Frieze Week Guide to What’s Actually Worth Your Time
Running from 14 to 18 October, Frieze Week 2026 brings a packed programme of exhibitions, gallery openings, special events and creative collaborations across London. Here's our curated list of what to see inside the tents and far beyond them.
How to Use This Guide
Frieze Week is five days, two tents, and a city-wide ecosystem.
1. Inside the tents — the stands, sections, and artists worth your time.
2. Frieze Masters — where the 18th century becomes meme-worthy.
3. Beyond the park — the shows everyone will be talking about.
4. The details — toilets, talks, and the things no one tells you about.
The stands everyone will screenshot
Myrlande Constant (Fort Gansevoort, A10) — sequinned Haitian Vodou flags, first solo in Europe.
Ana Mendieta (Alison Jacques, A25) — the 1972 beard-gluing work.
Márcia Falcão (Fortes d’Aloia & Gabriel, A15) — new paintings, already biennial-tested.
Selma Selman (acb Gallery, S07) — in The Code Universe.
Dalton Paula (Lisson, D01) — Afro-Brazilian portraits.
The Code Universe
Curated by Carol Yinghua Lu (Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing), this new section tracks how artists since the late 1970s respond to mass culture — from consumer goods to media imagery. Spanning Shanghai to New York, it considers the global legacy of pop and conceptual art in a post-digital age.
Artists: Selma Selman, Shinro Ohtake, Carolyn Lazard, Payne Zhu.
Artist-to-Artist
Seven artists, nominated by seven peers. A chain of recognition, not a sales floor. Yinka Shonibare picks Unathi Mkonto. Otobong Nkanga picks Jota Mombaça. Jeffrey Gibson picks Caroline Monnet. Gala Porras-Kim picks Jorge González Santos.
Go to the Toilets
Gray Wielebinski turns the fair’s public toilets into an intimate olfactory experience. Scented urinal cakes and toilet-rim blocks, enclosed in sculptural cages, release a custom fragrance — pencil shavings, paint, dust and sweat. The smell of the studio, pushed into one of the fair’s most controlled spaces.
The best piece you’ll find without a map.
FRIEZE MASTERS
There are over 1,200 Gillray prints, plus hundreds by Hogarth and Rowlandson. Expect sex, food, politics and gossip. After that, find Helene Schjerfbeck among the Nordic women painters. What to watch:
An Egyptian bronze of Ptah, once owned by William Randolph Hearst, believed to have inspired the Oscar statuette.
Van Dyck’s Portrait of a Nobleman at Colnaghi.
Anish Kapoor’s early ceramics at Galleria Continua.
BEYOND THE PARK
William Kentridge, Goodman Gallery: the world premiere of his new stop-motion film.
Cindy Sherman, Hauser & Wirth: the new Fabric Matrons series, partly made with fabric from the Chanel archive.
Nicola Turner, Annely Juda: 12 metres of wool and horsehair climbing a Georgian façade, right by Bond Street station.
Rebecca Warren, Maureen Paley: her first London show in 15 years.
Esteban Jefferson, Herald St: paintings about the British Museum, shown around the corner from it.
Issy Wood, National Portrait Gallery: 11 self-portraits, most never shown before.
