The 2026 edition of Art Basel once again transformed Basel into a global centre for contemporary culture, extending far beyond the halls of Messe Basel. While the fair welcomed more than 90,000 visitors and 290 galleries from 43 countries, some of the week’s most compelling moments unfolded across the city’s museums, public spaces, and independent venues. This year’s introduction of Basel Exclusive sought to reinvigorate the experience of discovery within the fair itself, but it was the wider constellation of exhibitions, installations, and site-specific projects that demonstrated the extraordinary vitality of Basel’s cultural ecosystem during Art Week. Discover our top three highlights from Basel’s wider cultural programme below.

Quayola. En plein air.

Quayola presented En plein air on the exterior platform of Haus Der Elektronischen Künste (HEK), in partnership with the Tezos Foundation, extending his ongoing Pointillisme series into the public realm. The installation brought together work derived from the artist’s investigation into landscape and machine vision and forms part of Quayola’s broader enquiry into the relationship between pictorial conventions and machinic vision in landscape painting. Last year, we presented works from the artist’s Storms series in London, where computational analyses of the seas of Cornwall were translated into videos and prints that reimagined the traditions of landscape painting through algorithmic processes.

Tom Bull in before the fall

Tom Bull was included in before the fall, a group exhibition curated by Heidi Brunnschweiler, Joffrey Chadrin, and Lukas Jakob, staged within a private domestic residence in Binningen, Switzerland, shortly before the building’s demolition and redevelopment. Conceived as the final exhibition to occupy the space, the project brought together artists whose works engaged with ideas of transition, memory, and the instability of the built environment.

Giovanni Ozzola in Sibylla

Giovanni Ozzola was included in Sibylla, a group exhibition curated by Sonia Taborda and Joerg Bader, bringing together an international group of artists within the gardens and historic setting of the park, accompanied by performances and musical interventions. Ozzola’s contribution resonated with the exhibition’s broader reflection on perception and landscape.