Antwerp Art Weekend 2026: Contemporary Art Takes Over the City Once Again

12th edition focuses on emerging talent, unique locations, and urgent narratives — May 14–17, 2026 | Antwerp

From May 14 to 17, 2026, Antwerp Art organizes the 12th edition of Antwerp Art Weekend. For four days, contemporary art once again takes over the entire city of Antwerp, with an ambitious and wide-ranging program of exhibitions, events, performances, talks, and festive gatherings.

This year, the program unfolds across 88 venues throughout the city — including galleries, museums, artist-run spaces and project venues — offering a unique opportunity to discover Antwerp’s dynamic contemporary art scene. Antwerp Art Weekend invites art lovers, collectors, professionals, and curious visitors to explore the city through art, encounters, and exploration.

The 2026 edition places a strong emphasis on encounters, collaboration, and new perspectives, while continuing to highlight the richness and diversity of Antwerp’s artistic ecosystem.

A city-wide program and a central hub

As in previous editions, M HKA — the Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp — serves as the central hub and information point throughout the weekend. Visitors can gather there to obtain practical information, meet others, and take part in a variety of activities.

The Antwerp Art Graduation Prize exhibition, which spotlights recently graduated artists, is a key highlight. The 2025 laureates — Charlotte Daniëlse (KASKA) and Marta Meers (SLA) — present new works, marking an important step in their artistic journeys (see below).

In addition, the OFF program continues to expand, with more than 30 sites bringing together independent initiatives, artist collectives, and alternative spaces, further emphasizing the diversity of the local artistic landscape.

Highlights and narrative angles

Young artists in the spotlight with the Antwerp Art Graduation Prize

For the fourth time in 2026, Antwerp Art is organizing the Antwerp Art Graduation Prize Exhibition, showcasing artists who have recently graduated from Antwerp’s art schools. This initiative aims to support emerging artists and help launch their professional careers.

Every year, two students with a master’s degree in fine arts are selected based on their graduation projects: one from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (KASKA) and one from Sint Lucas Antwerp (SLA). The Graduation Prize consists of a cash prize and an exhibition of new work during Antwerp Art Weekend.

The 2025 laureates that will be exhibiting their work are Charlotte Daniëlse (KASKA) and Marta Meers (SLA).

Other initiatives highlighting emerging artists

Gallery Sofie Van de Velde: The Wunderwall Enlarged presents works by young artists in an accessible and playful way.
Het Bos presents Vruchtbare Grond, showcasing artists who have participated in residencies there.
MINO ART SPACE focuses on artists of color and new voices on the art scene.
The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp opens its doors with a wide range of student projects.
FOMU — the Photo Museum Antwerp — hosts Nightwatch, an evening where young artists take over the museum with performances and a festive program.

Art as a reflection of societal urgency

Several exhibitions address contemporary political and social issues.

Annie Gentils Gallery, Stefaan Dheedene presents VERY VERY HUSH HUSH, an installation composed of fragments from a BBC radio program, Business English, focused on crisis management. These excerpts are re-edited into a sound fiction in which we hear a meeting of employees discussing a contemporary crisis.

Backspace presents Permanent Apocalypse, a group exhibition bringing together Loan Verbanck, Bram Kinsbergen, Bram Vanderbeke, Frédéric Pels, and Tom Volkaert. The exhibition takes the Apocalypse as its point of departure, assembling artistic practices marked by strong existential intensity.

At Kunsthal Extra City, artist and filmmaker Sammy Baloji (1978, DR Congo) invites visitors to reconsider the history of colonial exploitation in Central Africa and its present-day repercussions. Through tapestries and sound installations, he presents recent works in which material, image, and voice are closely intertwined.

At Pedrami Gallery, Klaartje Lambrechts develops a hybrid project in collaboration with dancers from Tehran, creating a dialogue between visual art and performance. After the suffocating intensity of the city, she turned toward silence and desert landscapes. Among dunes, rocks, and salt plains, she conceived a conceptual photographic series in which the dancers’ bodies merge with the fabrics that envelop them, exploring the physical and expressive limits of the body.

