On April 22, 2026, Gallery Weekend Beijing held a press conference to announce the list of participants for its 10th edition. This not only marks a milestone moment for Gallery Weekend Beijing as it enters the chapter of “Ten Years of Resonance, A Future of Coexistence,” but also officially raises the curtain on the 2026 Beijing Art Season.
Over the past decade, Gallery Weekend Beijing has consistently upheld a spirit of innovation and professionalism, cultivating strong local foundations while maintaining a global outlook. This year, it will continue to serve as a central driver of the Beijing Art Season, injecting renewed energy into the city’s artistic vitality and propelling the second Beijing Art Season to new heights.
Gallery Weekend Beijing’s ten-year trajectory reflects not only the growth of a key platform within Chinese contemporary art, but also the continuous expansion of its diverse ecosystem and international exchange network. This decade of resonance arises from both the layered accumulation of local foundations and the gradual formation of shared understanding within the field.
Since its successful inaugural edition in 2017, Gallery Weekend Beijing has remained committed to its founding values. It aims to strengthen curatorial practices and critical discourse among professional galleries and art institutions, and to build an international platform for contemporary art dialogue. From an initial group of just over a dozen participating institutions, this year’s Main Sector brings together 30 galleries, 10 non-profit art institutions, and a series of special exhibitions. The Visiting Sector likewise convenes a wide range of galleries from China and abroad, marking the largest scale of participation to date. Behind this growth lies Gallery Weekend Beijing’s continuous effort to refine its program structure, participation model, and institutional composition, responding to shifting conditions through ongoing self-iteration. At this ten-year milestone, Gallery Weekend Beijing enters a new phase within China’s contemporary art ecosystem. Centered on the 798 Art District, it will continue to activate key cultural nodes across the city—including the Caochangdi Art District and the CBD Art Zone—while connecting with institutions across China and internationally. Through these efforts, it aims to contribute to the formation of a distinct value system, professional framework, and cultural production model for contemporary art in China.
We are delighted to announce that the 10th edition of Gallery Weekend Beijing will take place from May 22 to 31, 2026. The VIP Preview will run from May 22 to 24, followed by Public Days from May 26 to 31. This year, Gallery Weekend Beijing will continue its invitation-only model for the Main Sector, while presenting a highly anticipated Special Exhibition. The program will also feature the return of the Visiting Sector, the Public Sector, and the Up & Coming Sector.
30 Galleries, 10 Non-Profit Institutions in the “Main Sector,” and Special Exhibitions: A Deep Convergence of Beijing’s Art Ecosystem The Academic Committee of the 10th Gallery Weekend Beijing was elected through a joint vote by the 30 galleries that participated in the Main Sector of the previous edition. This year’s committee members are: Guo Xi (Deputy Director, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art), Leng Lin (Founder, Beijing Commune), Tian Yuan (Founder, WHITE SPACE), Xi Tao (Founder, A26 Space), and Yang Beichen (Director, MACA Art Center).
After careful review, the committee selected 25 galleries from the previous edition to continue in this year’s Main Sector. In addition, to further refine the composition of participants and reinforce a content-driven approach, each committee member nominated one Beijing-based gallery (established for at least one year) to join the roster. Through this invitation-based model, a total of 30 galleries have been confirmed for the Main Sector of this year’s Gallery Weekend Beijing. They are:
A26 Space, Asia Art Center, Beijing Commune, BONIAN SPACE, CLC Gallery Venture, Galleria Continua, ESLITE GALLERY, HdM GALLERY, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Hua International, Hunsand Space, INKStudio, KeYi Gallery, Magician Space, Galerie Urs Meile, MG Space, Mocube, PIFO Gallery, Platform China, REFLEXION, SENSE GALLERY, ShanghART Gallery, SPURS Gallery, Star Gallery, Tabula Rasa Gallery, Tang Contemporary Art, TOKYO GALLERY+BTAP, Tong Gallery+Projects, WHITE SPACE, and XZ SPACE.
From their presentations, the much-anticipated “Best Exhibition Award” and “Infinity Award” will be selected.
