The 2026 cultural calendar keeps filling up, as the world’s most anticipated museum debuts and reopenings come online – each one as inspiring as the works it will house.
Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam
Initially founded in 2003, Nederlands Fotomuseum has now reopened in its new location: a state-of-the-art, nine-story building in Rotterdam’s Rijnhaven port area. Housed in the historic Santos warehouse, built at the beginning of the 20th century to store coffee beans from Brazil, the museum is crowned by a striking aluminium roof structure in which the restaurant ZES serves up responsibly sourced dishes with an uninterrupted view over Rotterdam.
Comprising more than 6.5 million photographic objects, the institution showcases the chronological evolution of Dutch photography in a permanent exhibition, with further temporary installations featured across two floors. The inaugural exhibitions are Awakening in Blue: An Ode to Cyanotype (until 7 June) and Rotterdam in Focus: The City in Photographs 1843 – Now (until 24 May).
New Museum, New York
Following a remarkable 5,570sq m expansion overseen by studio OMA, which abuts and doubles its original exhibition space, the New Museum has resumed operations with New Humans, a 200-artist collection exploring humanity in the age of technology. Other long-running installations include pieces by local talent Tschabalala Self, Berlin-based Klára Hosnedlová and the former YBA Sarah Lucas, each entering into dialogue with the museum’s architectural lexicon.
Having started as a single-room gallery with just three staff members in the 1970s, the New Museum has become a driving force of New York City’s cultural evolution, committed to offering a space for “new art, new ideas” – including for creatives not always embraced by the conventional institution, like women, queer artists and artists of colour. The New Museum’s reopening coincides with the inaugurations of a number of other projects on the opposite coast in LA, namely Dataland, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the newly relocated David Geffen Galleries.
MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives, Tokyo
An expansive four-billion-dollar development in south-central Tokyo, Takanawa Gateway City is the home of MoN Takanawa: The Museum of Narratives, which opens on 28 March. As part of the ever-changing urban landscape, the museum’s motto evokes the idea that everything is always in flux – a concept suitably represented by the distinctive spiral logo. The exterior, also in a spiral design, was created by Kengo Kuma and Associates, the firm behind many of the defining landmarks in the Japanese capital.
More of a cultural complex than a museum, the events and exhibitions offered in the opening year span myriad media and genres revolving around science, technology, manga, traditional performing arts and more. Plans to widen the portfolio through a collaboration with the Barbican Centre and Aomori Museum of Art are underway.
Centre for Contemporary Art, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
The first-ever establishment in Uzbekistan dedicated solely to contemporary art opens its inaugural year with Hikmah (until 30 June), a group exhibition curated by the institution’s Artistic Director and Chief Curator, Sara Raza. The show entails numerous site-specific installations by leading local artists that interact with the museum space, an early 20th-century industrial structure converted by French Studio KO to retain its characteristic features while introducing local materials and motifs.
Centre for Contemporary Art is expected to function as a cultural cornerstone of the region, first engaging the community with a city-wide public art festival, Tashkent Summer Days (21 June – 9 August), and then Tashkent Film Encounters, planned for December 2026.
V&A East, London
The Victoria and Albert Museum houses a diverse collection of over four million artworks and archival items, the vast majority of which are usually kept under strict security, with only a small fraction ever being exhibited. To the delight of international art lovers, however, the two new facilities comprising the V&A East – built at the site of the 2012 London Olympics, approximately an hour away from the main V&A – are destined to change all that.
The V&A East Storehouse unlocked its doors in May 2025, offering a backstage glimpse of the “working” museum and allowing visitors to see how the collected pieces are stored, preserved and ultimately displayed. The V&A East Museum, opening on 18 April, aims to collaborate with multicultural communities and global contemporaries in the interest of exploring the urgent challenges facing humanity.
Muzej Lah, Slovenia
With the fairy-tale castle and landscapes of Lake Bled as a backdrop, the David-Chipperfield-designed Muzej Lah aims to coexist with its Slovenian heritage and alpine surrounds as it shines a light on the extensive art collection of private patrons Igor and Mojca Lah, founders of Fundacija Lah. Comprising more than 100 post-war artworks by celebrated artists such as Anselm Kiefer and Joseph Beuys alongside eminent Slovenian creatives, this picturesque destination museum will begin welcoming art and architecture enthusiasts in the summer of 2026.
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Kanal, Brussels
A former Citroën garage redesigned by a trio of architectural firms, Kanal is an ambitious art complex born in collaboration with the Pompidou Centre and situated just a short walk from the historic centre of Brussels. Opening its doors on 28 November with ten thought-provoking exhibitions, the programme includes A Truly Immense Journey, presenting around 350 works by prominent modern artists; a multisensory underground installation by Joëlle Tuerlinckx; an exploration of the fragility of human rights by Istanbul-based Banu Cennetoğlu; and An Infinite Woman, the first exhibition of a two-part, multi-artist project examining and resisting the colonial rhetorics of the past. The complex also features three restaurants, two shops and an indoor playground designed by Turner-Prize-winning collective Assemble, making it an accessible cultural port of call for all ages.
Guggenheim Abu Dhabi
A much-awaited fourth Guggenheim is set to debut this year in Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat Island cultural district. The visual impact of the museum, conceived by Frank Gehry and echoing his earlier Bilbao project, is impressive and imposing, further cementing Saadiyat Island’s place on the global cultural map. A high-profile project two decades in the making, the museum has yet to disclose an official opening date – though the long-anticipated inauguration does appear imminent. When it is officially unveiled, it will be the largest of the Guggenheim museums, spanning approximately 80,000 square metres and showcasing a collection built by a team of curators for nearly 20 years.
