In early February 2026, Art Basel opens its newest edition in Doha. The fair will take place from 5 to 7 February, with Preview Days on 3 and 4 February, unfolding across Msheireb Downtown Doha and a network of cultural venues and public spaces.

Art Basel Qatar joins the Art Basel network as its fifth global edition, following Basel, Paris, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong. Its Doha debut reflects a long-term commitment to the MENASA region as a site of contemporary artistic production, institutional growth, and cultural authorship.

Dates, Access, and Venues

Show Dates: February 5–7, 2026
Preview Days (by invitation): February 3–4, 2026

Key venues in Msheireb Downtown Doha:

– M7
– Doha Design District (DDD)
– Barahat Msheireb and additional public sites

The fair unfolds across multiple architectural settings, guiding visitors through a sequence of interior and exterior encounters within Doha’s historic and contemporary urban fabric.

Curatorial Direction

Art Basel Qatar brings together 87 galleries presenting 84 artists, with more than half of the participating artists drawn from across the MENASA region. The galleries represent 31 countries and territories, including a group appearing at an Art Basel fair for the first time.

The edition is led by Artistic Director Wael Shawky, in close collaboration with Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel’s Chief Artistic Officer and Global Director of Fairs. Artist presentations engage with a shared curatorial framework titled Becoming, a proposition that explores transformation across cultural, material, and historical contexts.

Across the galleries sector, Becoming provides an editorial structure that connects individual practices without imposing stylistic uniformity. The framework allows works to be read through questions of memory, ecology, displacement, social transition, and personal narrative.

Special Projects

Alongside the galleries sector, Art Basel Qatar introduces a program of nine large-scale, site-specific Special Projects, spanning sculpture, installation, performance, film, and architecture. These commissions extend the fair into public and institutional space across Msheireb.

Participating artists include:

– Bruce Nauman, presenting a new 3D video work projected inside M7’s grand theatre.
– Hassan Khan, premiering a live musical suite developed through a customized digital system.
– Nalini Malani, presenting a large-scale outdoor projection from Ballad of a Woman on the M7 façade.
– Rayyane Tabet, creating an experiential pavilion centred on rest and suspended presence.
– Sumayya Vally, presenting In the Assembly of Lovers, a continuously reconfigured majlis conceived as a site for gathering and dialogue.
– Sweat Variant (Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born), staging a durational movement work exploring attention, memory, and relational endurance.

Additional projects by Abraham Cruzvillegas, Khalil Rabah, Nour Jaouda, and others further expand the program into questions of material history, displacement, institutional critique, and spatial politics.

Together, these commissions treat public space as a core element of the fair’s curatorial language.

Gallery Presentations

The galleries sector establishes a dialogue between regional practices and global art histories.

Selected presentations include:

– Etel Adnan (1925–2021) in a focused presentation centred on landscape, memory, and spiritual geography.
– Ahmed Mater, continuing his long-term engagement with Makkah through photographic studies of urban transformation.
– Mona Hatoum, presenting works that examine vulnerability, enclosure, and architectural constraint.
– Hassan Sharif (1951–2016), approached through studies and working materials that trace the development of a conceptual language in the Gulf.
– Marlene Dumas, presenting paintings drawn from media imagery addressing identity shaped by conflict and memory.
– Sophia Al-Maria, using the Toyota Hilux as a symbolic vehicle through Gulf histories of mobility, energy, and masculinity.

These presentations trace a range of artistic positions connecting personal experience, political memory, and formal experimentation.

Cultural Programme Across Qatar

Art Basel Qatar coincides with a strong national exhibition program across Qatar Museums institutions.

Key exhibitions during the fair include:

Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art
– we refuse_d (until Feb 9, 2026)
– Resolutions: Celebrating 15 Years of Mathaf (until Aug 8, 2026)

ALRIWAQ
– I. M. Pei: Life Is Architecture (until Feb 14, 2026)

Museum of Islamic Art
– I. M. Pei and the Making of the Museum of Islamic Art (until Feb 14, 2026)

QM Gallery Katara
– The Rooted Nomad: MF Husain (until Feb 7, 2026)

The fair reads as a week-long cultural itinerary connecting museum exhibitions, public art, and commissioned projects across the city.

Doha in the Art Basel Network

Art Basel Qatar reflects Doha’s growing role as a centre for cultural production, institutional dialogue, and international artistic exchange. Through its venues, public commissions, and curatorial structure, the fair situates contemporary art within a broader civic and architectural context.