From 9 to 13 September 2026, Berlin Art Week celebrates its fifteenth anniversary. With more than three hundred events, including over one hundred exhibition openings, contemporary art takes over the capital: one hundred and twenty-five museums, private collections, project spaces, galleries, and the Positions Berlin Art Fair present the latest developments in contemporary art.
Image above: Berlin Art Week 2026
The central meeting and information point for the citywide art festival, ›Berlin Art Week Garten‹ comes to Kulturforum this year, with locations at the Neue Nationalgalerie and Gemäldegalerie. Throughout the festival week, visitors can enjoy an extensive programme of talks, performances, workshops, film screenings, and DJ sets—all outdoors and free of charge.
»Berlin Art Week brings the diversity and energy of Berlin’s art scene together in one packed festival week. From major institutions opening their autumn exhibitions with us from Wednesday and galleries throwing open their doors with new presentations for ›Gallery Night‹ from Thursday, to independent project initiatives taking centre stage during ›Featured Night‹ on Friday and private collections opening doors that otherwise often remain closed over the weekend: for one week, we bring all these outstanding programmes together into a shared experience. That is what Berlin Art Week is all about: presenting new voices alongside established ones, bringing together diverse perspectives, and making art accessible to audiences even in places where they might not expect to find it,« says Mona Stehle, Artistic Director of Berlin Art Week.
Wednesday, 9 September 2026: Festival kicks off with openings across the city
Institutions across Berlin open their new exhibitions as the festival gets under way. Group exhibitions address some of the major issues of our time: divided histories, migration, and relations between Berlin and Eastern Europe. At Gropius Bau, ›Kreuzberg: Kunst und Migration seit 1960‹ (Art and Migration since 1960) looks back at the history of migrant communities in the neighbourhood. Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and Schinkel Pavillon jointly open ›Projections Onto the East‹, while Akademie der Künste explores social upheaval in ›Metaxy: Between Destruction and Reconstruction‹. Major solo presentations include Maurizio Cattelan at Neue Nationalgalerie, Lucia Tallová at PalaisPopulaire, and Arash Nassiri at Fluentum.
Thursday, 10 September 2026: The art market with Positions and ›Gallery Night‹
Positions Berlin Art Fair brings together more than ninety international galleries from around twenty countries in the hangars of former Tempelhof Airport, with a special focus on galleries from Turkey. Across the city, fifty-four Berlin galleries join ›Gallery Night‹ with new exhibition openings and extended opening hours through Sunday. At Wilhelm Hallen in Reinickendorf, Berlin galleries and institutions present ›Hallen 07‹, a nine-thousand-square-metre group exhibition. The VBKI-Preis Berliner Galerien recognises the programmes of emerging Berlin galleries, with the award ceremony taking place at PalaisPopulaire on Friday. This year’s shortlist features galerie burster, Gallery Gudmundsdottir, and Super Super Markt.
Friday, 11 September 2026: ›Featured Night‹
The ›Featured‹ section brings together around thirty project spaces and special initiatives selected by a jury, giving different voices a platform in places waiting to be discovered—from international names to art students and initiatives from Berlin’s independent scene. ›Featured‹ takes visitors to unconventional locations: from a suite at Hotel Adlon Kempinski, where Sunny Pudert hosts readings and performances, to the historic kitchen building at DRK Kliniken Berlin Westend, where Lu Yang presents the video work ›Doku: Triage‹, and Hermannplatz U-Bahn station, where Passage and Udo Kittelmann present a video installation by Carsten Höller, before reaching Reethaus, where Hans Ulrich Obrist and Soundwalk Collective invite visitors to experience ›The Ear is the Eye of the Soul‹. The section culminates in ›Featured Night‹ on Friday evening, with openings, performances, and parties across the city continuing late into the night.
Saturday, Sunday, 12–13 September 2026: ›Open Houses‹, Performances, ›Meet the Artist‹
›Open Houses‹ sees renowned private collections open their doors with no advance registration required. ›Discovering Collections!‹ also offers guided tours of Berlin collectors’ private spaces that normally remain closed to the public.
The festival’s performance series shift into high gear over the weekend. ›Perform!‹ continues on the terrace of the Neue Nationalgalerie through Sunday, while ›Alternde Meister‹ by Ersan Mondtag and Nadim Samman, a Berliner Ensemble production created especially for Berlin Art Week, brings performances to Gemäldegalerie. HAU Hebbel am Ufer hosts two premieres: Sophia Süßmilch with ›Something Terrible Will Happen: The Cannibal Woman‹ and Theresa Reiwer with ›Internet Explorer‹. Sound performance also comes from JJJJJerome Ellis, who weaves stuttering, voice, and Black musical traditions into performance at Haus am Waldsee. For the festival’s final major act, haubrok foundation invites visitors to a full day of performances on Sunday with ›Another Sunday Afternoon for Berlin Art Week‹.