Art in hidden and exceptional locations

One of the most distinctive aspects of Antwerp Art Weekend is access to unique venues, often normally closed to the public.

Club Zee and FAAR breathe new life into the former Seamen’s House, transforming it into a space dedicated to contemporary art. Once designed as temporary accommodation for sailors, the building becomes an inspiring historical setting for artistic exploration. In the former meeting rooms, Behind the Curtain, a duo exhibition by Ged Proost and Alexandra Pușcaș, is on view.

The art collective ERCOLA presents in the basement of the Godshuis the exhibition 'in caravan, ERCOLA'. Where the upper floors function as shared, visible, and organized spaces, the artists in the basement take on a different position: underground, temporary, rougher, and more collective. The basement thus becomes a physical and symbolic place for the younger generation of artists, who today increasingly see how autonomous workspaces and collective structures disappear under the pressure of redevelopment, regulation, and commercialization.

Among other notable projects is an exhibition on the Woonschip Leon, an iconic barge moored at 31 Houtdok-Zuidkaai in Antwerp. The boat not only serves as the home of visual artist Jelle Annie Michiels and her family, but also as a creative venue participating in Antwerp Art Weekend. Ten artist researcher were invites to design a flag with the theme 'hold on to'. These flags will be presented on the masts of different ships in the Houtdok.

A major group exhibition is also organized by the collective ZIJspoor (Demi Cocquyt & Elise Willems) in the former Antwerp Courthouse. 'STAND VAN ZAKEN' brings together a selection of young, emerging artists, with a focus this year on sculptural work in the space.

At TICK TACK, a site-specific project unfolds across three floors of the brutalist building De Zonnewijzer (1955), designed by Léon Stynen. Responding to the building’s exposed concrete structure and transparent street-facing façade, the exhibition stages a spatial choreography of sculptural elements in steel, resin and sound, creating an environment where architecture, body and material tension converge.

The international gallery Mariane Ibrahim temporarily takes over a striking Art Nouveau building. Located at 12 Kattendijkdok-Oostkaai, 12Antwerp is a site revitalized by AIM Architecture. More than just a venue, 12Antwerp is a space for exchange — a dialogue between art, design, and architecture; a bridge between disciplines, working methods, and perspectives; a place where spatial experimentation and cultural programming go hand in hand.

Human stories and participation

Beyond major exhibitions, Antwerp Art Weekend also makes room for personal and participatory projects.

HAPPY SAD at De Cinema / De Studio pays tribute to the “overflowing creative spirit” of Antwerp-based artist Daan Gielis (1988–2023), who passed away. His neighbor and close friend Olivier Rynders has spent recent years working on a documentary. The film takes its title from Gielis’s most popular neon artwork, Happy Sad, and follows Daan and his partner Lotte during the intense six months leading up to an extremely high-risk operation.

The exhibition Intra_Extra at A-Space questions boundaries, walls, and the conceptual lines of separation between nature and culture, investigating what falls inside or outside these definitions. Thirteen artists present work "Intra muros" (within the walls), engaging in a dialogue with the genius loci of the space itself and with the other works in A-Space. Simultaneously, these same artists leave the boundaries of these safe walls to intersect with the daily flow of the city.

At FAAR, visitors are actively involved and can contribute directly to the exhibition. The project Sticky Fingers invites everyone to bring a sticker — whether homemade or existing — to share. The content is entirely up to you — something politically or socially meaningful, a personal thought, a drawing, a humorous image, a slogan, a graphic you like, or even the sticker of your favourite kebab place. The gesture can be serious, playful, intimate, absurd, or completely casual. With this project, FAAR Art Space transforms into a temporary, uncensored container of ideas, built collectively through the accumulation of stickers.

Schönfeld Projects presents the group exhibition 'être humain'. A special highlight of the exhibition is the collaboration between Albert Pepermans (79) and young talent Felix Franssens (11). Working from the same sheet of paper and the same theme, they respond to each other’s gestures, creating a diptych that evolves through a dialogue between two generations. 'être humain' invites visitors to pause and reflect on what makes us human - through image, movement, and encounter.

Themes such as identity, community, and the environment are also explored in projects like Schelde Imaginaries and exhibitions at De Studio.