The Most Exciting Scottish Art Exhibitions of 2026

By Lena Kammerer, 05.01.2026

Fred[erick] William Stiven ARSA, Coastal Defences. © the artist's estate.

2026 is shaping up to be an exceptional year for Scottish art. Here’s our top picks of the shows set to define the cultural calendar over the next few months, from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Dundee, Inverness, and beyond.

Origin Stories | Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh | 24 January 2026 – 8 March 2026

2026 marks the bicentenary of the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA), celebrating 200 years as one of Scotland’s oldest and most influential cultural institutions. The RSA is using this momentous occasion to present an ambitious nationwide programme in collaboration with over 100 cultural partners, which will include events, exhibitions, performances, talks, and collection rehangs across the country. Together, these celebrations are set to play a defining role in shaping the year ahead for Scottish art. For those keen to get a first taste, or feeling overwhelmed by the sheer variety of artists and artworks on show throughout the year, Origin Stories, curated by Sandy Wood, the RSA’s Head of Collections, offers a compelling introduction. The exhibition traces the interconnected networks of artistic relationships that have formed during the development of art education in Scotland, examining questions of influence and legacy and bringing together works by some of Scotland’s most established artists alongside emerging voices.

Joan Eardley in Catterline (Fleming Collection) | Granary Gallery, Berwick-upon-Tweed | Summer 2026, Dates TBA

The Fleming Collection will present works by Joan Eardley just beyond the Scottish border at the Granary Gallery in Berwick-upon-Tweed. The show will reflect on Eardley’s oeuvre in the context of her fascination with Catterline, a coastal community in the north-east of Scotland, which formed the subject of many of her expressive and expansive landscape paintings. After visiting the fishing village near Aberdeen in 1950, Eardley began travelling back to Catterline regularly and eventually settled there permanently. Eardley’s Catterline paintings are imposing in scale and beautifully capture the sea, the country, and the sky surrounding the rugged Scottish coastline.

Irineu Destourelles: Faint Light of the World with Contradictions | Outer Spaces, Glasgow International | 5 June 2026 – 21 June 2026

Outer Spaces will take part in Glasgow International 2026, Scotland’s biennial of contemporary art with a solo exhibition from Glasgow-based visual artist Irineu Destourelles, co-curated with Natalia Palombo. Through an immersive sculptural installation encompassing sound, light, and spatial elements, Faint Light of the World with Contradictions will examine “how ambivalent historical narratives tied to one’s culture and language can co-exist within a single body and identity”. Destourelles’s new installation, informed by his own experience as a multilingual diasporic Creole person, seeks to ask: “how can one live with, and speak from, the tension between complicity and resistance?”.

We Contain Multitudes | DCA, Dundee | 7 February 2026 – 26 April 2026

At the start of the year the DCA in Dundee will become the home to a major group show, titled We Contain Multitudes, including the works of Andrew Gannon, Daisy Lafarge, Jo Longhurst, and 2025 Turner Prize winner Nnena Kalu. The displayed artworks range from textiles and photography to sculpture and drawing, all connected by the aim to interrogate the concepts of envelopment, enclosure, support, surrounding, and restriction. The exhibition is part of the three-year collaborative project of the same name between Collective, DCA, and Lux Scotland, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, which seeks to address institutional ableism in the visual arts sector in Scotland through commissioning new artworks, disseminating research findings, and achieving positive organisational development within each participating organisation. The goal is to enact systemic change that increases disabled artists’ visibility and access to opportunities, and truly takes into consideration their expertise and experiences.

Joyce W. Cairns: A Personal Odyssey | Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh | 1 August 2026 – 2 September 2026

Preceding the exhibition of another contemporary female Academician, Barbara Rae, the RSA will present, as part of their anniversary celebrations, a major retrospective exhibition of Joyce W. Cairns, acclaimed Scottish painter and the first woman elected President of the RSA. Cairns, also a highly influential educator, has influenced generations of Scottish artists through both her teaching and her art. The show surveys works from across her career, from her scenes depicting eerie figures at Aberdeen harbour to her acclaimed War Tourist paintings, and includes earlier paintings from her time at Gray’s School of Art and those drawing from memories of her childhood and home in the former fishing village of Footdee. Through these works, the exhibition highlights Cairns’ deeply personal and autobiographical approach to painting, revealing the recurring themes of memory, identity, and place that shape her practice and positioning her as one of the most significant voices in Scottish art today.

