From the Grand Palais to the City Beyond
Art Basel returns to Paris this fall
This October, the art world’s attention turns once more to Paris as Art Basel takes up residence beneath the Grand Palais’ glass canopy for the second time.
From October 24 to 26 2025, with VIP previews beginning October 22, the fair will bring together 206 leading galleries from 41 countries and territories. Twenty-nine of these are newcomers, underscoring the fair’s continued growth and its ability to attract the very best of the global art world. For collectors, curators, and enthusiasts alike, Art Basel Paris offers a platform that unites the city’s longstanding cultural prestige with the energy of contemporary practice.
Paris has long been a nexus of creativity, and the 2025 edition of Art Basel reflects this history while amplifying the city’s role as a hub of innovation. Nearly one-third of this year’s exhibitors operate spaces in Paris, an indication of how deeply embedded the fair is within the city’s ecosystem. The result is a fair that not only showcases art but also resonates with the intellectual and avant-garde spirit that has defined Paris for generations.
At the heart of the fair, its three core sectors — Galeries, Emergence, and Premise — trace the full spectrum of artistic innovation. Galeries unites 180 premier galleries showcasing everything from 20th-century masters to contemporary trailblazers, while Emergence transforms the Grand Palais balconies into a stage for bold, experimental work by rising talent. Premise, launched last year, offers curatorial propositions that challenge conventional narratives, sometimes featuring works pre-1900. Adding a playful Parisian twist, Oh La La! returns Friday and Saturday with in-booth interventions spotlighting rarely seen or reimagined pieces. This year’s edition, art-directed by fashion documentarian Loïc Prigent, explores the theme “À la mode,” tracing the rich dialogue between fashion and art — from textiles and tailoring to style, chic and social codes.
Adding to the week’s vibrancy, the UBS Salon will feature works from the UBS Art Collection in a curated display which draws upon the spirit and aesthetics of Modernism. Make it New! Modernism, Today showcases the endurance of the international cultural movement which spanned the late 19th to mid-20th centuries and encompassed art, literature, design, architecture and beyond. Works by Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Yinka Shonibare, Ryan Gander, Gina Fischli and Sonia Delaunay converse in an elegant reinvention of Modernist sensibilities, which attests to the continued influence of the movement for artists working today.
Alongside the bustling fair, the Conversation Program returns to the Petit Palais with a fresh concept of dynamic panels and debates. A new day‑long strand curated by Edward Enninful launches on Friday, October 24, bringing one‑to‑one dialogues with four figures who helped define the 1990s: Yinka Shonibare CBE, Juergen Teller, Sonia Boyce, and Mark Leckey. Shonibare, represented in the UBS Art Collection, has long probed identity, history and the politics of elegance, making his exchange with Enninful feel timely and magnetic.
Beyond the booths and crowds of the Grand Palais, the Public Program unfurls across the city’s streets and storied venues alike. On the Paris de l’Institut de France, Ugo Rondinone, another artist represented in the UBS Art Collection, installs the innocent, a monumental figure whose primal clarity and totemic calm feel tailor‑made for this historic site — linking contemporary life to deep cultural memory. Across the river at the Palais d’Iéna, Miu Miu presents Helen Marten’s 30 Blizzards., a new performance‑led project that distils her rich material language into a theatrical register. The promenade quality of the week is palpable — avenue Winston‑Churchill becomes a sculpture corridor, Delacroix’s intimate museum hosts a contemporary riff by Nate Lowman, and the Hôtel de la Marine showcases a textile landmark by Joël Andrianomearisoa.
Paris outside the fair is no less compelling. The Fondation Louis Vuitton stages a major Gerhard Richter retrospective, an essential encounter with a postwar master — and UBS Art Collection artist — whose restless oeuvre pivots between photography and painting — have shaped how we read images today. Across the city, the Musée Picasso devotes space to Philip Guston and Raymond Pettibon, while the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris spotlights Otobong Nkanga alongside the Prix Marcel Duchamp. It’s a citywide chorus of perspectives that makes a single day’s itinerary feel like a curated essay on modern and contemporary art.
Paris in October offers far more than exhibitions. For those eager to feel the city’s wider pulse, the fair week coincides with Jazz sur Seine, filling the city’s clubs and concert halls with the rhythms of international jazz, and the Festival d’Automne à Paris, a season-spanning celebration of theatre, dance, music and performance that brings together some of the most exciting voices in contemporary culture.
Art Basel Paris 2025 promises to be a moment when Paris once again takes center stage in the global art world, offering a cultural experience as wide-ranging as it is unforgettable.