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September is a hectic time for London’s art galleries. Not only does it signal the beginning of the busiest period of the year for major exhibition openings, and the impending arrival of some major art fairs, but it’s also when a lot of the big galleries announce their exhibition programmes for the following year.
We’ve heard what’s in store at Tate and the Courtauld, and now the National Portrait Gallery has revealed its programme for the new year. The smaller of Trafalgar Square’s two popular galleries has had a great year in 2026, with an excellent exhibition on Catherine Opie and a hugely popular show marking the centenary of Marilyn Monroe’s birth. An enticing exhibition from Tim Walker is opening next month.
And next year’s programme looks just as exciting, with major shows on a cult post-war figurative painter, an underrated female Impressionist and a major figurehead of British Pop Art on the cards.
National Portrait Gallery 2027 exhibition programme
The year kicks off with Peter Blake: Pop Art Life (Feb 11-May 23), a major retrospective for the 94-year-old artist who was a key figure of the British pop art movement. A first major institutional show dedicated to the Royal Academician’s portraits, it will bring together highlights from his eight-decade-long career, including images of musical icons like Bo Diddley, Sammy Davis Jr and The Beatles (with whom he created the iconic Sgt. Pepper album artwork).
In the spring, the gallery will turn its attention to painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt with the first UK retrospective on the oft-overlooked American impressionist. Mary Cassatt: Radical Impressionist (Mar 11-Jun 13) has been co-created in partnership with Paris’s Musée d’Orsay and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to mark the centenary of Cassatt’s death, and will focus on the painter’s portraits of women, from family and friends to patrons, professional models and unknown figures.
Over the summer, the NPG will once again host the Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer Portrait Award (Jun 24-Oct 10). Aiming to celebrate the very best in contemporary portrait painting, the award has received over 50,000 submissions from more than 100 countries since its inception in 1980.
Coinciding with this is 100 Writers (Jul 15-Sep 12), an exhibition of portraits featuring 100 celebrated figures in the English literary canon, from Shakespeare to the present day.
Autumn 2027 sees the gallery host the first major posthumous exhibition on Frank Auerbach (Oct 14-TBC). Exploring the post-war German-British artist’s distinctive portraits over a career spanning seven decades, it will feature his portrayals of Primrose Hill, Mornington Crescent and other locations near his Camden studio, as well as exploring the inspiration he took from Old Master paintings.
Finally, to close out the year, the gallery will host another edition of its portrait photography competition, the Winston Taylor Photo Portrait Prize (Nov 4-TBC). Established in 2003, the award showcases the best in contemporary photographic portraiture, and features a diverse range of work ranging from formal, commissioned portraits to spontaneous, intimate moments between family and friends.
To say we’re excited for such a jam-packed year of brilliant portraiture is an understatement!
The UK’s biggest Monet exhibition in a decade will open at Tate Modern next year
A first look at the reopened Natural History Museum gallery that was shut for 83 years
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