The Most Anticipated Art Museum Openings and Expansions of 2026

Museums, regardless of their size, face a minefield of challenges, from how best to preserve, share and display artworks to how to attract new audiences while cultivating loyalty among visitors who might eventually become patrons to how to push boundaries without sparking (too much) backlash. And let’s not forget that these institutions, often seen as permanent fixtures, are anything but. New museums open with great fanfare, and others close—sometimes surprisingly quietly. As art historian and former Met president and CEO Daniel H. Weiss notes in Why the Museum Matters, these cultural beacons are vital to preserving our collective heritage, yet their futures remain precarious.

In the past year, museums have grappled with disastrous wildfires, much-derided rebrandings, overt attempts at censorship, declining attendance, the loss of federal funds and the longest government shutdown in history. Yet, the institutional landscape wasn’t entirely grim. Many major museums began exploring ways to engage new generations of supporters and new audiences. Some started welcoming four-legged visitors or hosting yoga classes. At many institutions, the humble museum café got Michelin-worthy upgrades. There was a trend of doctors prescribing museum visits, and science began studying how museums might boost well-being.  And many more art museums opened last year than closed.  

A few institutions, however, did not open as planned in 2025, which is why some of the most anticipated 2026 museum openings and expansions are holdovers from last year’s list. Will the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi finally open its doors after all this time? That remains to be seen, but there’s certainly a chance! Here’s what you can look forward to in the coming months:

Opening: Refik Anadol’s DATALAND

• Spring 2026

Refik Anadol, who made headlines when his monumental work Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations was acquired by MoMA, is set to make history by opening the world’s first institution dedicated entirely to championing, promoting and showcasing the creative synergy between art and A.I. Rescheduled for a spring 2026 debut, Dataland will be located in The Grand LA, the Frank Gehry-designed development in Los Angeles’ cultural epicenter, close to other important L.A. cultural institutions, such as The Broad, MOCA, The Music Center, Walt Disney Concert Hall, REDCAT and The Colburn School. The opening, Anadol told Observer, is the realization of a long-held dream. “With DATALAND, we will be able to create and exhibit immersive experiences that fully integrate digital art with architectural spaces in collaboration with renowned firms like Gensler and Arup.”

Opening: Guggenheim Abu Dhabi

• Date TBD

The long wait for the opening of the much-delayed Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is nearly over. Maybe. In 2024, Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism announced that the Saadiyat Cultural District was on track for completion by the end of 2025, but it was unclear when the Guggenheim outpost would actually open. With its striking Frank Gehry-designed building (that some have called the ugliest museum to ever be constructed) and a price tag of over a billion dollars, the enormous 320,000-square-foot museum initially announced almost two decades ago was supposed to go up in the 2010s, but the project was hit by construction delays and protests by artists and labor activists responding to the treatment of workers in Abu Dhabi. It’s anticipated that the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi will play a significant role in the cultural development of the U.A.E., along with the Louvre Abu Dhabi. And for those wondering if there will be further delays, construction is ongoing, and the Guggenheim’s updated brand identity includes Arabic in anticipation of the museum’s opening. And if not in 2026, then definitely in 2027. Probably.

Opening: KANAL-Centre Pompidou

• November 28, 2026

The opening of KANAL in Brussels will give the city a large-scale contemporary art institution with the ambition and infrastructure to match its cultural capital. Occupying a transformed former Citroën garage on the northwestern edge of the city center, it spans 12,500 square meters across five floors, a footprint that exceeds the original Tate Modern and the Palais de Tokyo. Conceived as a multifunctional civic space rather than a single-purpose museum, KANAL will combine permanent and temporary exhibition space with performance venues, an architecture center, a library, restaurants, a bakery and a café. Its inaugural exhibition is set to include works by Matisse, Picasso and Giacometti on loan from the Centre Pompidou, with trilingual wall texts in English, Dutch and French already approved, signaling an outward-looking institution attuned to Brussels’s multilingual reality. Crucially, KANAL aims to address a long-standing gap in the country’s cultural infrastructure by ensuring its collection incorporates significant Belgian artworks.

Opening: Dubai Museum of Art

• Date TBD

Rising above Dubai Creek, the forthcoming—and floating—Dubai Museum of Art (DUMA) will, if all goes as planned, anchor the city more firmly in the global art world. (In statements, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid has cast it as a mirror of Dubai’s cultural ambitions.) Renderings of the curvaceous, shell-like exterior suggest Pritzker Prize winner Tadao Ando’s design will fold past and future into a museum that could be a contender for one of the world’s most beautiful. In the works are flexible exhibition floors, rooms built for talks, panels and education and even space for an art fair when the calendar demands it. 

