Art exhibitions in London: September and October 2025

September and October mark a busy time in the art world in London, from iconic art fairs to blockbuster exhibition openings. This is a guide to the best art exhibitions in London in the Autumn of 2025.

Start pencilling in your art dates — here are the best current exhibitions in London.

---

Current art exhibitions in London: September and October 2025

Frieze London and Frieze Sculpture

Regent’s Park, 17 – 21 October 2025 (Art Fair); 17 September – 2 November 2025 (Sculpture)

Frieze returns to Regent’s Park with its annual art fair and open-air sculpture exhibition. The fair brings together leading galleries from around the world, while Frieze Sculpture offers free access to large-scale works by international artists across the park. Together they mark a highlight of London’s autumn art calendar.

Mona Hatoum: Encounters — Giacometti

Barbican Centre, 3 September 2025 – 11 January 2026

This is the second in the Encounters: Giacometti series, in which the Barbican has invited several contemporary artists to dialogue with the work of Alberto Giacometti. In this iteration, Mona Hatoum presents a combination of new and existing works alongside a selection of Giacometti’s sculptures. Through this intergenerational presentation, the exhibition explores themes such as cages and confined spaces, domestic and hostile environments, memory, trauma, displacement, and exile — tracing the ways both artists translate existential concerns into sculptural form. Hatoum’s immersive installations respond to Giacometti’s iconic figures, creating a layered conversation about how sculpture can carry emotional weight across time.

Kerry James Marshall

Royal Academy of Arts, 20 September 2025 – 18 January 2026

This landmark exhibition is the first major UK survey of Kerry James Marshall, an artist renowned for addressing the absence of Black figures in Western art history. Featuring works from across four decades, it brings together paintings, drawings, and sculpture that chart his exploration of identity, visibility, and cultural history. The exhibition also includes a new site-specific work created for the Royal Academy.

Kiefer / Van Gogh

Royal Academy of Arts, 28 June – 26 October 2025

The Royal Academy stages a dialogue between Vincent van Gogh and Anselm Kiefer, examining the impact of Van Gogh’s art and writings on Kiefer’s practice. Van Gogh’s emotionally charged landscapes are presented alongside Kiefer’s monumental canvases and sculptures, which draw on history, myth, and memory. The exhibition aims to reveal how Van Gogh’s legacy continues to shape contemporary approaches to painting and symbolism.

Edward Burra / Ithell Colquhoun

Tate Britain, 13 June – 19 October 2025

Tate Britain presents parallel exhibitions devoted to Edward Burra and Ithell Colquhoun, two artists who worked in Britain during the mid-20th century. Burra’s sharp-eyed depictions of modern life and wartime scenes are contrasted with Colquhoun’s surreal and often esoteric paintings. Together, the exhibitions highlight two very different but equally distinctive approaches to the period’s artistic landscape.

Radical Harmony: Helene Kröller-Müller’s Neo-Impressionists

National Gallery, 13 September 2025 – 8 February 2026

The National Gallery presents its first exhibition devoted to Neo-Impressionism, drawing on the remarkable collection formed by Helene Kröller-Müller. Works by Seurat, Signac, Van Gogh, and Pissarro demonstrate the movement’s fascination with colour and light, while showing how collectors and patrons helped shape its legacy. The exhibition offers London audiences a rare opportunity to see these works together.

Do Ho Suh: Walk the House

Tate Modern, 27 October 2025 – 16 February 2026

In this newly commissioned installation, Do Ho Suh continues his exploration of memory and domestic space. Walk the House recreates interior architecture in translucent fabric, allowing visitors to move through stitched corridors and rooms. The work expands on Suh’s longstanding interest in the idea of home and how personal experience is carried across cultures and geographies.

Emily Kam Kngwarray

Tate Modern, 10 July 2025 – 11 January 2026

Tate Modern hosts the first major UK exhibition of Emily Kam Kngwarray, an Anmatyerr artist from Australia whose career flourished late in life. The exhibition includes a wide range of her paintings, created over an extraordinarily prolific eight-year period. Her rhythmic patterns and bold use of line and colour are rooted in her deep connection to Country and ancestral stories, offering new perspectives on contemporary abstraction.

Nigerian Modernism

Tate Modern, 8 October 2025 – 10 May 2026

This exhibition surveys the development of modernism in Nigeria, bringing together painting, sculpture, textiles, and archival material. It focuses on the period of political and cultural change in the mid-20th century, when artists sought to create a new visual identity for an independent nation. The exhibition highlights both well-known and overlooked figures, situating Nigerian modernism within a wider global context.

Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur

The Wallace Collection, September 2025 – January 2026

Grayson Perry’s ceramics, tapestries, and prints are presented within the ornate interiors of the Wallace Collection. The exhibition considers questions of taste, class, and cultural authority by setting Perry’s contemporary works against a backdrop of historic art and decoration. The juxtapositions highlight the artist’s interest in how art reflects identity, power, and aspiration.

Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons

Dulwich Picture Gallery, 24 September 2025 – 4 January 2026

Rachel Jones presents a new body of work at Dulwich Picture Gallery under the title Gated Canyons. Known for her bold use of colour and abstracted forms, Jones explores themes of identity, emotion, and the body. The exhibition builds on her recent acclaim while introducing paintings created specifically for the gallery’s spaces.

Marie Antoinette: Style & Power

V&A South Kensington, 20 September 2025 – 22 March 2026

The V&A explores the role of fashion and image in shaping Marie Antoinette’s public identity. The exhibition brings together examples of court dress, portraits, and decorative arts to examine how the queen’s style projected power but also provoked controversy. It also traces the ways in which her image has been reinterpreted in the centuries since, showing her continuing influence on fashion and culture.

Howard Hodgkin

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, Autumn 2025

Pitzhanger hosts an exhibition of works by Howard Hodgkin, whose paintings combine vivid colour with a highly personal approach to memory and emotion. The display features both large and small-scale works, emphasising the artist’s interest in painting as a record of experience. Shown within Soane’s historic house, the exhibition invites reflection on the relationship between art, architecture, and recollection.

---