Discover the programme of Rotterdam Art Week
Get your calendar ready, because there is something fun on the schedule again. From March 25 to 29, 2026, it is time for Rotterdam Art Week. Our city will be all about art, design, and architecture.
Visit special exhibition openings, admire outdoor installations, and enjoy pop-up shows and open studios. Finding it difficult to choose from the vast range on offer? Below you’ll find four great tips!
The New Current is a large-scale exhibition that you don’t just view—you step inside. During Rotterdam Art Week, an industrial venue is transformed into an immersive environment of installations, moving images, and sound, where art, space, and audience come together. Visitors move through dark and open spaces where light, sound, and perspective are constantly shifting. No prior knowledge is needed to experience it—just attention and curiosity.
For the 2026 edition, The New Current will take over the former Hunter Douglas Factory: 3,500 m² of industrial space filled with large-scale works by 26 artists. Under the theme Connections, the installations form a single landscape without a fixed route, where works overlap and respond to one another. This creates a physical exhibition to be discovered on foot, at your own pace.
During Rotterdam Art Week, Kunstinstituut Melly presents three different ways of looking at our world. In Spirit Faith Grace Rage, you dive into five decades of photography, sound, and archival work by Marilyn Nance, a visionary photographer and archivist from Brooklyn. Her images connect intimate moments with major historical movements, celebrating the resilience, love, and activism of communities worldwide. The exhibition demonstrates how personal archives can offer a powerful alternative to official histories.
With Suitcase Economy, Riet Wijnen transforms Melly’s ground floor into a lively meeting place centred around food and sharing, featuring installations, drawings, ceramics, and an experimental canteen where visitors can eat, converse, and participate in workshops. In I Breathe, You Breathe, donna Kukama invites you to experience art as a form of breathing: a rhythmic gathering of sound, video, drawings, sculptures, and performances that approach history as something living and constantly in motion.
During Rotterdam Art Week, Depot Boijmans van Beuningen hosts several exhibitions. In Beyond Surrealism, surrealist works by artists such as Leonora Carrington, Salvador Dalí, and René Magritte are paired with work by six contemporary artists, creating a dialogue with the museum collection and inviting visitors to see the world in a new way.
Additionally, Rondom Mode introduces visitors to fashion in a setting reminiscent of a photoshoot and studio, featuring designs by artists including Hussein Chalayan and Maison Martin Margiela. In Dagboek der Dingen, you can explore how artworks carry their own history and journey through time, with works by Vincent van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, and Auguste Rodin, among others. Finally, the presentation Onderzoek op de Rails – Van Gogh’s Populierenlaan tells the restoration story of Van Gogh’s painting The Poplar Avenue near Nuenen, which was carefully studied and restored after 140 years.
Did you know there’s a gallery inside WTC Rotterdam? During Rotterdam Art Week, you’re invited to an exhibition featuring three artists, where works come together that emerge from the inseparable relationship between imagination and reality. Paintings and works on paper showcase the power of female imagination, with images that—sometimes bordering on the dark—reflect on themes such as power, rituals, and our relationship with others.
During Rotterdam Art Week, Fenix presents three exhibitions, all centred around migration and personal stories. In Alle Richtingen, you can explore the museum’s art collection, featuring works by over a hundred artists from around the world. Their works tell stories of identity, borders, departure, and home, showing that migration is timeless and accompanied by emotions such as hope, love, and loss.
Additionally, Family of Migrants takes you through 180 years of photography with over 300 images of the cityscape and life in and around Rotterdam. In Het Kofferdoolhof, you walk among thousands of suitcases while listening via an audio tour to the stories of their former owners. This way, you discover how a single suitcase holds not only belongings but also memories and life stories of journeys, departures, and new beginnings.
Are you going to Rotterdam Art Week this year? Click the button below to explore the full programme!
