Paris belongs to art again this October. Art Basel Paris returns for its fifth edition to the Grand Palais, this time under new director Karim Crippa. The fair runs from 23 to 25 October 2026 and brings together 211 galleries from 41 countries. Nearly thirty of them will exhibit for the very first time.
Art Basel Paris 2026 sets a record for joint presentations
This edition, moreover, is defined by a record twelve joint booth presentations, the highest number in the fair’s history. Galleries, in other words, are increasingly rethinking how to share space rather than simply standing side by side. New York and Los Angeles, for instance, join forces around the work of Beauford Delaney alongside contemporary artist Alteronce Gumby. ChertLüdde and Ellen de Bruijne Projects, meanwhile, connect feminist and experimental practices across three generations.
Fashion enters Oh La La!
This edition also includes the Oh La La! initiative, returning on 23 and 24 October. It’s the fair’s signature format, in which galleries rework their presentations together with a guest collaborator from outside the art world. Last year’s edition, notably, was led by celebrated French journalist and filmmaker Loïc Prigent, long associated with fashion and documentary filmmaking about major fashion houses. Art Basel Paris has not yet announced the curator or theme for 2026.
This connection between fashion and the fair’s structure, however, is no coincidence. Art Basel Paris, for the fifth year running, counts a fashion-world brand as its Public Program Official Partner, namely Miu Miu, whom we covered separately. Similarly, we also looked at Deutsche Bank’s collaboration with Studio Lenca at Frieze London, a closely related model of pairing major brands with the art world through fairs.
A building older than Art Basel Paris 2026 itself
The Grand Palais was built for the 1900 World’s Fair. Constructed, remarkably, in just three years, it rose on the site of the older Palais de l’Industrie from 1855. It’s a masterpiece blending Classicism with Art Nouveau. Stone colonnades meet a glass-and-steel roof, which required more than 8,500 tonnes of steel, indeed more than the Eiffel Tower itself. A team of architects led by Charles Girault won the 1896 competition to design the building. Its façade, to this day, bears an inscription dedicating it to “the glory of French art.”
It’s in this very building, once a celebration of craft and art at the turn of the century, that Paris’s most significant contemporary art fair now takes place. This, in turn, gives the whole event another dimension, a direct continuity between what Paris showed the world in 1900 and what it shows it today.
Crossover: the French art market is growing
This edition, furthermore, arrives amid renewed growth in the French art market. According to the Art Basel & UBS Global Art Market Report 2026, French sales reached USD 4.5 billion in 2025. That’s a 9% year-on-year increase, following two years of decline. France has thus returned above 2019 levels and now accounts for 8% of the global art market. It ranks as the fourth-largest market worldwide, and the largest in the European Union.
The city shapes the fair, the fair shapes the city
Karim Crippa, presenting the new edition, said Art Basel Paris has gradually become a genuine part of the city’s cultural fabric. He succeeds Clément Delépine, who led the fair’s Paris arm since its founding in 2022. Delépine has since moved to Lafayette Anticipations, a production and exhibition centre in the Marais district designed by architect Rem Koolhaas. It was in this very building, in fact, that Martin Margiela staged his major solo exhibition in 2021, an artist we covered in connection with the Maison Margiela ANONYMITY campaign.
The fair, according to Crippa, stands out not only for the quality of its presentations inside the Grand Palais, but also for the extraordinary concentration of activity around it. Institutional exhibitions and cross-disciplinary encounters, after all, make Paris fair week a singular cultural and market moment.
Who’s exhibiting at Art Basel Paris 2026
More than 60 of this year’s exhibitors operate spaces directly in France, underscoring the depth of the local scene. They’re joined by galleries from around the world, from the US and China to Japan and South Korea, as well as Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire.
Where and when
Grand Palais, Avenue Winston Churchill, Paris. Preview days on 21 and 22 October, public Vernissage on 22 October, public opening from 23 to 25 October 2026.
Courtesy of Art Basel
