09/06/2026
This is your FIRST LOOK the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026 the 258th edition. And if you’ve never been, this is the year to start.
I was there today, and I got to meet the man behind it all Ryan Gander OBE RA, this year’s co-ordinator, who has built the entire exhibition around one powerful theme: Interconnectedness. The idea that no matter how different we are, our creative outputs hold more in common than they do apart.
But Ryan didn’t do this alone. The full committee of Royal Academicians who selected every single work are: Eileen Cooper, Michael Craig-Martin, Oona Grimes, Katherine Jones, Goshka Macuga, Humphrey Ocean and Peter St John, who leads the Architecture rooms. These are some of the most respected names in British art. Every work on these walls passed their eye.
And because the theme is Interconnectedness, Ryan has deliberately mixed all media together painting beside sculpture, architecture beside photography, print beside film. A £50 work hanging on the same wall as a £50,000 one. A complete unknown beside a Royal Academician. Everything in conversation with everything else. That is not an accident. That is the point.
Here’s something most people walk straight past. There is a line that runs through the entire exhibition at exactly 2 metres high. Look for it. It has been there since the days when patrons arrived on horseback, and later in top hats — and an artist always knew their work had truly arrived when it was hung above that line. Above the top hats. In full view of everyone in the room. That line is still there today. A quiet nod to 258 years of tradition that most visitors never notice. Now you will.
This is how art collectors start. Not at auction. Not at a private gallery. Here. At the show that has been running every single year since 1769 — open to every artist, every medium, every level of fame. Grayson Perry and a complete unknown. Same walls. Same show. Same chance to be discovered.
Over 1,500 works. Most of them for sale. From £50.
Open 16 June – 23 August. From £23.50 to get in. Under 16s free.