2026 will be a year of extraordinary richness for the Italian exhibition panorama, with a calendar that spans five centuries of art history through retrospectives of international scope and highly ambitious curatorial projects. From the main Italian cities – Milan, Rome, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Ferrara, Naples – a program emerges that ranges from the masters of the Baroque to the protagonists of the twentieth-century avant-garde, from the painting of the Macchiaioli to contemporary photography, from street art to the golden age of Abstract Expressionism. Let’s see together the exhibitions that await us from January 2026
Leonora Carrington, Palazzo Reale, Milan
The first Italian solo exhibition dedicated to Leonora Carrington, an English artist with a radically multifaceted personality, is on display at Palazzo Reale until 11 January. The exhibition presents the unique trajectory of this migrant and exiled woman artist through the multiple languages she experimented with: painting, writing, theater and critical thinking. The exhibition itinerary restores the complexity of a figure who made imagination an instrument of resistance and knowledge, documenting his fundamental contribution to the visual and literary culture of the twentieth century.
Man Ray, Palazzo Reale, Milan
Also at Palazzo Reale, until January 11th, you can visit the large retrospective dedicated to Man Ray, which retraces the biographical and artistic stages of the master between the United States and Paris. The exhibition itinerary is divided into thematic nuclei – self-portraits, muses, nudes, the famous “rayographies” and “solarisations”, fashion – proposing the rediscovery of a unique artist who crossed and renewed the languages of twentieth-century art and photography, documenting his history and his travels between the two sides of the Atlantic.
Nan Goldin, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan
Nan Goldin’s major retrospective, which can be visited until February 2026, is part of the industrial space of the HangarBicocca with an installation that strengthens the link between personal memory, architecture and the collective dimension of the exhibition experience. Photography, video and installation build an immersive story that crosses the central themes of the American artist’s research: intimacy, the fragility of bodies, communities on the margins, memory as a political act. The architecture of the former industrial plant dialogues with the emotional power of Goldin’s images, creating an experience that goes beyond simple vision to become a physical and psychological experience.
The Macchiaioli, Royal Palace, Milan
From 3 February to 14 June 2026 Palazzo Reale hosts the first major Milanese retrospective dedicated to the Macchiaioli, the movement that radically renewed nineteenth-century Italian painting. Through over one hundred works from the main Italian museums, the exhibition reconstructs the experience of artists such as Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega and Telemaco Signorini, protagonists of a pictorial research deeply intertwined with the civil and political tensions of the Risorgimento. The exhibition itinerary documents the visual revolution brought about by these painters, who abandoned the academic tradition for an en plein air painting based on the “stain” of color and the immediate rendering of light.
Mark Rothko, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
From 14 March to 26 July 2026 Palazzo Strozzi hosts the long-awaited exhibition dedicated to Mark Rothko, one of the absolute protagonists of Abstract Expressionism and twentieth-century art. The Florentine exhibition aims to highlight the influence of Renaissance art on Rothko’s artistic universe, investigating the profound connections between Italian painting of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the American master’s research on light, color and the spiritual dimension of painting. The comparison between the rooms of Palazzo Strozzi and the large chromatic fields of Rothko promises to constitute one of the most significant moments of the Italian exhibition season.
Andy Warhol. Ladies and Gentlemen, Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara
From 14 March to 19 July 2026 Ferrara hosts Andy Warhol. Ladies and Gentlemen in the rooms of Palazzo dei Diamanti, in what is the re-edition of a historic exhibition organized in the same venue in 1975. The exhibition is dedicated to the homonymous series of 150 portraits created by the Pittsburgh artist to explore themes such as multiculturalism and gender identity. Fifty years later, the project allows us to reread one of Warhol’s most courageous and visionary cycles, in which the artist turns his gaze to the New York drag community, anticipating issues today at the center of contemporary cultural debate.