UK Aids Memorial Quilt | Tramway, Glasgow | 12 September 2026 - 27 September 2026

For the first time, the UK Aids Memorial Quilt will be on display in Scotland, exhibited at Tramway in Glasgow alongside archival material documenting the project’s Scottish origins and the documentary film There Is A Light That Never Goes Out. The quilt comprises 42 quilts and 23 individual panels, commemorating more than 384 individuals affected by HIV and AIDS. Initiated in 1985 by American activist Cleve Jones, the AIDS Memorial Quilt was conceived of as both a living memorial and a powerful form of protest, confronting public silence, stigma, and governmental inaction. In the late 1980s, Scottish activist Alastair Hume encountered the project while visiting San Francisco and, on his return, established a UK version. Hume, now known as Ally Van Tillo, highlights that the quilt’s “significance today is not just historical” as “language used to ostracise gay people has not gone away, and the queer community is once again under threat”.

Catherine Opie: To Be Seen | National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh | 8 August 2026 – 1 November 2026

A highlight next summer is set to be the National Galleries of Scotland’s presentation of work by American artist Catherine Opie. Catherine Opie: To Be Seen, a touring exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery in London curated in collaboration with the artist, consists of almost 80 of Opie’s photographic portraits, depicting her contemporaries, such as fellow artists and LGBTQ+ friends, as well as herself over the span of thirty years. These will be displayed in conjunction with numerous portraits from Scotland’s very own national collection, thereby interrogating “the who, why and how of portraits” and inviting visitors to reflect on who is and who often fails to be portrayed in art.

Bugarin + Castle | Scotland + Venice for the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia | 9 May 2026 – 22 November 2026

The interdisciplinary Glasgow-based artist duo Bugarin + Castle, comprised of Davide Bugarin and Angel Cohn Castle, who first met performing in a queer cabaret in Edinburgh over a decade ago, will represent Scotland at the 61st International Art Exhibition in Venice, La Biennale Di Venezia, with a multi-layered project consisting of sculptural, performance and moving image work, curated by the Mount Stuart Trust and commissioned by Scotland + Venice. The concept of the parade serves here to unravel the intricate, complicated, and emotional legacies of shame, pride, and celebration. Through excavating queer histories, Scottish archives, and Filipino cultural heritage, the two artists explore how social control is  impacted by sound and costume, utilising cabaret performance and architectural methodologies shaped by their queer and decolonial research. In 2027, Bugarin + Castle’s work is planned to return to Scotland as an exhibition at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute.

Veronica Ryan | Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute | Opening 30 May 2026

Before Mount Stuart will welcome back Bugarin + Castle after their travels to Venice, the nineteenth-century Neo-Gothic mansion will first become host this year to the largest solo show in Scotland to date by British sculptor Veronica Ryan. Some of the new work exhibited emerged out of Ryan’s interactions with and reflections on the materiality of Mount Stuart house and its contents, while also exploring questions around the concept of lineage and family histories. Other works will look at the Isle of Bute and its intimate relationship with the sea surrounding it. Ryan’s handcrafted elements become vessels to explore questions around memory, personal narratives, and environmental concerns, while also examining the act of collecting and the far-reaching traces of history, specifically colonialism, within natural and found objects.

Shimmering: Anne Bevan / Mary Bourne | Inverness Museum & Art Gallery | 28 August 2026 – 17 October 2026

Further up north, once again in connection with the RSA 200 celebrations, the Inverness Museum & Art Gallery will exhibit new works by RSA Academicians Anne Bevan and Mary Bourne, under the title Shimmering. Both artists explore the ecology of places in northern Scotland; Bevan’s work examines the interplay between place and environmental change, focusing on her Orkney home and investigating the past, present, and future of marine energy. Collaborating with scientists, she uncovers and makes visible formations, movements, and elements hidden within the sea. Bourne’s practice, primarily in the medium of carved natural stone, explores the relationship humans have with their environment. The work to be exhibited in Inverness is informed by her late father’s ornithological research and investigates how science and emotion shape the need to conserve Scotland’s wild coastline.