘7 Summers’—the result of a collaborative artistic experiment by Diakron and Emil Rønn Andersen. The Haus am Lützowplatz is presenting ‘On Landscape. Between Escapism and Relaxation’, a group exhibition on landscape painting. The nGbK is showcasing the graduates of the artists’ programme of the same name in ‘In touch—Goldrausch 2026’, accompanied by an extensive programme of events.
You can now find the full programme calender at berlinartweek.de—with weekly updates already available via the Berlin Art Week Newsletter.
WHEN?
Wednesday, 9 September – Sunday, 13 September 2026
