The top exhibitions to catch in France in 2026

May 8, 2025 to February 2, 2027

For its 15th anniversary, the Centre Pompidou-Metz is thinking big. From rarely seen pieces to icons such as the wall of André Breton's studio and Marcel Duchamp's chess table, the entire diversity of the Centre Pompidou collection is on display in the Grande Nef and the museum's galleries through an alphabetical list of 27 sections combining humor, commitment, and imagination. Adding to the exhibition are the facetious works of Maurizio Cattelan, from the famous banana taped to the wall (Comedian) to the huge cat skeleton (Felix), inviting visitors to explore a world where art challenges certainties and reinvents Sunday as a space of freedom.

Visit the Centre Pompidou-Metz in Lorraine 

From 14 June 2025 to 19 April 2026

Off the coast of Cap Corse, at a depth of 120 metres, a series of intriguing sand circles caught the eye of underwater photographer Laurent Ballesta. Between 2021 and 2024, he conducted research with a team of scientists and discovered a unique underwater landscape populated by species previously unknown at this depth. Through a series of spectacular photographs, the exhibition at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon reveals an extraordinary scientific and human adventure, while celebrating the richness and fragility of the marine world.

Visit the Musée des Confluences in Lyon

From September 26, 2025, to September 27, 2026

In Toulouse, Les Abattoirs unveils the art of assemblage, a technique that transforms fragments, everyday objects, and discarded items into compositions that are both poetic and surprising. Through nearly a century of creations, from pioneers such as Picasso and the Dadaists to contemporary artists such as Diego Bianchi and Kenia Almaraz Murillo, the exhibition highlights the diversity of materials and techniques, such as accumulations of sewn fabrics or collages of paper archives that invent new forms. More than just a technique, assemblage becomes a genuine act of care, inviting visitors to reflect on our relationship with objects, their repair, and their reinvention.

Visit Les Abattoirs in Toulouse, Occitanie 

From October 15, 2025, to March 30, 2026

The Mucem celebrates Don Quixote, the universal hero created by Miguel de Cervantes, through more than 200 pieces combining masterpieces, popular objects, and archives from the Spanish National Library, among others. From reinterpretations by Goya, Dalí, Picasso, and Honoré Daumier to films by Orson Welles and Terry Gilliam, the exhibition explores the comic, turbulent, and deeply modern dimension of a character who constantly oscillates between illusion and reality. The exhibition also highlights the vitality of contemporary perspectives, from Gérard Garouste's gouaches to Abraham Poincheval's performances, showing how the world's most famous antihero continues to inspire artists.

Visit the Mucem in Marseille, Provence

October 17, 2025 to August 16, 2026

Do you really know about zombies and their origins? Far removed from the undead creatures of cinema and pop culture, Haitian zombies refer to criminals judged by secret societies and condemned to a death of excruciating suffering. A complex figure, shaped by African religions and indigenous Caribbean cultures, and marked by the traumas of slavery. The Musée des Confluences invites you to explore these little-known beliefs, still alive today, and to understand how they have shaped this universal myth.

Visit the Musée des Confluences in Lyon 

From November 7, 2025, to March 22, 2026

Discover Gustave Caillebotte's Le Pont de l'Europe (The Bridge of Europe) or the colorful intensity of the Fauves with Henri Manguin's Le Nu au canapé bleu (Nude on a Blue Sofa), and let yourself be surprised by Maximilien Luce's pointillism or Félix Vallotton's attention to detail. From Picasso to Renoir, Manet to Suzanne Valadon, including long-forgotten artists, this winter, Oscar Ghez's collection is coming to the Caumont Art Center, revealing the boldness and diversity of French painting at the turn of the 20th century. The exhibition also highlights the collector's visionary role in art history.

Visit the Caumont Art Center in Aix-en-Provence

November 7, 2025 to May 31, 2026

What is queer art, and how can it transform our view of the world? For this exhibition designed for the museum's main hall, artist Lieven de Boeck combines mobile sculptures, performances, and interactive experiences, inviting the public to become actors in the work. Between political reflections, impromptu encounters, and performative moments, “Breaking Free” offers a lively journey where each interaction questions our social models and explores new forms of relationship with art.

Visit the Olivier Debré Contemporary Art Center in Tours, in the Loire Valley.

November 8, 2025 to April 5, 2026

Industrial poetry, promises of travel, and perpetual motion—like seaside landscapes, harbor panoramas have long captivated artists. Through nearly 120 works, the exhibition “Ports en vues” offers a dialogue between paintings, photographs, and engravings in which breakwaters, cranes, moorings, and containers are transformed into fascinating motifs. Among the highlights, Raoul Dufy's recently acquired Le Port du Havre (1902) reveals the beginnings of Fauvism with its bold colors and vibrant touches, while Hassan Massoudy's calligraphy is inspired by the industrial settings of the 1970s. The tour ends with Dans le port du Havre (1998), a contemporary work by the artist duo Pierre and Gilles, which reaffirms the imaginative power of the port landscape by combining staging, portraiture, and visual brilliance.

Visit the André Malraux Museum of Modern Art in Le Havre, Normandy

From November 22, 2025, to May 31, 2026

As winter fills the French Riviera with flowers and fragrances, the Bonnard Museum brings its collections to life with a unique exhibition, enriched by works never before shown to the public, including L'Atelier au Mimosa (1939-1945), a masterpiece on loan from the Centre Pompidou. In this iconic painting, Bonnard's studio dialogues with the mimosa garden, bathed in golden light, where textures and reflections respond to each other in subtle harmony. The exhibition offers an opportunity to rediscover the magic of Bonnard's painting, with its vibrant colors, precise brushstrokes, and intimate relationship between the artist and his garden.

