Tate Modern releases their 25/26 programme

Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate, said “2026 will be a particularly exciting year for Tate,” and how right she is. Revealed on 24 March, the upcoming programme for the South Bank institution schedules female dominated shows with the works of Tracey Emin, Frida Kahlo, and Ana Mendieta.

The landmark Young British Artist Tracey Emin exhibition will run from 26 February to 31 August next year, showcasing 40 years of the artist’s work, with some having never been exhibited before. A statement revealed that the show will display how she challenges boundaries, “using the female body as a powerful tool to explore passion, pain, and healing” and demonstrate her “lifelong commitment to painting, showing her recent work as the culmination of the ways she has channelled her life into her art” presenting topics of love, trauma, and autobiography through forms such as painting, video, textiles, neons, writing, sculpture, and installation. We can expect to see her award-winning My Bed instillation, which demonstrates her raw depression during a period in the ’90s. This exhibition will culminate a successful period for Emin, following exhibitions in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi and at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut.

Although she died in 1954, Kahlo’s work wasn’t adopted by the mainstream until the 1970s; and from then became a recognised and celebrated figure in art history as well as in progressive feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements

Following on from that, from 25 June to 4 January 2027, Frida Kahlo: The Making of an Icon, will exhibit more than 130 works of the artist’s “many selves—the dedicated wife, the intellectual, the modern artist, and the political activist”. Work by more than eighty of her contemporaries and other artists she inspired will also feature alongside documents, photographs and memorabilia from Kahlo’s archives. The exhibition will explore Kahlo’s life and legacy, including her iconic self-portraits, showcasing the Mexican artist’s signature vibrant style. This exhibition will also bring together works from more that eighty of her contemporaries as well as other artists inspired by Khalo, broadening the scope of the exhibition aiming to consider the role of women artists in the Twentieth century. Although she died in 1954, Kahlo’s work wasn’t adopted by the mainstream until the 1970s; and from then became a recognised and celebrated figure in art history as well as in progressive feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements. For an introduction to Kahlo, I would highly recommend viewing the 2002 film, Frida.

The season will end with a major exhibition dedicated to another important female artist, late Cuban-American Ana Mendieta, who’s show will run from 9 June to 10 January 2027. The exhibition will include newly remastered films, early paintings, and late sculptural pieces, many of which have never been seen in the UK before presenting her themes of feminism, violence, life, death, identity, place, and belonging. “[It] will continue outside the gallery walls, embracing Mendieta’s deep relationship with the natural world,” says a Tate statement.

Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography will examine the international movement which first transformed the camera into an artistic tool

Later in the year, we can expect to see a group exhibition called Light and Magic: The Birth of Art Photography which will examine the international movement which first transformed the camera into an artistic tool. It will span an era from the 1880s to 1960s showing global, experimental photography using techniques which reimagined photography as an art form.

Throughout the year, three seasons will be marked by one of the Tate modern’s annual commissions. Firstly the edge Infinities Commission in the Tanks, the UNIQLO Tate Play summer commission, and the world-renowned Hyundai Commission in the Turbine Hall in the autumn.

In the meantime, we can enjoy exhibitions at the Tate Modern by Leigh Bowery, The Genesis Exhibition: Do Ho Suh, and a landmark group exhibition on Nigerian Modernism.