Every October, two massive, climate-controlled pavilions land on the lawns of Regent’s Park and draw a global network of gallerists, curators, collectors and critics into their orbit. The art world calls this Frieze London, and depending on who you ask, it’s a seven-figure shopping experience, a Ruinart-fuelled networking event or just one hell of a spectacle.
For the uninitiated, navigating the fair with its sheer volume of art, outfits and curatorial jargon can feel dizzying, but fear not — as a Frieze veteran, I’m here to impart all I know, so you can air-kiss, glass-clink and ‘See you in Basel!’ your way into the fold like a seasoned gallerista.
What is Frieze London?
Frieze London 2025. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Frieze
Launched in 2003 by Frieze magazine founders Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, the tented fair helped cement London’s place alongside long-established art-market centres like New York, Paris and Basel. It’s since become a fixture in the diary of any serious art insider, collector or well-heeled hanger-on, attracting over 85,000 visitors annually.
Today, the fair brings together nearly 300 galleries across 48 countries and spans two separate spaces. Toward the south end of the park, Frieze London is dedicated to work by living artists. Here, you’ll find blue-chip contemporary galleries like Hauser & Wirth alongside emerging spaces like Gathering or Ginny on Frederick. By contrast, Frieze Masters spans thousands of years of art history, exhibiting everything from mediaeval manuscripts and Old Master oil paintings to rare antiquities. But the fair’s impact extends far beyond the tents, and ‘Frieze week’ has become a city-wide moment, triggering landmark exhibitions, pop-up shows and celeb-studded parties from Mayfair to Shoreditch.
This year, Frieze will run from 14–18 October, and what makes 2026 particularly interesting is its focus on discovery, as the fair gives the stage to fresh global voices. And, for the first time ever, Mr & Mrs Smith will be among them, as it presents To Seek, To Find, a presentation of original photographic works exploring the transformative power of travel.
What to know before you go
XXjira Hii, Frieze London 2025. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Frieze
A little preparation goes a long way at Frieze. First things first: getting in. Advance tickets with a timed, half-hour arrival slot are essential and can only be booked online. Standard entry starts at £48 for a single-fair weekend ticket, £92 for a combined weekend pass covering Frieze London and Frieze Masters, and prices go up to £250 for combined access on Thursday when previews are held. There are limited concessions for students (£32 for a combined ticket) and children (starting from £10), and multi-entry passes available for Frieze Members, too.
For some breathing room with a side of celeb-spotting, book a morning slot on a weekday. Weekends and afternoons are much busier, though a great anthropological exercise for the gossip you might overhear (just ask Plaster Magazine). Next, the dress code: Frieze is a sartorial free-for-all, but you’ll want comfortable, if not entirely sensible, footwear. I’ve seen everything in past years, from Fendi First boots to towering Rick Owens stompers, and wouldn’t be surprised to see Chanel’s barefoot sandals doing the rounds this season. But trust me — no one wants to traverse London in those.
There’s supposedly a 15-minute walk between the tents, but my advice is to allow 25. Better still, take the free shuttle bus, which runs every 15 minutes. There are maps, which you’ll find inside, but I like to surrender to the chaos, allowing myself to be led by instinct. Or ask people about the best things they’ve seen and have them guide you — it’s a great conversation-starter.
Plan of action
The most common mistake for first-timers is trying to see everything. With hundreds of galleries displaying everything from six-figure paintings and mind-boggling video works to room-spanning installations, exhaustion sets in quickly if you don’t pace yourself. With that in mind, here are the shows I’ll be making a beeline for this year.
To Seek, To Find, Mr & Mrs Smith
No.9 Cork Street
To Seek, To Find, Mr & Mrs Smith
As an official Frieze partner, Mr & Mrs Smith will present its first-ever photography exhibition at No.9 Cork Street, curated by renowned art advisor Brandei Estes. The show brings together 10 of the most compelling voices in contemporary photography, all commissioned by Smith in the past two years, including Tina Barney, Stanislas Motz-Neidhart, Isabelle Young and Martin Parr. Taking its cue from the final line of Tennyson’s poem Ulysses, ‘To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’, To Seek, To Find probes that mysterious and restless drive that keeps us venturing into the unknown. Editioned prints will be available to buy during the exhibition’s run, with a limited run of chromogenic prints also available online afterwards. All profits will be donated to Mr & Mrs Smith’s charity partner, the Human Dignity Trust, an organisation working to defend the rights of LGBTQ+ people around the world through strategic litigation and legislative reform. Open 16-17 Oct; no booking required
Albert Oehlen, Gagosian
Frieze London (Booth D14)
Gagosian, Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 2020–26
For a Frieze first-timer, Oehlen’s work makes a fine entry point. With its focus on movement and colour, layers and interjections, you can appreciate it at face value. ‘I’m not interested in meaning at all,’ Oehlen has previously stated. ‘I especially can’t stand it if it’s like encoding and decoding.’ At Gagosian, six new, large-scale and texturally complex paintings by Oehlen take centre stage. Drawing on abstracted imagery from art history, while still immersed in the present, the paintings twist and turn through different forms, resisting resolution.
