The Lingotto complex, once a Fiat car factory in Turin, today hosts something entirely different from cars. Right there, from October 30 to November 1, 2026, Artissima holds its thirty-third edition, the international fair of contemporary art that has, for five years running, been directed by Luigi Fassi as one long, carefully considered curatorial sentence.
Fancy as this year’s theme
This edition is called Fancy: A Flexible, Acrobatic Body. The title borrows from philosopher Martha Nussbaum and her 1995 book Poetic Justice, in which she argues that moral imagination, the ability to feel one’s way into someone else’s experience, is one of the most powerful things art can offer.
Fassi takes it further still: art as a form of public intelligence, capable of keeping democratic institutions alive at a time when that sounds less and less self-evident. The visual identity comes from the Turin-based studio FIONDA, now in its ninth year of collaboration with the fair. The logos of past editions become brackets here, bending, multiplying and generating unexpected trajectories.
By the numbers, quickly
183 galleries, 35 countries, four continents, 66 monographic projects and 37 galleries at the fair for the very first time, that’s Artissima 2026 in short. Seven sections in total, four selected by the galleries committee. Three have their own curators: Present Future, Back to the Future and Disegni.
Present Future is the oldest platform for discovering new names, twenty-six years running. It is led this year by Léon Kruijswijk from Luxembourg’s Mudam and independent curator Joel Valabrega. Together they focused on artists working at the intersection of craft, industry and technology.
Back to the Future moves in the opposite direction entirely, toward pioneers who were not afraid to stand against what they saw as wrong. Their work spans the 1930s to the 1990s. And Disegni, the only section of an Italian fair devoted exclusively to drawing, marks its tenth edition this year.
The illy Present Future Prize has been awarded since 2001, twenty-six editions in, making it one of the oldest prizes at the fair.
The city as accomplice
Artissima long ago outgrew the Oval alone. Massimo Vitali has a preview of next year’s exhibition at Gallerie d’Italia, while Louis Morlæ, last year’s winner of the illy Present Future Prize, exhibits at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo during the fair. For a few days, Turin turns into one large, branching installation, where the city itself becomes part of the dramaturgy.
A building that used to be a car factory
The Oval itself stands in Lingotto, a former Fiat factory. Its roof once served as a test track for cars. Today it is called Pista 500 and has become a panoramic promenade. Every year, a monumental billboard is created there as part of the prize of the same name. Industrial history has found an entirely new language for itself here, and that is exactly the point.
Practical information
Artissima 2026 runs from October 30 to November 1 at Oval Torino, in the Lingotto complex. The main programme also includes Artissima Junior for younger visitors. There is also the publishing section WoW – Worlds of Words, along with a series of accompanying exhibitions across the city.
