Art Basel Paris Spills Out Onto Paris's Streets and Landmarks

Art Basel Paris is open to the public from Wednesday, October 21 to Sunday, October 25, 2026, and this year much of the art sits outside the fair's main hall. The fair is held at the Grand Palais, the glass-roofed exhibition hall in central Paris, where more than 200 galleries show work. Its free public program, the works placed around the city, is where many visitors will spend the most time.

The fair began about five years ago under the name Paris+ by Art Basel. Its public program now takes over several well-known sites, and the Palais d'Iéna is one of them. French filmmaker Alice Diop, born in 1979, has created an immersive project there called Geste de Consolation, which means something like "gesture of comfort." The rooms include a black-and-white self-portrait by South African photographer Zanele Muholi and Sentinel (Mami Wata), a sculpture by American artist Simone Leigh.

Fashion house Miu Miu, which is named as the official partner of the public program for the third year, also helped with the Palais d'Iéna project. The library and living room use seating recycled from the brand's latest Paris fashion show, according to ARTnews.

At the Petit Palais, the city's fine-arts museum near the Champs-Élysées, German artist Cosima von Bonin has placed a group of large soft sculptures at the entrance. They include leather octopuses, mohair whales and velvet St. Bernard dogs. The creatures were commissioned by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the designers behind Loewe, for the Spanish label's Fall/Winter 2026 show. Inside the museum, French artist Prune Nourry has a "carte blanche," meaning a free hand to fill a space with her own work. Her project begins with a Corten steel sculpture outside the museum, which is not part of the Art Basel program.

Across the Seine, on the hilltop plaza of the Trocadéro, facing the Eiffel Tower, British artist Tracey Emin has three bronze sculptures. They are installed on the Parvis des Droits de l'Homme, a plaza that this year replaced Place Vendôme as the program's home for large outdoor installations. ARTnews reported in September that the works show women resting at different stages.

For visitors planning a day out, a few practical points matter. Children up to the age of 12 get in free, according to the Art Basel ticket page. Guided tours run Friday through Sunday. From October 21 to 25, students from the École du Louvre, the training school attached to the Louvre museum, will be at the public program sites between 2pm and 5:30pm to help visitors.

The Art Basel Shop in Paris is also carrying a capsule collection of works by the American painter Beauford Delaney, along with artist-designed objects and limited editions.

The art fair is run by Art Basel, a company best known for its Swiss fair in Basel, and its Paris edition is one of several it holds each year. The public installations, however, are free to walk up to, and that is the part of the week most Parisians will see without buying a ticket.