Opening: Fondation Bustamante

• July 2026

Founded by French artist Jean-Marc Bustamante, the new institution will be housed in Arles’ Sainte-Croix church, a former medieval parish rebuilt in the 18th Century and redesigned for its new purpose by architect Charles Zana. Exhibition spaces will unfold across three levels, alongside programming that includes classes, lectures and symposiums, while also preserving Bustamante’s archives. Born in Toulouse in 1952, the artist has built a career spanning photography, painting and sculpture; he represented France at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, directed Printemps de Septembre in Toulouse and led the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris from 2015 to 2018. Elected to the Académie des beaux-arts in 2016, he will also be the subject of a retrospective at Ludwig Museum Koblenz in 2026. Beyond showcasing his own work, the foundation aims to become an outward-facing platform for contemporary art, with Bustamante stating, “My goal is to position the foundation among the exceptional cultural offerings of the city, providing support and visibility to artists from all generations and to young exhibition curators, critics and historians from around the world.”

Opening: CANYON

• Date TBD

Designed by New Affiliates Architecture, CANYON introduces a new model for contemporary art on the Lower East Side by both centering durational works and staying open late into the night to meet its audience where they already are. Conceived by veteran museum director Joseph C. Thompson (founding director of MASS MoCA) alongside financier Robert Rosenkranz, the institution positions itself as a hub for video, sound, performance and other practices that take time to appreciate. Housed in a vacant commercial space, CANYON will have 18,000 square feet of galleries equipped with advanced sound and display technologies, plus a performance hall seating up to 300 for concerts and other performances, screenings and podcast tapings. A large skylit piazza with a cafe, bars and a full-service restaurant will function as a social commons, reinforcing the idea of cultural space as communal space. “We believe that if the art invites you to settle in and stay awhile, it should be in a really comfortable, sociable space, more like a living room than a typical white or black box,” Thompson told Observer. “Little things—like soft seating with backrests and a place to put a drink—and big things, like precise articulation of image and sound, make a difference with this work.”

Opening: V&A East

• April 18, 2026

After years of planning and revised timelines, the V&A East Museum is now set to open, marking a major expansion of the Victoria & Albert Museum into east London’s Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Conceived as a cornerstone of the East Bank cultural complex, the five-story museum builds on the earlier opening of the V&A East Storehouse in May 2025, which offered public access to the V&A’s collections and archives. The new museum will have two free permanent “Why We Make” galleries presenting more than 500 objects spanning global art, architecture, design, performance and fashion, alongside temporary exhibitions, beginning with “The Music Is Black: A British Story.” Highlights range from Leigh Bowery and Mr Pearl’s fetish-inspired ballet costumes for Michael Clark Company’s 1987 production Because We Must to Derek Jarman’s abstract set model for Don Giovanni at Sadler’s Wells Opera in 1968, as well as a 17th-century gown by textile designer Anna Maria Garthwaite. New acquisitions by figures including Yinka Ilori, the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives Ladakh, VIN + OMI and east London publishers One of My Kind and Rabbits Road Press will anchor the museum’s focus on contemporary global culture.

Opening: The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

• September 22, 2026

“Stories are mythology, and when illustrated, they help humans understand the mysteries of life,” said director George Lucas in a statement announcing the opening date of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles’s Exposition Park. Co-founded by Lucas and Mellody Hobson, the museum’s collection will be housed in a building designed by Ma Yansong of MAD, with surrounding gardens designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA. The institution’s mission frames narrative art as a universal form of meaning-making, and Hobson echoed this ethos in a statement, describing the institution as “a museum of the people’s art,” adding, “Our hope is that as people move through the galleries, they will see themselves, and their humanity, reflected back.” The permanent collection will comprise more than 40,000 works, displayed across 35 galleries totaling 100,000 square feet, and organized around themes drawn from everyday experiences, including love, family, community, work, play, childhood and adventure. The collection, which spans pop culture and fine art, includes everything from illustrations, sketches, mural painting and comic art to children’s book imagery, science fiction, cinematic artifacts and documentaries about artists and filmmakers.

Opening: Tashkent’s Centre for Contemporary Arts

• March 2026

The opening of the Centre for Contemporary Arts Tashkent will mark a significant moment for Uzbekistan’s cultural landscape, positioning the country more firmly within global contemporary art conversations. Led by the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation under the direction of chairperson Gayane Umerova, the expanded CCA reflects a broader investment aimed at strengthening the nation’s cultural ecosystem, stimulating its creative economy and creating new opportunities for artists at local, regional and international levels. Housed in a revitalized 1912 industrial building originally used as a diesel station and tram depot, the center has been transformed by French architecture firm Studio KO, whose design establishes a dialogue between historical structure and contemporary form through the use of traditional techniques and local materials. The result is a forward-looking institution grounded in Uzbekistan’s artisanal legacy and artistic heritage. Curated by artistic director Dr Sara Raza, the inaugural exhibition, “Hikmah,” will bring together artists including Ali Cherri, Kimsooja, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Nari Ward, Muhannad Shono, Shokhrukh Rakhimov and Tarik Kiswanson, signaling the CCA’s ambition to function as a hub for cross-cultural exchange.

