The Art Market Check by Melanie Gerlis
As collectors seek access, context and connection, regional art fairs are emerging as increasingly influential market hubs.
As the big-brand art fairs jostle for international supremacy and the art market tries to capture a new generation of buyers, regional art fairs are coming into their own.
“For visitors, we can offer specific cultural knowledge of the region, from its restaurants to its museums. For the galleries, of course we want them to sell works, but it is also about meeting other art professionals and making new connections, to become part of a community that we know and can bring together,” says Julie Quottrup Silbermann, the director of Copenhagen’s CHART Art Fair. This rising relevance reflects a broader shift in how people engage with art. UBS began its relationship with CHART as the fair’s official Key Partner in August 2022, supporting its work to bring collectors, art professionals and wider audiences together. They find that collectors—particularly newer and next-generation buyers—are looking not only for access to works, but for context, trusted relationships and opportunities to learn. Regional fairs can offer precisely that: a more approachable setting in which discovery, conversation and community sit alongside commerce.
This emphasis on in-person engagement is reflected in the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026: art-fair sales rose by 4% in 2025 to account for 35% of dealer turnover, their highest share since 2022. Growth at both international and local fairs—particularly among mid-sized dealers—points to the continuing value of fairs as places to discover art, build relationships and broaden participation.
She has just overseen the 14th edition of the fair, whose aim has always been to promote galleries from the Nordic region. This year, CHART welcomed 23,000 visitors to its displays from 37 galleries, who were generally “really, really happy,” she says.
For Quottrup Silbermann, and many other regional fair directors, the key is being accessible, to its galleries, overseas visitors and to local could-be collectors.
Broadening its reach beyond the elegant Kunsthal Charlottenborg building this year included putting art in Copenhagen’s Metro stations, ranging from artist videos on advertising screens to live dance performances to and from Kongens Nytorv station. These included the activation of Alberte Skronski’s “Link Pimousine (Pink Limousine)”, for which two performers dress as a bright stretch limo and make their way through the city. “It’s fun, and it’s a way for people to get away from their phones, to be present together rather than fragmented,” Quottrup Silbermann says.
For the galleries inside the fair building, the cost of participation is not disclosed but, Quottrup Silbermann says, “they could show here many times over compared to the major international fairs.” This gives them an opportunity to “take more risks, try out new things, that’s what I like about a regional fair.”
She cites displays including an almost immersive showing of six large-scale, imagined landscape paintings by the Stockholm artist Ebba Svensson, her first show in Denmark (Galleri Magnus Karlsson) and sculptures, by Danish artist Ragnhild May, of sirens and mermaids wearing headsets with music that the artist part-composed (Alice Folker Gallery). Iceland’s Gallery Gudmundsdottir brought watercolours and a performance by the Icelandic Love Corporation that addressed menopause as a rite of passage. These might not be instant commercial hits but, Quottrup Silbermann says, “can bring a new artist to a new audience”.
Younger art fairs on the scene are taking a leaf out of the CHART book. Zane Čulkstēna, the founder of Riga’s Kim? Contemporary Art Centre, launched the Riga Contemporary art fair last year and finds that, after 18 years of organising art exhibitions, the fair proved more effective. “There is something about the market set-up that relaxes people. You would think it would be more scary, but it’s the opposite. Maybe there’s a sense that the galleries actually want you there,” she says.
Her fair, whose second edition fielded 42 exhibitors this year, many from the Baltics, had 17,000 visitors, up from last year’s 15,000. Such levels are far ahead of initial expectations, Čulkstēna says. With exhibitor fees of euro 500—significantly below those typically associated with major international fairs—and free entry supported by Riga City Council, the fair is designed to lower barriers for galleries and visitors alike. There is private support too, mostly from the local VV Foundation.
For Čulkstēna, growing the fair’s international visitors is the next priority and, like Quottrup Silbermann, she sees the role of the Riga fair as partly tourism. “There is a huge demand for tours and explanations of the region, and we play a social role for the art community. There are sauna mornings, karaoke nights, meetings in bars,” she says.
For many of Riga Contemporary’s visitors, the fair’s role is to stimulate activity in a country “where there isn’t a tradition of buying,” said a spokesperson from the city’s Māksla Xo Galerija. Making prices visible, and often visibly below euro 10,000, helps its cause.
The fair’s co-founder is Jeffrey Rosen, co-owner of the Tokyo gallery Misako & Rosen, as well as co-president of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA). Rosen previously ran a similarly community-based fair in Tokyo called Onsen Confidential, which Čulkstēna describes as an inspiration for Riga. Rosen finds that the role of a regional fair to establish a collecting community is vital. “If you’re developing something, you need a foundation,” he says.
At the same time, the smaller fair organisers are conscious of the competition for collectors. “There are more than 300 fairs worldwide. But a lot of us are asking the same questions, how to be sustainable, how to fund our activities, how to stay relevant,” Quottrup Silbermann says.
As such, there is broad recognition that rather than fight for visitors, there is value in creating a collective regional voice. “We can really cultivate collegial relationships. So if you are talking to a blue-chip gallery at, say, Art Basel, they maybe don’t want to know the details of what is happening in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania, but they’d like a sense of the Baltic art scene. We can pool our specific knowledge for an international audience, if we’re working together,” said Lilian Hiob, director of the biennial Foto Tallinn fair, which opens its fourth edition this month (Kai Art Center, 18-20 September).
She was speaking on a panel at the Riga fair that brought her together with Quottrup Silbermann, Sonata Baliuckaitė Arlauskienė, artistic director of ArtVilnius and Gilles Neiens, artistic director of Art Düsseldorf—a rare, and compelling, display of collaboration.
Such talks are central to the regional fair organisers, who take responsibility for stimulating the next generation of buyers and creatives, many of whom could feel shut out of the larger events on the circuit. At CHART, the free-to-enter conversations included one the new generation of collectors; Riga Contemporary had sessions on how to buy art and how to succeed as an artist; Foto Tallinn has a fair tour on collecting for your home and a talk called ‘The ABCs of collecting photographic art’.
At CHART, this educational role was brought into focus by Carola Wiese of UBS Family Advisory – Art and Collecting, who moderated a discussion on how a new generation of collectors is reshaping established practices and priorities. The conversation underscored a UBS view that collecting is rarely only transactional: confidence grows through knowledge, dialogue and relationships.
“One of the greatest strengths of regional fairs is their ability to empower new collectors” outlines Wiese. “By bringing together galleries, artists, and audiences in an approachable environment, they create opportunities to learn, ask questions, and develop a personal eye. The knowledge and confidence gained at a regional fair often become the foundation of a collector's evolution and future engagement with the art world.” Through it all, Quottrup Silbermann says, the quality of art and its display is still king. “Being accessible doesn’t mean operating at a lower level. It is about opening doors to a wider audience, so everyone feels they can enter, and will see great things.”
