The best art and architecture of autumn 2026

The most anticipated exhibition of the year centres on an embroidered epic of war and conquest that miraculously preserves an intimate window on the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066. Yet, you may find yourself simply fascinated by the artistry of the Anglo-Saxon women who used coloured wool to depict billowing sails, charging horses and King Harold’s spectacular moustache. Jonathan Jones British Museum, London, 10 September to 11 July

Lady in Blue by Tschabalala Self

This joyously comic, exuberant celebration of life on the streets – or in this case, the plinth – is likely to be a sensation. A young woman in a blue dress and blocky shoes strides boldly across the rectangular Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. Her body is big in every sense, her rollicking form a surreal overstatement. An assertive, optimistic work of infectious self-confidence. JJ Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London, from 10 September

Sunil Gupta: Life With a Camera, 1970-Now

Life With a Camera is an apt description of the career of Sunil Gupta, whose portraits of anonymous gay men in Delhi, queer couples in the UK, and cruisers in New York combine a deep commitment to the principle that all forms of love and community should be made visible with a classical eye for composition. Ben Eastham Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 19 September to 31 January

Turner prize

This year’s Turner prize promises powerful art. Kira Freije creates tragicomic tableaux of human figures whose bodies are empty metal frames but whose faces are cast from real people; Simeon Barclay tells stories of working-class northern life through performance and sculpture; Marguerite Humeau makes sculptures out of materials such as wasp venom; and Tanoa Sasraku exhibits textiles and drawings. Should be a good one. JJ MIMA, Middlesbrough, 26 September to 29 March

Beverly Buchanan: Weathering

When making permanent monuments has come to seem hubristic (who will be left to appreciate them?) and even irresponsible (do we really need more stuff?), Beverly Buchanan’s tumbledown “shack sculptures” celebrate the organic processes of decay and ruin, restoring the proper hierarchy between art and nature. BE Spike Island, Bristol, 26 September to 31 January

Painting the French Riviera

Artists didn’t just paint the Riviera; they helped invent it. The rise of France’s Mediterranean coast as a holiday resort from the 1870s onwards coincided with the new, savage embrace of raw sunlight by Monet and Cézanne. Matisse and the Fauves painted the Riviera in psychedelic colours, but it was Picasso who saw beach life as erotic and shockingly modern. JJ Royal Academy, London, 2 October to 31 January

Salman Toor: Someone Like You

Rendered in his signature emerald-absinthe tones, Toor’s paintings tell the imagined lives of young, queer south Asian men. Much like near-contemporary Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, he inserts fictionalised subjects into paintings in the traditions of the masters to tell enigmatic, evocative, and gently subversive stories. BE Courtauld, London, 2 October to 10 January

Wakaliga Uganda

This film studio in Kampala makes action movies on budgets of a few hundred pounds – using props made out of scrap metal and editing rigs built from discarded computer parts – which are shown in makeshift cinemas to live commentaries by charismatic “video jokers”. The challenge? How to reproduce that culture in a gallery without sucking the life out of it. BE Chisenhale Gallery, London, 2 October to 6 December

Sophie Calle: Something Missing

In the language of wellness culture, Sophie Calle lacks boundaries. She has followed a stranger to Venice to secretly photograph him, rifled through the personal effects of hotel guests, and written a newspaper column exposing the private life of a man she had never met. In the fifth decade of her career, it will be interesting to see how her particular brand of mischief lands in our increasingly puritanical culture. BE Turner Contemporary, Margate, 3 October to 24 January

Katherine Hubbard: The Great Room

During the pandemic, Katherine Hubbard’s mother started to show the effects of a progressive brain disease. They have been working together ever since, with the artist’s profoundly moving photographs, sculptural installations and writings reflecting on how memory and identity is constructed, breaks down, and might be rebuilt. BE Studio Voltaire, London, 7 October to 10 January

The 90s: Art and Fashion

It was the decade when British art started to be taken seriously around the world, while shocking and scandalising Britain itself. It was also the great decade of the Turner prize. Curator Edward Enninful, former editor-in-chief of Vogue, sets YBAs including Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas alongside fashion icons such as Alexander McQueen and photographer Juergen Teller. JJ Tate Britain, London, 8 October to 14 February

Robert Ryman: The Real Thing

Ryman’s paintings are “the real thing” in the sense that they rejected illusion: his delicate white-on-white works were the logical conclusion of minimalism’s mania to cut art down to its fundamentals. Exquisite refinement or tiresome navel-gazing? Go make up your own mind. BE Barbican, London, 8 October to 28 February

Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess

Forget the Bayeux tapestry, Botticelli’s Venus is coming to Britain. Well, not quite The Birth of Venus, but a similar Botticelli nude that shows he did a nice trade in images of the ancient deity of love and desire. This exhibition starts in ancient Greece with the cult of Aphrodite and follows her reincarnation as the Roman Venus into modern times. JJ Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 8 October to 11 April

Willem de Kooning at work

The greatest painter of the second half of the 20th century? No one can match his range; from shockingly violent (the notorious Woman series) to heart-stoppingly pretty. The most anticipated show of the season. BE Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 9 October to 17 January

Pope.L: Five Decades

Pope.L’s business card introduced him as “The friendliest black a