Sharjah Art Foundation Spring 2026 Programme

Sharjah Art Foundation has released its Spring 2026 programme, continuing its commitment to artistic exchange and collaboration with the international arts community.

The line-up spans landmark retrospectives, first-time Gulf presentations, emerging artists and a renewed commitment to public space, anchored by the return of March Meeting and the latest edition of Vantage Point Sharjah.

The season opens with the long-awaited reopening of Al Majarrah Park, redesigned in collaboration with the artist collective SUPERFLEX. Once a familiar gathering point along Sharjah’s creek, it re-emerges as a sculptural urban landscape shaped by the outlines of old courtyards and homes, complete with playful large-scale objects contributed by the community. It signals the Foundation’s ongoing work with artists who rethink civic space and collective memory.

Leda Catunda’s expansive survey continues in Al Mureijah Square, through early February, offering a vivid overview of the Brazilian artist’s distinctive language of textures and pop sensibilities. Jorge Tacla takes over three galleries from 8 February with over 170 works spanning four decades, his largest exhibition to date. Jorge’s inverted, ghostlike canvases examine the imprint of trauma on urban landscapes, shaped by his Palestinian and Syrian heritage and his life in Chile.

Also opening in February is the first UAE solo exhibition of Ahaad Alamoudi, whose practice blends image-making, choreography and digital media to explore identity, repetition and the region’s shifting aesthetic codes. Her new commissions will sit alongside earlier works that explore ritual and the narratives that shape cultural futures.

Spring also marks the arrival of Rachid Koraïchi’s sweeping exhibition across Al Mureijah Square and the Calligraphy Museum. Curated by Salah M. Hassan, it brings together more than five decades of work in ceramics, metal, textiles and painting, rooted in a deep engagement with signs, symbols and Sufi philosophy.

Across other SAF venues, several major 2025 shows remain on view, including Image Keepers: Photographic Works from the Sharjah Art Foundation Collection, Of Land and Water at Kalba Ice Factory, Leda Catunda: I like to like what others are liking and Mounira Al Solh’s A land as big as her skin, presented in partnership with the Bonnefanten Museum.

June brings two thoughtful presentations. First is the Gulf’s inaugural exhibition of the work of Guatemalan-Palestinian artist Rodolfo Abularach, celebrated for his hypnotic focus on the human eye. Then, a two-artist exhibition by Laila Majid and Inaam Zafar explores how images, materials and surfaces organise the rhythms of daily experience through sculpture, painting and photography.

Alongside these exhibitions, Sharjah’s annual convening of artists and thinkers, March Meeting 2026, returns from 27 to 29 March with a three-day programme of talks, performances and cross-disciplinary conversations. Later in the year, Vantage Point Sharjah 13 opens as the first edition presented in the new Photography Gallery. Four artists selected through an international open call will debut a commissioned series developed with the Foundation's support.

The programme closes with the permanent display Photographic Encounters along the Gulf Coasts, a vital archival collection of 165 images documenting people and places across the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean littorals from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many appear publicly for the first time, offering a rare look at the region’s early photographic history.

Sharjah Art Foundation’s spring season unfolds across the city’s cultural sites, linking historical narratives with contemporary practices and opening space for new artistic dialogues across the region.

Visit: sharjahart.org