Fall 2025 in Europe: 25 exhibitions worth traveling for

Paris

Paul Troubetzkoy. The Sculptor Prince
Where: Musée d’Orsay
When: September 30, 2025 – January 11, 2026

From September 30 at the Musée d’Orsay, the first Paris retrospective of Pavel Trubetskoy, the Russian aristocrat and sculptor whose portraits of Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Rodin are world-famous. Working between Moscow, Paris and Milan, he became a master of “living” sculpture, preferring spontaneity to academic rigor. The halls are filled with bronze, plaster, drawings and rare archival materials that reveal his ability to capture movement and character rather than pose.

George Condo
Where: Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris
When: October 10, 2025 – February 8, 2026

On view through October 10 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is a major exhibition by George Condo, an American artist who combines the traditions of the Old Masters with the grotesque and ironic. His portraits with fractured facial expressions and displaced anatomy balance between caricature and psychological study. The exhibition spans several decades, showing different facets of his manner.

Philip Guston: Irony/History
Where: Musée Picasso
When: October 14, 2025 – March 1, 2026

From October 14, the Picasso Museum will show late works by Philip Gaston, who in the late 1960s abandoned abstraction for figurative painting with political overtones. His large pink and gray canvases speak of violence, fears and personal memories. The Paris exhibition traces this turn and its impact on generations of artists.

Kandinsky: The Music of Color
Where: Centre Pompidou × Musée de la Musique
When: October 15, 2025 – February 1, 2026

From October 15, the Centre Pompidou and the Musée de la Musique present a joint project on the role of sound in the work of Wassily Kandinsky. Nearly 200 works and objects from the artist’s studio – scores, instruments, books – help trace how music became the basis of his abstract language. The multimedia rooms create a synaesthesia effect, allowing you to literally hear his paintings.

Gerhard Richter
Where: Fondation Louis Vuitton
When: October 17, 2025 – March 2, 2026

From October 17, the Louis Vuitton Foundation presents a large-scale exhibition of Gerhard Richter, one of the most influential artists of the second half of the 20th century. The halls are filled with abstractions, blurred photographs, landscapes and glass panels in which the image appears and disappears.

Bridget Riley: Starting Point
Where: Musée d’Orsay
When: October 21, 2025 – January 25, 2026

From October 21 at the Musée d’Orsay, early works by Bridget Riley, one of the key figures in British art of the second half of the 20th century. In the 1960s, she created her recognizable language of alternating stripes, waves and geometric shapes that transform a painting into an optical experience. The exhibition includes drawings and paintings, in which her handwriting was formed and her first experiments with color and rhythm appeared.

Exposition Générale
Where: Fondation Cartier
When: October 25, 2025 – end of August 2026

From October 25, the Fondation Cartier opens its new building opposite the Louvre and immediately launches its first project, Exposition Générale. Visitors to the exhibition will see selected works from the Foundation’s collection over the past forty years, from painting and photography to video art.

Art Basel Paris (Paris+)
Where: Grand Palais
When: October 24 – 26, 2025

From October 24 to 26 at the Grand Palais – the Parisian version of the world’s largest contemporary art fair. The program includes leading galleries from Europe, the USA and Asia, special projects and meetings with artists. It is a key event of the art market, with dozens of exhibitions around the city.

Paris Photo
Where: Grand Palais Éphémère
When: November 13 – 16, 2025

From November 13 to 16, the Grand Palais Éphémère will host the largest photography fair. More than 200 galleries and publishers will show works from the classics of the 19th century to experiments with new technologies. A separate section will be dedicated to photo books and rare archives.

Berlin

Petrit Halilaj: Syrigana
Where: Hamburger Bahnhof
When: September 11, 2025 – May 31, 2026

Since September 11, Kosovo artist Petrit Halilaji has been transforming the halls of the Hamburger Bahnhof into an installation dedicated to memories, lost homeland and personal myths. The project combines large-scale sculptural elements and details related to his childhood. The exhibition is constructed as an emotional landscape in which the viewer is physically immersed.

Max Ernst to Dorothea Tanning: Networks of Surrealism
Where: Neue Nationalgalerie
When: October 17, 2025 – March 1, 2026

From October 17, Neue Nationalgalerie explores surrealism through the creative and personal connections of the most prominent representatives of the movement. The focus is on Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning and the artists in their circle, whose works form a chain of mutual influences.

Annika Kahrs
Where: Hamburger Bahnhof
When: November 14, 2025 – May 3, 2026

From November 14, Annika Kars will present a project working at the intersection of sound and image. Her multimedia installations and videos explore communication and perception, creating situations in which familiar signals take on new meaning. In Berlin, she will invite viewers not just to observe, but to participate in the process.

Hommage an Vittore Carpaccio
Where: Gemäldegalerie
When: November 20, 2025 – April 6, 2026

From November 20, the Gemäldegalerie presents an exhibition dedicated to the Venetian Renaissance master. The exhibition features Carpaccio’s works from museums and private collections in Europe, brought together in one space for the first time in decades. This is an opportunity to see his complex, multidimensional scenes, where biblical subjects are juxtaposed with images of everyday life in Venice.