Artist-to-Artist
Frieze London (Throughout)
Kurimanzutto at Artist-to-Artist, Frieze London 2025. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Frieze
Bolanle Contemporary, Eilen Itzel do Espirito Santo, Ofun Irosun, 2024
Back in its fourth edition, the Artist-to-Artist section is about peer-to-peer recognition. This year, seven established international artists, including Yinka Shonibare and Firelei Báez, have selected emerging talents for solo presentations, including Vienna-based Paul Robas at Alice Amati. Nominated by painter Louise Giovanelli, Robas makes intimate paintings exploring memory and human experience.
Queering Modernism
Frieze Masters (Throughout)
Bahman Mohassess, Untitled , 2006. Courtesy of Bahman Mohassess Estate and Ab-Anbar Gallery
New for 2026, Queering Modernism is a curatorial enquiry into how gender and sexuality have shaped 20th-century art. Conceived by Anke Kempkes, who curated Queer Modernism 1900–1950 at K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, this section spans decades and geographies, tracing a lineage shaped by embodied experience. Like Artist-to-Artist, presentations will run throughout Frieze Masters and include the work of Bahman Mohasses, a pivotal figure of the Iranian avant-garde, French surrealist Claude Cahun and many more.
Conversations with Nature, Tadashi Kawamata
Frieze London (Ruinart Art Bar)
Each year, Ruinart welcomes artists to pay tribute to the Maison’s legacy. This year, Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata was chosen to present new exhibition Conversations with Nature at the fair’s Ruinart Art Bar. Known for site-specific installations built from simple, often reused materials, such as planks, chairs and barrels, Kawamata’s work explores fragility and impermanence, inviting viewers to observe ‘the vibrations of nature essential to the harmony of champagne’. Alongside a central installation, the artist will display sketches, drawings and models created during his visit to Maison Ruinart in Reims.
Other galleries to note are younger London destinations, including Harlesden High Street, Heidi and Rose Easton.
The Frieze first-timer’s survival guide
Preparation is key: Pack a refillable water bottle, a portable phone charger and some protein bars for when you can’t face the queue for Gail’s.
Buying and collecting: Ignore investment trends and buy what moves you. That piece you can’t stop thinking about? That one will give the most rewarding returns.
Take breaks: Navigating Frieze can feel like tackling Oxford Street on Christmas Eve, except everyone is wearing Marni and pretending to understand relational aesthetics. Overwhelm is par for the course, so tap out the minute everything starts to look like an aggressively lit migraine aura. Sit down, grab a glass of champagne, and watch people stroke their chins while mistaking the water cooler for a sculpture.
Talk to people: There are some enormous egos in the art world, so if you approach a gallery assistant without one, they’re usually happy to engage with you. They’re deeply knowledgeable and will gladly share all they know about the artist’s background and work — as well as some gossip, if you play it right.
Beyond the tents
Frieze Sculpture
Regent’s Park, English Gardens
This free-to-enter outdoor exhibition features striking large-scale sculptures framed by autumn foliage. This year at Frieze Sculpture, Fatoş Üstek returns as curator for her fourth consecutive year, bringing together works by artists including Douglas White and Angel Otero that explore the theme of ‘hybridity’. And there are two free curator-led tours, each starting at midday on the first and last Sunday of the show.
Until 1 November 2026
Louise Nevelson, Model for Celebration II, 1976, Pace Gallery. Frieze Sculpture 2023. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Frieze
Where to eat: Head to Selfridges’ art deco dining spot The Brasserie of Light, where London’s largest Damien Hirst work — a 24-foot-tall, crystal-encrusted Pegasus with a 30-foot wingspan — floats over the tables.
Where to stay: A short stroll from the action of Regent’s Park, the Kit Kemp-designed Dorset Square Hotel is full of pleasing patterns, bold colours and knowing nods to the square’s past as the original Lord’s Cricket Ground.
