It’s been a whirlwind 2026 already. The year kicked off with a bang at Art Basel Qatar and barrelled forward into a spring marked by a much-talked-about Venice Biennale, a jam-packed week of fairs in New York, and a blockbuster series of sales at the auction houses. For the indefatigable collectors, dealers, and—yes—journalists that constitute the art world, there’s one more marquee event before summer takes hold: Art Basel’s flagship fair in the otherwise tranquil Swiss canton of Basel.
The Swiss edition of Art Basel still carries a reputation for presenting the most museum-quality work, even if that reputation has waned somewhat as fairs in Paris, and now the the Gulf, take hold. This year, the fair introduced Basel Exclusive, a new opt-in program in which exhibitors agree to withhold at least one top work from the pre-fair PDFs and previews, in the hopes of generating some you-had-to-be-there-to-see-it buzz. Of the 240 exhibitors in the main galleries section, 193 have opted in to the initiative, according to the fair.
Thus, there are bound to be some big-ticket artworks missing in our preview. Nevertheless, with a focus on art dealers with reputations for bringing the freshest (and highest-priced) secondary market works, here’s some of what will be hanging on the walls in Basel.