Vienna

Gothic Modern
Where: Albertina
When: September 19, 2025 – January 11, 2026

From September 19, the Albertina explores how artists of the 20th century reinterpreted Gothic motifs. The exhibition includes Munch, Beckmann, Kollwitz and other modernist masters whose works are placed in dialog with works from the Middle Ages. Among the themes are religious subjects and expressive images, in which medieval aesthetics acquires a modern sound.

Cézanne, Monet, Renoir. French Impressionism from Museum Langmatt
Where: Belvedere
When: September 25, 2025 – February 8, 2026

From September 25, the collection of French Impressionists from the Swiss Langmatt Museum will be on view in the Lower Belvedere. Monet’s landscapes, Cézanne’s still lifes and Renoir’s scenes, which rarely leave their native collection, will appear in a Viennese context for the first time. For the audience, this is an opportunity to see Impressionism in a chamber-like but very precise selection.

Marina Abramović
Where: Albertina Modern
When: October 10, 2025 – March 1, 2026

From October 10, Albertina Modern gives its halls to Marina Abramović. The performance legend will present key works and new projects that explore the limits of physical and emotional endurance. The exhibition combines video documentation, objects and live performances, engaging the viewer in the process itself.

Florence

Flowers: Soutine, De Pisis, Chagall
Where: Collezione Roberto Casamonti
When: September 16, 2025 – November 1, 2025

From September 16, the private museum Collezione Roberto Casamonti in Florence will present the project “Flowers: Sutin, De Pisis, Chagall.” The exhibition includes still lifes and landscapes by three twentieth-century artists working with the motif of flowers. Marc Chagall and Haim Sutin bring the experience of the avant-garde and the Parisian school to the theme. The Italian line is represented by Filippo De Pisis.

Fra Angelico
Where: Palazzo Strozzi
When: September 26, 2025 – January 25, 2026

From September 26, a major project dedicated to Fra Angelico will open in Florence. Palazzo Strozzi and the Museo San Marco will bring together paintings, frescoes and manuscripts by the master, including recently restored works. This is a rare opportunity to see a significant part of his legacy in one of Italy’s most beautiful cities.

Helsinki

Sarah Lucas: NAKED EYE
Where: Kiasma
When: October 10, 2025 – March 8, 2026

From October 10, Kiasma Museum presents Finland’s first major retrospective of Sarah Lucas. The sculptures, installations and photographs by the artist, who is associated with the Young British Artists movement, explore themes of the body and sexuality. The exhibition spans almost forty years of work, while retaining her trademark humor and provocativeness.

Basel

Yayoi Kusama
Where: Fondation Beyeler
When: October 12, 2025 – January 25, 2026

From October 12, Fondation Beyeler presents the largest retrospective of a Japanese artist in Switzerland. “Infinite Rooms”, bright dot installations, early painting cycles and new projects show seven decades of her work.

Madrid

Warhol, Pollock and Other American Spaces
Where: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
When: October 21, 2025 – January 25, 2026

From October 21, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum opens an exhibition dedicated to American art of the mid-20th century. At the center are Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol, whose approaches to painting were shaped in very different artistic environments. In addition to their works, there are works by their contemporaries, archival photographs and documents that reveal the atmosphere of New York in the 1950s and 1970s.

Zurich

Druck gemacht! Meisterwerke auf Papier von Albrecht Dürer bis Dieter Roth
Where: Kunsthaus Zürich
When: October 31, 2025 – January 25, 2026

From October 31, Kunsthaus Zürich will show an outstanding collection of printed graphics spanning five centuries. From Dürer’s engravings and Rembrandt’s etchings to the expressionist and avant-garde works of the 20th century, each piece is presented as an independent work. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see how technique and material have changed the artistic language over the centuries.

Oslo

MUNCH Triennale: Almost Unreal
Where: MUNCH
When: November 15, 2025 – February 22, 2026

From November 15, the Munch Museum launches a new triennial dedicated to the boundaries of the real and the virtual. Artists from different countries work with analog and digital technologies, creating large-scale installations and interactive projects. The exhibition invites viewers to explore how art responds to technological change.

Antwerp

Magritte. La ligne de vie
Where: KMSKA
When: November 15, 2025 – February 22, 2026

From November 15, Antwerp’s Royal Museum of Fine Arts will reconstruct a lecture-exhibition of René Magritte from 1938, when the artist himself selected and commented on his works, constructing a personal narrative about painting and image. Today, the project brings together paintings, archival photographs and documents, allowing us to “hear” his voice through the decades.

Stockholm

Pablo Picasso: Late Picasso
Where: Moderna Museet
When: November 22, 2025 – April 5, 2026

From November 22, Moderna Museet is showing more than seventy works from Picasso’s late period. The paintings, created between 1963 and 1972, are characterized by the freedom and energy that defined his final phase. The exhibition reveals how this period influenced the art of the second half of the 20th century.