What lies ahead for Seoul's art scene in 2026

Do Ho Suh's "Nest/s" (2024) / Courtesy of Do Ho Suh Studio

The year 2026 brings a crowded art calendar and a widened field of view. Across Seoul, museums are turning to Korean masters and internationally active contemporary artists, while new exhibitions examine queer art through the lens of the city’s own histories and neighborhoods.

New institutions are also joining the scene, including Centre Pompidou Hanwha Seoul, while the major biennales — Venice, Gwangju and Busan — return to anchor the year.

Korean masters in focus

Major museums this year are dedicating solo exhibitions to established Korean artists, alongside contemporaries with strong international profiles.

In September, as the city enters its annual peak art season with Frieze Seoul, Do Ho Suh and Koo Jeong-a will take center stage.

A comprehensive survey of Suh’s practice will be mounted at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), Seoul. Long concerned with ideas of home, displacement and belonging, his work often takes the form of delicately constructed installations that replicate architectural spaces drawn from his personal history. Using translucent fabric and paper, Suh recreates corridors, staircases and rooms at full scale, inviting viewers to physically move through them.

Koo follows her representation of the Korean Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale with an exhibition centered on perception. Working with intangible media such as scents and magnetic fields, she creates environments that subtly disrupt the viewer’s sensory order. At the Leeum Museum of Art, her creations will extend beyond the gallery into the museum’s lobby and other unexpected corners.

Kim Yun-shin's wooden sculptures on view at the 2024 Venice Biennale's International Art Exhibition / Courtesy of the artist, Lehmann Maupin and Kukje Gallery

In March, the Hoam Museum of Art in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, will stage the first blockbuster retrospective of nonagenarian sculptor Kim Yun-shin. Carving directly into wood chunks with chainsaws, she produces freestanding assemblages with organic, almost primal, forms reminiscent of sprouting plants or totem poles. In addition to her signature sculptural series, the exhibition includes early prints and paintings to offer a fuller view of her 70-year career.

The Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) is set to mark the 110th anniversary of Yoo Young-kuk’s birth with the largest retrospective of the artist to date. A pioneer of Korean abstraction, Yoo is best known for distilling the country’s natural landscapes into fundamental elements of dots, lines, planes and color. The May show will provide an in-depth look at his oeuvre, including previously unseen pieces.

Yoo Young-kuk's "Work" (1967) / Courtesy of Yoo Youngkuk Art Foundation

International heavyweights

Alongside homegrown talents, a roster of prominent international figures is set to enliven the city’s art calendar throughout the year.

Damien Hirst's "For the Love of God" (2007) / Courtesy of the artist

The MMCA will present a large-scale retrospective of British artist Damien Hirst in March — the first of its kind in Asia. From animals preserved in formaldehyde to display cases with pills and surgical instruments, Hirst’s art confronts uneasy questions about death, immortality and human desire. Provocative by design, he has long occupied a polarizing position within the contemporary art world.

In February, the Leeum Museum of Art turns its attention to Tino Sehgal, whose practice rejects material objects in favor of live encounters. Built around what he calls “constructed situations,” his works take shape through choreographed interactions and exist only in that moment. The Seoul exhibition includes a site-specific live piece created through his reimagining of the museum’s own collection.

Another artist making his solo debut in Korea is Jonas Wood. Known for reworking everyday interiors and landscapes, Wood uses bold patterns, compressed perspectives and saturated color to transform familiar spaces into carefully staged compositions. His September show at the Amorepacific Museum of Art will gather more than 80 works, including paintings, prints and wallpaper.

Jonas Wood's "Bball Studio" (2021) / Courtesy of the artist

Reframing the once-marginalized

Art Sonje Center is kicking off the year with a significant exhibition examining LGBTQ+ practices long situated outside the mainstream. “Spectrosynthesis Seoul,” opening in March, brings together works by more than 70 artists to consider contemporary queer art through Seoul’s specific cultural contexts — from the neighborhoods that shaped Korean queer subcultures to micro-histories left undocumented amid the city’s breakneck modernization.

A reassessment of female trailblazers neglected within art history narratives comes to the fore as well. At the Leeum Museum of Art, a group exhibition in May gathers first-generation women artists from around the world, including Judy Chicago and Tsuruko Yamazaki, to highlight their early immersive environments that invite visitors’ sensory engagement.

Installation view of the recreated "Feather Room" (1966) by Judy Chicago, Lloyd Hamrol and Eric Orr
(The Room Company) at Haus der Kunst Munchen in Germany / Courtesy of Haus der Kunst Munchen

Rhee Seund-ja's "A World without Obstacle" (1968) / Courtesy of Gallery Hyundai

In February, Arario Gallery Seoul will put forth a large-scale survey of Park Young-sook. Park’s photographic practice from the 1960s, such as her “Mad Women Project,” foregrounded the female body to challenge patriarchal power structures.

White Cube and Gallery Hyundai turn the spotlight this year on Rhee Seund-ja, regarded as Korea’s only female first-generation abstractionist. In 2024, her solo show was mounted as an official collateral event of the Venice Biennale.

Gallery Hyundai will also highlight the work of Christine Sun Kim in September. Drawing on her lived experience as a Deaf artist navigating a hearing-centered world, Kim explores sound through the body, American Sign Language, musical notation and infographics. Her oeuvre reveals how meaning is mediated and often distorted across different systems of communication.

New museums, returning biennales

This year brings a new constellation of art institutions to the capital. Centre Pompidou Hanwha Seoul, the satellite outpost of the iconic Parisian museum, will open in May inside the 63 Square skyscraper in Yeouido, following an initial delay to the project.

Another addition arrives in the first half of the year with the Seo-Seoul Museum of Art, a branch of SeMA in western Seoul dedicated to performance and media art.

Biennales will also return, bringing a sense of anticipation. The 61st Venice Biennale begins on May 9, with its flagship International Art Exhibition unfolding under the theme, “In Minor Keys.” The show was conceived by Cameroonian-Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh before her sudden passing last year.

In Venice, the Korean Pavilion centers on the idea of “Fortress and Nest.” Curated by Binna Choi, the exhibition brings together works by Choi Go-en and Ro Hye-ree, proposing a 21st-century “space of liberation” that reframes social unrest as a more inclusive form of energy.

Park Young-sook's "Scene 24" (1965) / Courtesy of Arario Gallery

Back on home ground, Korea’s two headliner biennales both unfold in September. The Gwangju Biennale, Asia’s longest-running survey of contemporary art, has named Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen as its artistic director. His edition will explore how “the practice of artistic transformation resonates with Gwangju’s legacy of democratic change.”

The Busan Biennale’s upcoming edition is jointly led by Amal Khalaf and Evelyn Simons and centered around the theme, “Dissident Chorus,” suggesting a polyphonic gathering of voices against the port city’s backdrop.