Jenkin van Zyl: Enclosure
Somerset House
Known for theatrical, nightmarish and hallucinatory films and installations, Jenkin van Zyl takes over Somerset House with a specially commissioned new film, Enclosure. Set within a decaying cryonics facility, once somewhere tourists could temporarily inhabit the lives of others, the work asks what happens when systems built on desire and self-preservation outlast the conditions that created them. The word ‘immersive’ gets thrown around a lot, but judging by van Zyl’s previous shows, you can expect to be all-consumed by the surreal sets and world-building.
Until 29 November 2026
Where to eat: Similarly high-drama Sarastro is built like a Victorian theatre, with velvet drapes, gold trimmings and props from West End shows.
Where to stay: Much like van Zyl’s mind-bending worlds, Henrietta Experimental breaks all the rules with maximalist interiors by Dorothée Meilichzon and its oh-so-theatrical Experimental Cocktail Club.
Sturtevant: Eat the Outside to Light Up the Inside
Raven Row, Spitalfields
The first institutional exhibition since the death of American artist Sturtevant in 2014, this display charts her radical conceptual practice. Known for reprising works by artists like Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and Félix González-Torres, her work spans painting, installation, textiles and video, and this show seeks to reveal how it continues to challenge conventions of contemporary art and aesthetics.
15 October to 20 December 2026
Where to eat: Tucked away inside a community arts space, Rochelle Canteen is a semi-secret spot where diners can enjoy simple, seasonal British dishes in a converted bike shed.
Where to stay: Like Sturtevant, who riffed on the work of Modernist male artists, The Hoxton, Shoreditch’s rooms feature mid-century interiors with a feminine touch.
Alex Margo Arden: Nothing Personal
Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation, Chelsea
Rising star Alex Margo Arden was the 2025 recipient of the inaugural Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation Prize and wowed Frieze attendees with her raved-about installation at Ginny on Frederick. In her latest show, Nothing Personal, Arden restages Amy Winehouse’s personal property to explore the effects of celebrity ownership and death on everyday objects, transforming them into sites of fetishisation and speculation.
9 October 2026 to 23 January 2027
At Sloane
Where to eat: All artists need a muse, and for acclaimed British chef Tom Aikens, it was his mother — a keen baker who taught him about food’s infinite pleasures. Muse, his Chelsea restaurant, is an homage to her, delivering seasonal dishes, each with its own short origin story.
Where to stay: Romance abounds at At Sloane, where (unlike the title of Arden’s show) everything is personal, from the ‘love’ lighting settings to the decks of Pillow Talk cards in rooms.
Frieze FAQs
Is Frieze only for collectors?
While serious amounts of cash are exchanged at the fair, it’s not just about buying. Frieze is a way for art professionals to take the temperature of the market and spot emerging trends in wider contemporary practice. I started attending Frieze as a penniless art student 15 years ago to do just that. But even if you’re not working in the arts, it’s a dynamic day out full of the weird and wonderful.
Do you need an art history degree to enjoy it?
It may seem counterintuitive, but it may be better not to be an art expert. Art can be very self-referential, but the best pieces allow you to project your own experience and associations onto them. There’s no right way to interpret an artwork; it rarely requires the elaborate, intellectual decoding you’ll hear people engaging in between booths. If a work makes you pause or reflect, it’s done its job.
Is everything unaffordable?
While headline-grabbing works by big names may command millions, many emerging sections and surrounding satellite events offer prints, editions and works by rising stars at more accessible prices.
Your at-a-glance fair guide
Tickets: Advance online booking only. If seeing art is your main priority, opt for a morning time slot. If people-watching is your main motivation, visit in the afternoon.
Footwear: Leave the stilettos for the experts — flats are your friends.
Bags: Keep it small enough to bypass strict bag checks, but large enough to pocket the free magazines, arty totes and 10,000 press releases you’ll somehow acquire.
Transit: Take the shuttle bus between Frieze London and Frieze Masters. The weather can be drizzly at this time of year, and that ‘15-minute’ walk between them is very much a myth.
Strategy: Quality over quantity; pick a few galleries, take regular breaks, and enjoy the madness.
Catch Mr & Mrs Smith’s debut Frieze show, To Seek, To Find, at No.9 Cork Street from 16 to 17 October 2026. Learn more here
Header image: Frieze London 2025. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Frieze
Stephanie Gavan is a freelance writer and editor from Liverpool with a background in contemporary art and a deep affection for Italy, having spent years living among the canals of Venice. She now splits her time between London and Copenhagen, penning travel, arts and wellness pieces for Vogue, Financial Times, Wallpaper*, Art Review, Dazed and more.
