The art world enters 2026 carrying the residue of a chastening year, but also something it hasn’t felt in a while: a sense that the ground may finally be steadying. If 2025 was defined by recalibration rather than collapse, the months ahead suggest the first real green shoots of recovery—less about exuberance, more about confidence returning quietly and deliberately.
Last year was marked by a slower tempo across the board. Auctions lost their sense of theatre, speculative flipping retreated further from view, and the market’s appetite for risk narrowed dramatically. According to major auction houses, consignors became more selective, reserves more conservative, and buyers more exacting. Works still sold—but often only when pricing felt incontrovertibly fair. The days of overnight sell-outs and eight-figure bidding wars, at least for now, appear firmly behind us.
That caution was compounded by geopolitics. The reintroduction and expansion of US tariffs under emergency trade powers cast a long shadow over cross-border activity, particularly between the US and China. American buyers travelled less, shipping decisions slowed, and galleries recalibrated their global footprints. Yet if 2025 exposed the fragility of over-globalisation, it also revealed a market learning to work smarter, closer to home, and with greater regional nuance.
Art fairs reflected this shift. The mood at Art Basel Hong Kong last spring was emblematic: no frenzy, no hysteria—but steady placements, quieter conversations, and a noticeable uptick in younger collectors from Asia. Dealers spoke of slower decision-making but higher-quality engagement. Elsewhere, Frieze Seoul continued to prove that newer fairs can still build momentum when aligned with local energy, while Art Basel Paris consolidated its position as Europe’s most watchable new hub, buoyed by institutional muscle and renewed French collector confidence.
Importantly, 2025 was also a year in which artists—not speculation—returned to the centre of the conversation. Painters such as Michael Borremans and Louise Bourgeois continued to anchor blue-chip demand, while sustained interest grew around contemporary figures including Jadé Fadojutimi, Amoako Boafo, and Simone Leigh—artists whose markets have cooled just enough to feel credible again. The speculative froth has thinned, but seriousness has returned.
There is also a perceptible shift in tone. Sustainability initiatives are no longer treated as marketing exercises but as cost-saving necessities; shared shipping, regional storage, and fewer but better fairs are easing financial pressure on galleries. Gen Z collectors—less brand-driven, more values-led—are engaging earlier, particularly in Asia and parts of Europe. And while geopolitical tensions remain unresolved, the market has begun to price them in rather than panic at every headline.
No one is predicting a return to the excesses of the pre-2022 boom—and that may be precisely the point. The outlook for 2026 is brighter because expectations are more realistic. The art world feels leaner, more disciplined, and paradoxically more hopeful. Confidence, after all, does not always arrive with a roar. Sometimes it comes quietly, booth by booth, sale by sale, with the sense that the worst of the adjustment may finally be behind us.