Opening: LACMA’s David Geffen Galleries 

• April 2026

The long-anticipated expansion of LACMA marks a transformative moment for the museum and its role within Los Angeles. When the project was announced in 2019, its necessity was not immediately obvious, but much of LACMA’s campus infrastructure dated back more than 50 years, increasingly constraining a museum whose international stature had outgrown its buildings. Rather than simply enlarging the footprint, the expansion extends LACMA’s physical and cultural presence across the city. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the new concrete-and-glass structure replaces four aging buildings and unifies the campus through a sweeping elevated form that spans Wilshire Boulevard. Named for David Geffen following a $150 million gift, and supported by an additional $125 million from Los Angeles County, the building introduces a new curatorial approach that rethinks how art history is presented. At a preview event, Michael Govan explained that the design is intentionally organic, with windows throughout that maintain a constant visual exchange with the city beyond. “There’s no hierarchy—no clear front or back. The narrative is open, and there’s no prescribed journey within the space,” he said.

Opening: The Crystal Bridges Expansion

• June 6 and 7, 2026

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, will soon open a major expansion, aligning its next chapter with the United States’ 250th anniversary and marking a milestone of its own. The project will increase the museum’s footprint by 50 percent, adding 114,000 square feet of new galleries, studios, dining options and event spaces set within the natural landscape of the Ozarks. The expanded and reinstalled galleries will offer new pathways through the breadth of American art, emphasizing the diversity of the nation’s stories, people and places. More than a physical enlargement, the expansion underscores the museum’s broader ambition to deepen public access, encourage sustained engagement with American art, and strengthen its role as a civic and cultural gathering place. Admission will still be free.

Reopening: Museo Dolores Olmedo

• Date TBD

The planned reopening in 2026 of Mexico City’s Dolores Olmedo Museum will restore one of the country’s most significant cultural institutions after more than half a decade of uncertainty. Home to the world’s largest collection of works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the museum closed in 2020 during COVID, prompting years of speculation about its fate. Founded in 1994 by Dolores Olmedo, a prominent collector and close friend of Rivera, the museum was established in La Noria, a 16th-century hacienda in Xochimilco that quickly became a beloved cultural hub known not only for its art but also for its lush gardens, Day of the Dead altars and resident Xoloitzcuintli dogs. Olmedo, who died in 2002, acquired more than 140 works by Rivera and 25 paintings by Kahlo, many directly from the artists, and made it clear that she wished the collection to remain in Xochimilco “for the Mexican people.”

Reopening: The Gilcrease Museum

• Fall of 2026

The reopening of the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, will mark a major cultural milestone for the city. Located northwest of downtown, the museum has the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of art of the American West, held alongside a growing body of art and artifacts from Central and South America, encompassing more than 350,000 items dating from 12,000 BCE to the 21st Century and representing hundreds of Indigenous cultures across the Americas. The re-envisioned 91,000-square-foot building, funded through voter-approved measures and private support, is designed to meet contemporary standards for conservation, research and touring exhibitions while providing a state-of-the-art setting for Western and Native American art. “As we open the doors to the new Gilcrease Museum to the public for the first time, we celebrate a historic milestone on a project that will transform Tulsa’s cultural legacy for generations,” Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said in a statement, referring to the museum’s holdings as “the greatest collection of American art outside of the federal government.”

Reopening: The Musée de la Vie Romantique

• February 14, 2026

The Museum of Romantic Life in Paris is set to reopen on—what else—Valentine’s Day, after an extended renovation. The museum, rose gardens and beloved tea room were refreshed while maintaining the charm that has long defined the former home of artist Ary Scheffer. On its first floor, the museum houses an evocative ensemble dedicated to George Sand, including family portraits, household objects, jewelry, rare watercolors known as dendrites and plaster casts by Auguste Clésinger of the writer’s right arm and Frédéric Chopin’s left hand. Paintings by Scheffer include portraits of Pauline Viardot and Queen Marie-Amélie alongside literary scenes inspired by The Giaour, Faust and Marguerite and The Heart of Midlothian, complemented by works from contemporaries such as François Bouchot, Camille Roqueplan and Redouté. The reopening will coincide with the exhibition “Facing the sky, Paul Huet in his time,” which foregrounds the Romantic landscape painter while reactivating the site’s dialogue between art, nature and domestic space.