After an intense year with very powerful exhibition proposals -with names like Maruja Mallo, Robert Capa or Matisse- Madrid is getting ready to welcome with open arms a new and exciting season of exhibitions throughout 2026 in which museums, halls, cultural centers or foundations are involved.
Although some of the most outstanding exhibitions that have opened in 2025 will still accompany us in 2026, we will focus here on those that will open next year. And, from what is known so far, it seems that a fairly common denominator -but not the only one- will be the bet on the discovery of artists or themes that are not so well known to the general public.
1. Hammershøi. The listening eye
© Finnish National Gallery / Hannu Aaltonen
The Thyssen will dedicate an exhibition in 2026 to the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), the first retrospective of this artist in Spain. In the nearly 100 paintings that comprise it, the public will be able to approach the recurring themes and motifs of his work: from his attractive and intriguing interiors to the role of his wife, Ida Ilsted, in his creative process.
All his paintings, moreover, are characterized by moving in the elusive terrain of ambiguity, probably one of the characteristics that makes it so fascinating to try to understand and interpret its meaning even more than 100 years after his death.
📍Location: Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum (Paseo del Prado, 8)
🗓️ Dates: February 17 to May 31, 2026
2. I am Ashurbanipal, king of the world, king of Assyria
Through more than 150 objects from the British Museum’s collection, the exhibition recaptures the complex and multifaceted figure of Ashurbanipal, the king who ruled the great Assyrian Empire between 669 BC and 631 BC.
From his military training to his ambition to gather in his palace all the existing knowledge, this exhibition rescues from oblivion one of the most important kings in history, as well as the cultural heritage of what was once the largest empire in the world.
📍Location: CaixaForum Madrid (Paseo del Prado, 36)
🗓️ Dates: April 9 to October 4, 2026
3. Anders Zorn. Traveling the world, remembering the earth
He painted from high society characters such as kings and celebrities of his time to the everyday life of the people of Sweden, female nudes or Andalusian scenes, and his friendship with Joaquín Sorolla left its mark on his work -which not in vain is included in that of the luminist painters of the turn of the century-.
The Swedish Anders Zorn (1860-1920) is the career of a humble artist in constant evolution -in themes and styles- who managed to carve a niche for himself in the European panorama thanks to his virtuosity.
📍Location: Sala Recoletos Fundación MAPFRE (paseo de Recoletos, 23)
🗓️ Dates: February 19 to May 17, 2026
4. Helen Levitt
Parallel to the previous exhibition, the Sala Recoletos will also host a photographic exhibition in 2026 dedicated to the photographer Helen Levitt, who since the 1930s portrayed with her camera her fascination for the tireless life of the New York streets.
The nearly two hundred images that make up the exhibition reconstruct Levitt’s poetic and personal vision through scenes such as children’s games, everyday gestures and scenes of popular neighborhoods.
📍Location: Sala Recoletos Fundación MAPFRE (paseo de Recoletos, 23)
🗓️ Dates: February 19 to May 17, 2026
5. Ana Locking. Nostalgia and utopia
This retrospective covers more than two decades of the designer’s creation through more than 160 garments. The backbone is fashion as a discipline that does not remain solely on the aesthetic level, but is articulated as a “narrative, emotional and political” discourse that moves between nostalgia and utopia and is committed to its own time.
📍Location: Canal de Isabel II Hall (Santa Engracia street, 125)
🗓️ Dates: March 4 to July 12, 2026
6. The Aesthetic Transition. Spain, 1960-2020
An exhibition about exhibitions. As a sort of meta-exhibition, this exhibition reflects on the act of exhibiting in our country at a time of many changes: the opening to the outside world of the dictatorship in the 1960s, the transition to democracy allowing the arrival -30 years later with respect to the rest of the Western world- of contemporary and international art or the most recent changes in the visual culture of the last decades.
📍Location: Fundación Juan March (Calle Castelló, 77)
🗓️ Dates: October 16, 2026 to January 10, 2027
7. Wunderkammer
The word wunderkammer comes from German and means “chamber of wonders”: it refers to collections of curious objects and, from next January 2026, it will also refer to the exhibition of Ana Juan, an international reference in the world of drawing, with which CentroCentro will open its season.
Through her creations, the artist tries to bring order to the chaotic world we live in with imaginary beings and figures that, depending on who looks at them, can have one meaning or another.
📍Location: CentroCentro (Plaza de Cibeles, 1)
🗓️ Dates: January 29th to May 3rd, 2026
8. Lola Lasurt. Rehearsal for Deep Song
Can dance and the body reflect the pain of a people? Deep Song and Immediate Tragedy, Lorca-inspired choreographies created in 1937 by Marta Graham after exposure to photographs arriving from the Spanish Civil War, are proof that they can. Decades later, visual artist Lola Lasurt pictorially reconstructs this dance: the tensions, the falls and permanent contact with the ground or what a woman’s body endures.
She also brings this dance to the present through a video projected at ground level in which she can be seen trying to understand the dance from her own body, before being able to paint it.
📍Location: Sala de Bóvedas of the Centro de Cultura Conde Duque.
🗓️ Dates: January 23 to April 12, 2026