The Art Collector's Year

By Global Social Season editors · 6 September 2026 · updated 10 September 2026

The collector's year has a structure that other circuits envy: it is run by two fair companies and a handful of auction houses, all of whom publish their dates a year or more ahead and hold to them. Art Basel's four fairs — Hong Kong in late March, Basel in June, Paris in October and Miami Beach in December — and Frieze's four — Los Angeles in February, New York in May, Seoul in September and London in October — give the year eight fixed points. The Venice Biennale adds a ninth in even years. TEFAF in Maastricht in March, for old masters and objects, adds a tenth. The marquee auction weeks in New York in May and November, in London in October and in Hong Kong in spring and autumn set the prices between them.

What makes this a circuit rather than a list is attendance. The preview days of the major fairs are attended by a few thousand collectors, advisers, curators and dealers who see one another every six weeks, in a different city, for most of the year. A fair week is also a museum-opening week and a gallery-dinner week; the public sees the fair, and the fair is only half of it.

Winter and spring

The year opens quietly in Brussels with BRAFA in late January and in Los Angeles with Frieze in February, and gathers speed in March: TEFAF's ten days in Maastricht in the middle of the month, Art Basel Hong Kong at the end, with the Hong Kong spring sales beside it. Since 2026 Art Basel has also held a fair in Doha in February. Then Venice: in even years the Biennale's preview week in the second week of May draws the whole profession to the lagoon before the exhibition opens to the public for six months, and in odd years the Architecture Biennale does the same for a different one.

May is New York's: Frieze New York and TEFAF New York in the first half, the marquee evening sales at Christie's, Sotheby's and Phillips in the second, the Met Gala on the first Monday for those whose interests overlap. The week of the sales is the week the market's mood for the year is set.

Basel, and the autumn

Art Basel in Basel in the third week of June is still the fair that defines the others, and its preview days are the collector's equivalent of Ascot's Tuesday. Design Miami's Basel edition once ran alongside it; its future is unannounced. The summer is then empty of fairs until Frieze Seoul in the first week of September, which has become the Asian market's autumn opening.

October is the densest month: Frieze London and Frieze Masters in Regent's Park in the second week, with PAD London and the London evening sales in the same days, and Art Basel Paris in the Grand Palais a week later. Paris Photo follows in November, the same month as the New York fall sales, and the year closes in Miami Beach in the first week of December, where the fair, Design Miami and the satellite fairs on the beach make the most concentrated art week in the Americas. The people who leave it go to St. Barts or the Alps, and are in Los Angeles again in February.

Events in this piece

Basel Art Basel Jun 17–20, 2027 Miami Beach Art Basel Miami Beach Dec 4–6 Paris Art Basel Paris Oct 23–25 A Hong Kong Art Basel Hong Kong Mar 25–27, 2027 London Frieze London Oct 13–17, 2027 New York Frieze New York May 12–16, 2027 F Seoul Frieze Seoul Sep 1–4, 2027 Los Angeles Frieze Los Angeles Feb 25–28, 2027 Maastricht TEFAF Maastricht Mar 13–18, 2027 Venice Venice Biennale May 9 – Nov 22 New York New York Spring Marquee Auctions May 11–20, 2027 New York New York Fall Marquee Auctions Nov 9–20 London London October Auction Week Oct 13–15, 2027 Paris Paris Photo Nov 12–15 A Doha Art Basel Qatar Jan 28–30, 2027