Last year, the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) initiated an early announcement of its forthcoming annual program – a convention long embraced by the performing arts in an early spruik of next year’s talents, but one traditionally avoided by the gallery sector.
I’ve never really understood why – exhibitions are locked in long in advance. Early knowledge allows people to plan their travel and to curate their own engagement – which is appreciated in our current times when discretional spending is a little tighter and we are often overwhelmed by the pace of things.
What’s on offer, and does this transparency pay off?
Read ahead:
Highlights leading NGAs 2026 programming
While the announcement does not include any major international exhibitions (these announcements are usually made with a splash later), the program at first glance doesn’t raise a pulse. For some, however, it might raise some alarms.
It kicks off with a continuation of artist Tony Albert’s much anticipated 5th National Indigenous Art Triennial: After the Rain (which opens in December), and will run through to April before touring for the remainder of 2026. The Gallery has invested highly in this show and it promises to deliver fresh conversations.
That First Nations lens is continued with another exhibition invested in – the stalled presentation of Ngura Pulka – Epic Country (11 Apr – 23 Aug 2026, free) which got caught up in the ‘white hands on black art’ claims in 2023. It brings together large-scale paintings by senior First Nations artists and collectives from the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, Coober Pedy and Tarntanya/Adelaide.
Read: APY Art Centre Collective vindicated, but calls for wider sector inquiry
Is it a topic still too raw and unresolved to show, or is it time to put these painting on the walls and continue the transparent conversations? We predict it is going to be one that will again dominate conversations in 2026.
Two much loved Australian artists, Arthur Boyd and Rosalie Gascoigne, are given the spotlight in 2026. For Gascoigne it will be a major retrospective (31 Oct 2026 – 7 Feb 2027, free) moving from her early small assemblages to her expansive wall works and floor installations.
It has been a while since we have seen a major show of her work – the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) presented Found and Gathered alongside Lorraine Connelly-Northey in 2022, with earlier retrospectives at the NGV in 2009, the City Gallery Wellington (NZ) in 2004, and last last century, the survey Material and Landscape at the Art Gallery of NSW and the NGA in 1998.
Given many of Gascoigne’s key works are in the NGA’s collection it is a welcome revisit of this important – and much-loved – artist.
Changing the tone completely will be Full Throttle (5 Dec 2026 – 29 Mar 2027, ticketed)which turns to popular culture and the car as a lens to interrogate contemporary life, identity and power. It will wrap up the year for NGA, and is sure to be a popular drawcard for the summer season, although not an entirely new curatorial subject.
We have to remember Canberra is home to Summernats, and the exhibition will overlap with the Festival of Speed, usually held on the last weekend in January. My guess, however, is these audiences won’t overlap, but will sure up more casual visitors to the gallery.
ArtsHub’s pick of NGA’s 2026 program
Surprisingly, our pick is NGA’s look at Arthur Boyd next year – an artist who is well represented in exhibitions nationally and ‘done to death’. But there’s a twist here.
Over winter, the Gallery takes a first look at Arthur Boyd: tapestries (20 Jun – 18 Oct 2026, free), featuring 20 monumental tapestries from his large-scale Life of St Francis series, created at the Manufactura de Tapeçarias de Portalegre, Portugal and purchased by the National Gallery in 1975.
They are rarely pulled out for public viewing; indeed this is the first time they will be presented as a complete suit, and the Gallery are describing it as ‘a landmark exhibition’. Tapestries and textiles are always popular with viewers, and we are expecting this one to be a hit.
To bring it into greater context, the Gallery will expand this conversation with a collection display, Tapestries from the national collection (30 May – 1 Nov 2026), which demonstrates how this ancient form of textile production remains a compelling medium for artists today.
NGA 2026 program: not to be forgotten
Two newly curated collections exhibitions for 2026 that caught our eye. The first is Blueprints for temples (2 Apr 2026 – Jan 2027, free), an exhibition exploring the relationship between the body and architecture – where artists pose new ways of experiencing spaces of contemplation and our place in the world.
And the other is, Migration and modernism: Émigré artists in post-war Australia (23 May 2026 – Mar 2027, free), which explore the communities that have shaped Australia as we know it today, featuring artists such as Hiroe Swen, Simryn Gill and Stanislava Pinchuk.
Our pick for the NGA’s touring exhibition to look out for in 2026 is, Of this earth: transforming culture and Country through First Nations ceramics. It will be touring from March 2026 and highlights cultural continuity and contemporary artistic expression across 30 key works by significant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, including Billy Bain (Dharug people), Nicole Foreshew (Wiradjuri people) and Janet Fieldhouse (Kalaw Lagaw Ya/Meriam Mir peoples).
