Art Basel 2026: What You Need to Know
Art Basel and Latin American Art | Review
What is Art Basel?
Art Basel is one of the world's most important art fairs — held every June in Basel, Switzerland, it presents galleries, collectors, curators and institutions from across the globe for one week. Think of it as the art world's annual temperature check: what sells, what doesn't, which artists are gaining attention and which galleries are making bold bets. This year's edition ran from 16 to 21 June, with 290 galleries from 43 countries presenting works by over 4,000 artists.
Why does it matter if you're not there?
What happens at Basel tends to ripple outward. The works that sell, the artists that generate attention, the conversations that happen in the booths and at the dinners — these inform what the wider art world talks about for months afterwards. For galleries like MÍRAME, following Art Basel and Latin American art closely is part of how we understand where the international conversation is heading and where the artists we represent fit within it.
How did the fair go?
Strongly, by most accounts — though measured rather than frenzied. According to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026, global art sales reached $59.6 billion in 2025, up 4% after two years of decline, and the mood in Basel reflected that cautious recovery.
Art advisor Haily Widrig told ARTnews that the market had become increasingly polarised — "there is more disparity in the market than in previous years; there seems to be a go-big-or-go-home attitude at the booths" — with works either commanding very high prices or sitting at the much lower end, and relatively little in between.
Artsy covered the headline opening day sale of a 1963 Picasso offered at $35 million by Hauser & Wirth, one of the world's most powerful galleries. Works in the $200,000–$2 million range moved well across the fair. By the close on 21 June, the fair had welcomed 90,000 visitors from 103 countries, with representatives from more than 270 museums and foundations in attendance — a year-on-year increase.
Pablo Picasso's 1963 painting "en plein air" which sold for $35 million at Hauser & Wirth | Image Courtesy Art Basel
Art Basel and Latin American Art. Anything notable for a Latin American market?
Two things stood out. Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, one of Brazil's leading contemporary galleries, sold works by three Brazilian artists on opening day — a small but meaningful signal of the region's growing commercial presence at the fair's highest level. And in the fair's Feature sector — dedicated to historically significant art — a Madrid gallery presented a major solo show of Joaquín Torres-García, the Uruguayan artist widely considered one of the most influential Latin American figures of the twentieth century, whose work argued passionately that Latin America had its own visual language independent of Europe.
Aleya Hamza, director of Cairo's Gypsum Gallery, noted in Art Lyst about the fair's openness to work from galleries and artists outside the traditional Euro-American circuit — a signal, however small, that Basel's attention is widening geographically.
Anything to be concerned about?
The Art Newspaper reported that the Baloise Art Prize — awarded each year to emerging artists showing in the fair's Statements section, one of the few places at Basel where newer and less established practices find a platform — was cancelled, with dealers told at the last minute. It is a small detail, perhaps, but it speaks to a broader tension at a fair that is simultaneously the most important platform for emerging art and one of the most expensive places in the world to show.
What does all this mean from Costa Rica?
No Costa Rican gallery has a booth at Basel this year — and that's not unusual. But the conversations happening there — about which regions are gaining collector attention, which practices are finding institutional support, where the market is looking next — matter here too. The signals are worth paying attention to for anyone working in this region.
Costa Rica has had a presence at the fair before: Federico Herrero, one of the country's most internationally recognised painters and represented by New York's James Cohan gallery, was commissioned to create a monumental site-specific work for the UBS Lounge at the 2019 edition.
A booth at Basel is not on MÍRAME's horizon just yet. But following what happens there each year is part of how we understand where Costa Rican art sits in the broader conversation, and where we want to take it. Art Basel and Latin American art have a complicated history — the region has long been underrepresented on the gallery walls, even as its collectors have grown in influence.
If you would like to know more about what we do at MÍRAME, we would love to hear from you.
MÍRAME Contact Information:
Email: [email protected] Follow: Facebook | Instagram