Gallery Weekend Beijing 2026 Academic Committee (in alphabetical order):
Guo Xi — Deputy Director, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art
Leng Lin — Founder, Beijing Commune
Tian Yuan — Founder, WHITE SPACE
Xi Tao — Founder, A26 Space
Yang Beichen — Director, MACA Art Center
In addition, 10 Main Sector non-profit institutions have begun presenting their latest exhibitions, with a particular emphasis on solo shows by local and international artists. These exhibitions engage a wide range of themes, including historical memory, technology, and digital life. At the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, the Great Hall is presenting Yang Fudong: Fragrant River until May 31. This marks the artist’s largest institutional exhibition to date. It brings together six newly created video works, one large-scale painting installation, a set of furniture-and-video installations, and a series of early paintings, videos, and archival materials to weave together past and present, emotion and reality. From May 1 to August 30, 2026, UCCA will also present Duan Jianyu: Daisies, a Light Breeze, No Relatives Writing Poems in the West, Middle, and New Halls. This marks Duan Jianyu’s first institutional solo exhibition in Beijing, serving as a mid-career retrospective spanning over a decade. Meanwhile, Wind H Art Center launched Zhou Yilun: SIRĀT on March 12, alongside Ning An’s latest individual project, Turtle Shell, in The StairCASE Young Artists Program. The former transforms the exhibition space into a carnival party with numerous sculptures, while the latter integrates installation, video, and real-time monitoring systems within the art center’s distinctive staircase architecture, creating an immersive environment rooted in the observation of daily life and emotional resonance.The Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum launched Setting the Tone of the Exhibition (Outside-In) on March 14. As part of the overall project Setting the Tone of the Exhibition: The Anatomy of Exhibition Openings, it features works by 30 international artists, exploring how different artistic strategies and methods shape the perception of and intervention in space. This exhibition evokes an absurd yet poetic, chaotic, and psychedelic theatrical experience. The Red Brick Art Museum is concurrently presenting the large-scale solo exhibition Aurora by Chinese artist Fu Rao (currently based in Dresden, Germany), as well as Primordial Paths, the first Asian exhibition for Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa. Both artists move between their homelands and distant contexts, employing distinct visual languages to explore universal themes of human existence amid migration, displacement, memory, and identity. The Song Art Museum is presenting Qin Qi’s solo exhibition Tales from the Thousand and One Nights (opened March 21). Through nine independent yet interconnected narratives, the exhibition brings together over 60 representative works from 2011 to the present, highlighting key themes in the artist’s practice, including folklore, exoticism, the animal world, urban modernity, and contemporary figurative painting. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Espace Louis Vuitton, Espace Louis Vuitton Beijing launched French artist Jean-Michel Othoniel’s solo exhibition Dazzling Trilogy on April 14. The exhibition presents the poetics of glass and light, evoking contemplative spatial imaginaries while paying tribute to histories of migration, individual memory, and those who endure through remembrance.
Since April 19, the Taikang Art Museum has been presenting the largest retrospective of modern artist Fu Luofei’s career to date: The Shape of Content: Fu Luofei’s Realist Painting and Wartime Art in China. Showcasing over 400 artworks and more than 100 precious historical archives, the exhibition comprehensively traces Fu’s creative trajectory. It also examines the context of wartime art and the “World Art Association,” aiming to highlight the key forces that connected the art of new-era China. On April 25, 798CUBE will launch a dual solo exhibition, Kairos Resounding: Julian Charrière & Laurent Grasso, curated by Zhang Ga. The two internationally acclaimed artists work independently yet in deep resonance with one another to explore time, perception, and planetary transformation. This marks the first institutional solo exhibition in China for both artists. Equally anticipated is the X Museum’s fifth collection exhibition, X Collection 404: When Landscapes Draw Near, running from May 24 to August 16, as well as solo exhibition projects by artists Luan Xueyan and Zhu Kaiting at MACA Art Center during Gallery Weekend Beijing.
As a special exhibition in this year’s Main Sector, WHITE SPACE presents a new solo exhibition by Ouyang Chun, titled Nirvana. Designed by spatial designer and contemporary art collector Tian Jun, the exhibition will open on April 28 at 798 Art District, Building D01, and run through June 7. Ouyang Chun describes Nirvana as a state of sustained inner labor—an ongoing process of groping through chaos and darkness, and of rebuilding from the ruins of destruction. It is both a site of spiritual tempering and a moment of transformation. Bringing together works spanning seven years, from 2018 to 2025, the exhibition highlights the artist’s intensified engagement with the materiality of painting, his recent expansions into other materials, and the richly layered tensions across narrative and imagistic dimensions.
The Return of the Special Sectors: Multidimensional Spatial Practices of the Visiting, Public, and Up & Coming Sectors
The Visiting Sector returns this year in collaboration with leading galleries from cities across the globe. The preview lineup includes BANK/MABSOCIETY (Shanghai, New York) and Each Modern (Taipei), both participating for the third consecutive year to present solo projects by their represented artists. Making their debut are Axel Vervoordt Gallery (Antwerp, Hong Kong), Capsule (Shanghai), and Hole – Contemporary Art Platform (Shanghai), each bringing their first exhibition projects to Beijing. As one of the most distinctive components of Gallery Weekend Beijing, the Visiting Sector aims to present a series of in-depth exhibition practices by outstanding galleries from China and abroad within the unique industrial architecture of the 798 Art District over a two-week period. What it conveys extends beyond the positions of galleries and the artistic characteristics of the works, unfolding instead as a site-specific narrative of how art is viewed and understood.
The Public Sector and Up & Coming Sector will also return concurrently. This year, the Public Sector expands beyond the 798 Art District into the urban fabric of Beijing for the first time, presenting large-scale installations and moving-image works across outdoor spaces and urban screen interfaces. The Up & Coming Sector will bring together emerging artists and curators, featuring a special project co-presented by artist Ai Kuo and curator Yang Zi at Building A08 in the 798 Art District. In addition, this year’s Gallery Weekend Beijing will host a special forum marking its 10th anniversary, using this milestone as a lens through which to examine key developments in Chinese contemporary art over the past decade.
Further highlights of the 10th edition of Gallery Weekend Beijing, including the full list of participating galleries in the Visiting Sector and the forum schedule, will be announced in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!
