miart 2026 Heads in a New Direction

Following the success of last year’s art fair, the 30th edition of miart is reshaping how it presents contemporary art. Housed in the new South Wing of Allianz MiCo, the fair will take place across three levels and welcome 160 galleries around the concept of ‘New Directions’. The theme is a tribute to jazz pioneer John Coltrane (1926–1967) and has been interpreted around the principles of improvisation, dialogue and exchange.

miart’s three core sections – Established (with the sub-category ‘Established Anthology’), Emergent and Movements – are each looking to emphasise something distinctive in how audiences navigate the works on display.

Alongside UK galleries such as Ben Brown Fine Arts and Sadie Coles HQ, international galleries including Buchholz, Peter Kilchmann, Galerie Lelong and Galerie Hubert Winter will feature prominently in the Established section. Particularly interesting this year is the fair’s decision to invite 20 galleries to participate in the Established Anthology ‘meta-section’, conceived to articulate what miart director Nicola Ricciardi describes as ‘the complexity, trajectories and transformations of time’ (Ricciardi 2026). How this unfolds across individual gallery stands will be revealing.

Monia Ben Hamouda, Monument to Vulnerability IV (Stoning of the Devil), 2024. Installation View from "Exposure - Art, culture, fashion in and out of the showcase" (MUDEC, Museo delle Culture, Milan, 2024). Courtesy the artist and ChertLüdde, Berlin — Monia Ben Hamouda, Monument to Vulnerability IV (Stoning of the Devil), 2024. Installation View from “Exposure – Art, culture, fashion in and out of the showcase” (MUDEC, Museo delle Culture, Milan, 2024). Courtesy the artist and ChertLüdde, Berlin

Frederik Næblerød, Identity I. 2025. Courtesy Alice Folker Gallery

In 2025, the Emergent section proved a particularly strong draw, and evidence of its success is that some of those galleries have since graduated to the Established section – a positive sign given the economic pressures facing smaller organisations. A further encouraging development is Italy’s reduction of its VAT rate on art sales from the standard dealer rate of 22% (or 10% for direct sales) to 5%, now the lowest such rate in any EU country (Saccardo et al. 2026).

The 2026 programme also introduces a dedicated strand called Movements, devoted to both historic and contemporary experimental moving-image art. Curated by Stefano Rabolli Pansera, Artistic Director of the Sound and Moving image Art Film Festival (SMAFF), the section explores how sound and vision interact within a specially configured environment at the fair. At the miart press conference, Ricciardi indicated that, rather than presenting moving-image works on conventional screens, the ambition is for something far larger and more immersive (Ricciardi 2026). The decision to foreground this medium raises an apposite question: does it reflect the fair responding to the growing number of artists working across moving image?

Mario Schifano, Futurismo Rivisitato, 1972–76, Photo: Marco Anelli/ /Tommaso Sacconi

Running alongside Milan Art Week, miart offers a distinctive vantage point on the European art world. Less daunting than Art Basel or Berlin’s gallery weekend, the 2025 edition held some sensational presentations, and the 2026 fair is looking to shake up its format further. The promises are compelling, though they are undeniably ambitious in scope, and the risks inherent in conceptually focused fairs are not inconsiderable. Yet with Italy’s favourable tax scheme and Ricciardi’s drive tso push the fair into new territory, there is every reason to expect miart to live up to its ambitions.

miart, 17-19 April; 2026
www.miart.it/en
Milan’s international modern and contemporary art fair, organized by Fiera Milano

Ai Weiwei, Girl with Pearl, 2022. Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA

Bibliography

Ricciardi, N 2026, miart 2026 press conference, miart, Milan, 2026.
Saccardo, N, Negri-Clementi, A, Elsisi, K & Ligasacchi, G 2026, 5% VAT in Italy for the art market: regulatory impacts and opportunities for international operators, CRS, viewed 2 March 2026, [full URL required to complete citation].

Images courtesy of miart