Visit the Bonnard Museum in Le Cannet, on the French Riviera. 

November 29, 2025 to March 30, 2026

To mark its bicentennial, the Musée Fabre in Montpellier is dedicating a major retrospective to Pierre Soulages, a leading figure in contemporary art. The exhibition brings together 120 paintings, bronzes, glassworks, and papers that bear witness to the artistic dialogues between Soulages and iconic figures in art history such as Rembrandt and Zao Wou-Ki. From cave art to the famous Outrenoirs, works in which black becomes a source of light through a play of textures and reflections, the exhibition reveals seventy years of creativity.

Visit the Fabre Museum in Montpellier, Occitanie

From November 29, 2025, to March 1, 2026

From Courbet to Monet, Corot to Matisse, the greatest painters have made Étretat one of the most famous landscapes in art history. At the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, an exhibition designed in collaboration with the Städel Museum in Frankfurt brings together paintings, drawings, photographs, and archives to tell the story of how this spectacular setting on the Normandy coast became a legendary motif and a laboratory for experimentation from Romanticism to Impressionism. As Étretat now faces erosion and overcrowding, the exhibition invites us to reconsider the power of these images, which have shaped our view of nature for two centuries.

Visit the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon 

December 2, 2025 to March 1, 2026

A leading figure in Czech art, Jan Křížek (1919–1985) created a world populated by enigmatic human figures, where his astonishing compositions were inspired by art brut and surrealism. Having fallen in love with France, he settled in Corrèze, near the Dordogne Valley, where he developed a unique style that captivates with its sensitivity and inventiveness. While the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Brest is closed, the Ateliers des Capucins is presenting his drawings, watercolors, and prints, offering visitors the opportunity to be seduced by this self-taught artist.

Visit the Ateliers des Capucins in Brest, Brittany. 

January 24 to June 28, 2026

From Venetian mirrors to wrecked car engines, Moroccan wedding dresses to portraits of models and young black women, Valérie Belin transforms reality into a theater where objects become almost alive and bodies freeze into sculptures. Her latest series, Cover Girls, continues this exploration of the false and the true, appearances and illusion, between black and white, color and digital. The exhibition presented in 2026 at Les Franciscaines offers a fascinating journey through the metamorphoses of contemporary photography, revealing the precision and audacity of an artist who never ceases to question the boundary between beings and things.

Visit Les Franciscaines in Deauville, Normandy

January 31 to May 3, 2026

Since 2021, Montpellier's MO.CO has been promoting contemporary creation in the Occitanie region during the SOL biennial! For its third edition, Montpellier Contemporain is partnering with the Fabre Museum to honor the Montpellier School of Fine Arts, revealing a rich history that blends academic tradition with bold experimentation. Through works by former students, from the school's origins to the present day, the exhibition highlights the connections and breaks that have shaped this place, which has become a veritable artistic laboratory, producing renowned figures such as Abdelkader Benchamma and Jean-Baptiste Durand.

Visit the MO.CO. in Montpellier, Occitanie 

Starting February 7, 2026

In 2026, the Bassins des Lumières invites visitors to dive into the heart of Matisse's universe through an immersive experience where paintings, cut-outs, and stained glass come to life in a ballet of light and color. From his early post-impressionist paintings to his vibrant fauvism, and on to his creations for the Chapelle du Rosaire in Vence, each stage of his work is revealed with intensity and emotion. The monumental projections convey the power of color, which becomes a language and a means of artistic expression.

The bright colors and intense patterns of Frida Kahlo's work extend this chromatic dialogue in a second immersive exhibition. The two Fridas, Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and The Broken Column, come to life on the walls of Les Bassins, revealing the artist's multiple identities and creative force. Each projection highlights the smallest details, from plant motifs to anatomical symbols, and conveys the full power of her art.

Visit Les Bassins des Lumières in Bordeaux 

March 6 to July 12, 2026

At the Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, Giulia Andreani, a leading figurative painter of her generation, revisits 19th-century history by transforming archival images into paintings in her signature icy blue style. From her portraits of women resistance fighters to her depictions of leaders frozen in their power, such as La Procession, inspired by a photograph of a military parade, the artist brings back to life those whom history has forgotten. With some fifty works and a monumental fresco created for the exhibition, Peinture froide offers a critical and contemporary look at our collective memories.

Visit the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art 

March 27 to July 5, 2026

In 2026, the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny will celebrate the centenary of Claude Monet's death with an exhibition dedicated to his early years in Giverny, a decisive period that preceded his future Water Lilies. From the misty banks of the Epte and Seine rivers to the rows of poplar trees and fields of poppies, visitors will discover Giverny as the painter first saw it in 1883, through some thirty paintings returned to the place where they were created.

Visit the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny in Normandy 

From May 8, 2026, to April 25, 2027

Château Borély, home to the Museum of Decorative Arts, Ceramics, and Fashion, highlights an essential chapter in Marseille's creative history, where the floral elegance of Art Nouveau meets the modernist lines of Art Deco. Nearly 180 works, on loan from major French institutions and from rarely seen local collections, reveal the richness of an artistic heritage that is still little known. This exhibition offers visitors from around the world a spectacular immersion into the creative effervescence that shaped the style of Marseille at the turn of the 20th century.

Visit Château Borély in Marseille, Provence

Suzanne Valadon at the Centre Pompidou, Pablo Picasso at the Atelier des Lumières, Niki de Saint Phalle at the Grand Palais, Pierre Bonnard at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris and David Hockney at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Discover our selection of not-to-be-missed exhibitions in Paris museums and digital art centres.