If Frieze Week is London’s art circus, Paris is the next ring. Two weeks from now Art Basel Paris fills the Grand Palais, the city’s glass-roofed landmark, for a fair that advisers increasingly treat as the main event. Here’s what to know.
When is it, and who’s in it?
The public days are Oct. 23 to 25, with 211 galleries, according to ARTnews. The VIP preview opens Oct. 21 and an invitation-only Avant-Première runs Oct. 20. Thirty-two galleries are first-timers, a record 24 are sharing booths, and 64 are based in France. The Premise sector, which spotlights unusual curatorial displays, grows to 12 galleries, nine of them newcomers. Last year’s edition drew more than 73,000 visitors and representatives of over 240 museums, per organizers.
What’s the Emily in Paris connection?
Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, who plays Emily’s chic boss Sylvie Grateau, is the guest art director of Oh La La!, the program that invites galleries to rehang their booths on the final weekend. This year’s theme is “Myths and Legends,” covering metamorphosis, dreams, ritual and the cosmos.
What’s happening outside the fair?
Plenty. Tracey Emin has large-scale sculptures of women at different stages of rest at the Trocadéro, directly across from the Eiffel Tower, part of an expanded public program that also includes Yinka Shonibare, Niki de Saint Phalle, Carmen Herrera and Robert Indiana, ARTnews reports.
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Fashion is in the mix, too. Miu Miu has handed its Art Basel Paris commission to filmmaker Alice Diop, who will stage Geste de Consolation at the Palais d’Iéna and at the brand’s runway show. It’s her first exhibition, and it opens with a photograph by Zanele Muholi, followed by a two-channel film that collages her own films and archives, ARTnews says. It follows Goshka Macuga in 2024 and Helen Marten in 2025.
Louis Vuitton is using the fair to debut 13 new Artycapucines designs made with the Keith Haring Foundation, built around his Running Heart and Radiant Baby figures, ARTnews reports. And Sotheby’s is turning an apartment on the Rue de Rivoli, overlooking the Tuileries, into “Chez Sotheby’s”: a restaurant hung with works by Picasso, Matisse, Warhol, Richter and Bacon, open Oct. 19 to 24.
Why does Paris matter right now?
Because collectors have started to treat London and Paris as one long trip, and Paris has the museum shows to anchor it. Dealer Thaddaeus Ropac, whose gallery is showing at both fairs, told ARTnews that many American collectors now plan their travel to combine the two cities.
Paris’s strength is its blockbuster museum exhibitions, which are attracting the Americans and international collectors.
Thaddaeus Ropac, dealer, ARTnews
The numbers back it up. France accounted for $4.5 billion in art sales in 2025, about 8% of the global market, according to the Art Basel & UBS Global Art Market Report 2026 as cited by ARTnews. Some advisers say Paris has started to overshadow even Art Basel’s Swiss flagship. The talks program, now moving into the Grand Palais auditorium for the first time, includes Hans Ulrich Obrist with artist Simone Fattal and a conversation between the heads of the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre about their museums’ futures.
First stop is London: Frieze Week opens Oct. 14, and Art Basel Paris follows a week later.
- Dates
- Oct. 23–25 (public); VIP preview Oct. 21
- Where
- Grand Palais, Paris
- Galleries
- 211, including 32 first-timers
- Also on
- Chez Sotheby’s, Oct. 19–24; Tracey Emin sculptures at the Trocadéro
