The Dorchester’s guide to London’s art season

This is the main event, with around 170 galleries bringing the best of contemporary art to a huge marquee in the south of the park.

The big names are all here, including Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and White Cube – but if you’re looking for something different, explore the Focus section, which is dedicated to younger galleries. Many sold out their booths entirely in 2025, including Harlesden High Street (which focuses on exhibiting work by people of colour) and Ginny on Frederick (which spotlights emerging talent with an experimental edge).

Leave time for Frieze Sculpture, a free outdoor trail through the park's English Gardens, on until November 1. Go more than once if you can: the sculptures seem to change as the leaves turn around them. Look out for the mythical maximalism of Tarini Sethi's intricate stainless-steel screens, and Douglas White's eerie Black Palm, a tree over seven metres tall made from exploded truck tyres.

Frieze Masters is a 15-minute stroll across the park, or a quick ride on the free shuttle. This is the place for art made before 2000, from antiquities to modern icons, and is a little calmer and more contemplative than its contemporary sibling. In 2026, we’d look out for Dubai's Gallery Isabelle, exhibiting for the first time with striking mixed-media works by Iranian artist Fereydoun Ave, and standout British historical paintings from Patrick Bourne & Co.

This year's talks programme, Breaking the Mould, looks at how historic art forms and materials can speak to the present. Two to book are Broken: The Power of the Fragment (3pm, October 15) and Narrative Threads: Textiles and Storytelling Beyond Bayeux (12pm, October 17).

A short walk from The Dorchester, PAD London fills Berkeley Square with historical and contemporary design, as well as high jewellery justly described as ‘wearable art’.

2026 highlights include Lloyd Choi Gallery, presenting material-led work from South Korea that’s rooted in heritage and the natural world, and Rademakers Gallery from the Netherlands, presenting Overgrown – an exhibition filled with tactile, nature-inspired Dutch design.

Now in its 14th London edition, 1-54 brings contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora to Somerset House. For the first time, it also looks back, with a spotlight on Modernist artists – and a monumental installation takes over the Edmond J. Safra Fountain Court as well.

Also look out for Monsoon: The Peter Simon Collection, sold across three auctions on October 14 and 15. Simon, who founded Monsoon and Accessorize, built a collection of more than 200 modern and contemporary works, from Francis Bacon to Joan Miró, shaped by his textile-sourcing trips through India and his instinctive eye for colour.

Beirut-born, Paris-based artist and composer Tarek Atoui takes over the Turbine Hall for this year's Hyundai Commission. His immersive installation is built around sound, played on sculptural instruments he invents himself: live performances take place throughout the run, and entry is free.

We’re not just recommending this one as it’s a lovely stroll across Hyde Park from The Dorchester – but we can’t deny it makes the experience more enjoyable. Indian artist and filmmaker Amar Kanwar premieres a moving-image installation, The Charcoal Man, alongside two other works which – in Kanwar’s signature poetic style – explore the effects of colonialism and Partition on his homeland. It’s a show that invites you to slow down and think.

Undoubtedly the most significant Renoir show in the UK for 20 years. It focuses on the artist at his peak, from the 1860s to the 1880s, and his lifelong fascination with human connection. The star is Dance at the Moulin de la Galette, on show in the UK for the first time. It's a huge, sun-dappled scene of a dance in Montmartre, painted with such rippling energy that you feel you could step right into it.