Robert Mapplethorpe. The forms of desire, Palazzo Reale, Milan
From 29 January to 17 May 2026 Palazzo Reale hosts an important retrospective dedicated to Robert Mapplethorpe, one of the most significant names in twentieth-century photography. Curated by Denis Curti, the exhibition explores the artist’s exceptional ability to combine an almost sculptural precision with a profound introspection on desire, identity and corporeity. Through a selection of iconic images – from famous nudes to floral compositions – the journey investigates the tension between form and impulse, between aesthetic rigor and emotional power, giving the Italian public the opportunity to deal with the complexity of a visual language still capable of arousing emotion and debate today.
Bernini and the Barberini, Palazzo Barberini, Rome
From 12 February to 14 June 2026 Palazzo Barberini presents the major exhibition Bernini and the Barberini, a project curated by Andrea Bacchi and Maurizia Cicconi which recounts one of the founding chapters of Roman Baroque and European art. The exhibition explores the extraordinary relationship between Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Maffeo Barberini, a cardinal who was later elected Pope Urban VIII, highlighting how their personal, artistic and political understanding favored the affirmation of a new and grandiose language that transformed the city and the artistic panorama of the seventeenth century. Through exceptional loans, models, drawings and sculptural and architectural works, the itinerary offers a reinterpretation of the birth of the Baroque through the gaze of one of its most influential architects.
Mario Schifano, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome
From 16 March to 12 July 2026 the Palazzo delle Esposizioni dedicates a major exhibition to Mario Schifano, one of the undisputed protagonists of Italian art of the second half of the twentieth century. The exhibition project, promoted by the Department of Culture of Rome Capital and by Palaexpo, offers a chronological journey through the various phases of the artist’s career, from the first visual experiments to the iconic paintings and the more experimental works of the following years, restoring the complexity and originality of his visual language. The exhibition also tells in depth Schifano’s intense relationship with Rome, which was not only the place of birth and training but also the nucleus of an artistic vision in constant dialogue with the international avant-gardes.
Van Dyck. The European, Palazzo Ducale, Genoa
From 20 March to 19 July 2026 Palazzo Ducale offers one of the most ambitious exhibitions of the Italian season with Van Dyck the European. The journey of a genius from Antwerp to Genoa to London. The exhibition brings together over fifty paintings by the great Flemish painter Antoon van Dyck, coming from more than thirty museums in twenty-two European cities, including the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Madrid and the National Gallery in London. The thematic itinerary crosses the three key cities of the artist’s career: his native Antwerp, the Genoese Superba where he developed relationships with the local aristocracy, and the court of Charles I of England, where he became the official portrait painter, documenting Van Dyck’s extraordinary ability to dialogue with different cultural contexts and to profoundly renew the portrait genre.
Peggy Guggenheim in London. Birth of a Collector, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
From 25 April to 19 October 2026 the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice hosts one of the most anticipated exhibitions of the season with Peggy Guggenheim in London. Birth of a Collector, a project that investigates the international debut of the famous American collector. The exhibition explores the period between 1938 and 1939 in which Peggy Guggenheim managed the Guggenheim Jeune gallery in London, which became a point of reference for the European avant-garde and innovative artists of the time. The itinerary brings together significant works exhibited in those first exhibitions together with archive materials that reveal the network of influences and friendships – from Marcel Duchamp to Samuel Beckett – that shaped the collector’s vision.
Obey, Gallerie d’Italia, Naples
From 6 May to 6 September 2026 the Gallerie d’Italia in Naples will host an exhibition dedicated to Obey (Frank Shepard Fairey), an internationally renowned artist among the protagonists of contemporary street art, known above all for the famous Hope poster created for Barack Obama’s electoral campaign. The exhibition marks a significant encounter between urban language and the Neapolitan artistic context, bringing to the heart of Naples a selection of works that reflect the central themes of Obey’s research: from social justice to peace, from the criticism of power to the construction of a visual imagination capable of circulating in public spaces. The initiative offers the public a unique opportunity to engage with the visual and conceptual strength of one of the most influential names on the contemporary international art scene.