Throughout the festival week and across all its sections, artists from Germany and around the world reflect the diversity of Berlin’s art scene: Ryuichi Sakamoto at Hamburger Bahnhof, Jeewi Lee at Berlinische Galerie, Forensic Architecture and Emeka Ogboh, among others, at Haus der Kulturen der Welt for the Berlin edition of Bienal de São Paulo, Carrie Mae Weems at C/O Berlin and Galerie Barbara Thumm, Gregor Hildebrandt at Wentrup, Wu Tsang at Bortolozzi, Rachel Seidu at Between Bridges, Matt Browning at Mies van der Rohe Haus, Julius von Bismarck and Tuan Andrew Nguyen at Esther Schipper, Florentina Holzinger at Kino International, Jeremy Shaw at Galerie Neu, Martin Margiela at Konrad Fischer Galerie, Robert Rauschenberg at Bastian, and Izabella Gustowska at Kvost—Kunstverein Ost.
The full programme is available in the programme calendar at berlinartweek.de. During the festival week, the Berlin Art Week Newsletter also delivers the day’s highlights every morning, while the interactive map helps visitors navigate the programme across the city.
15 Years of Berlin Art Week
»Launched fifteen years ago, Berlin Art Week has become a fixture on the international art calendar, thanks to the artists and our many partners. From the outset, we have seen the diversity and decentralised nature of Berlin’s art scene as a strength: we create visibility for different artistic positions and places, and, as a festival for the public, offer many different ways to engage with contemporary art.
Fifteen years of Berlin Art Week cannot be taken for granted, particularly at a time of tangible cuts to cultural funding. That made it all the more important for us to capture the voices and contributions marking this anniversary in a publication. It not only looks back, but also documents our shared commitment to Berlin as a centre for art—and carries that conviction into the years of Berlin Art Week still to come,« says Simone Leimbach, Director of Exhibitions and Events, Kulturprojekte Berlin.
A limited-edition booklet marking Berlin Art Week’s fifteenth anniversary will be available at ›Berlin Art Week Garten‹ throughout the festival week. Across one hundred and twenty-eight pages, essays, interviews, and photo spreads trace the development of Berlin Art Week over the past fifteen years, take stock of where it stands today, and look ahead to the future of Berlin as a city of art. More than fifty voices from Berlin’s art scene share their personal perspectives.
15 Years of Berlin Art Week—Selected Voices from the Anniversary Publication
»Today, Berlin Art Week marks the start of the autumn and winter season: institutions open their new exhibitions, while a packed programme of talks, performances, concerts, and many other formats unfolds across the city. For a few days, all of this brings into focus something that has always distinguished Berlin, and that we should never forget: the extraordinary diversity of its art landscape and the interplay between its many different players. For us, Berlin Art Week ha s become an essential date in the calendar—one we look forward to every year.« —Esther Schipper, Galerie Esther Schipper
»For fifteen years, Berlin Art Week has demonstrated the power that emerges when an entire city brings its cultural energies together. Exhibitions, openings, conversations, performances, and encounters come together in a programme whose impact extends far beyond the art world. Berlin Art Week not only mobilises institutions but also their audiences, reminding us that art truly comes alive when it brings people together. That the cultural administration chose to withdraw its financial support in this anniversary year of all years can only be described as short-sighted and scandalous.« —Thomas Köhler, Berlinische Galerie
»Berlin Art Week brings together the full spectrum of ways in which art becomes visible. For one week, museums, private collections, galleries, project spaces, and independent art spaces weave together into the rich fabric that makes Berlin’s art scene uniq ue worldwide. Looking back at the programmes of recent years, it becomes clear how continuously the field has evolved: complexity has grown, exhibition models have begun to merge, and the boundaries between public and private are being explored in increasingly conceptual ways. Anyone who wants to understand contemporary art should experience it.« —Juliet Kothe , curator and writer
»Artists make Berlin what it is. Their decision to live and work here defines the city. Berlin Art Week brings that back into the spotlight. None of this would be possible without them.« —Gerd Harry Lybke, Galerie Eigen+Art
»Fifteen years of Berlin Art Week reflect an art city that never stands still. For Julia Stoschek Foundation, those have been intense years at Leipziger Straße : packed galleries, long queues, and conversations stretching late into the night. Looking ahead, I hope Berlin Art Week continues to embrace the openness and plurality that define it.« —Julia Stoschek, Julia Stoschek Foundation
»Berlin Art Week is the city’s cultural New Year celebration, in a way that only Berlin can pull off: the weeks of empty theatres, opera houses, and concert halls are over. Berlin Art Week sends a message out into the world: We’re back. The galleries pull out all the stops, the museums surprise us, and the art world celebrates itself and art—year after year … indispensable.« —Peter Raue, lawyer and supporter of the arts
»Berlin Art Week brings the niches of the independent scene into view, strengthening the project spaces and initiatives that have shaped Berlin as a centre for art for many years .« —Christof Zwiener , Netzwerk freier Berliner Projekträume und Initiativen
»For decades, Berlin has ranked among the world’s leading art capitals. At the same time, it’s a city where far too many people are intent on cooking up their own little soup. With Berlin Art Week, there’s finally a moment each year when people bring their different ingredients together to create something collectively. Berlin is at its best when we think and act together and stand side by side.« —Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW)
WHEN?
Dates: Wednesday, 09. September until Sunday, 13. September 2026
WHERE?
Different Art Locations across Berlin
