Exhibitions in London this month (July 2026)

July is when the summer season settles in. Everything big is already open — the job now is picking your moments. One major arrival at Tate Modern, one quiet deadline at the Barbican, and five weeks of long evenings to work through the rest.

Tate Modern · Opens 9 July

Ana Mendieta

Mendieta made her work with earth, fire, blood and her own body, mostly in fields and riverbanks where almost nobody saw it happen. What survives is photographs and film — and it has shaped forty years of art since. Tate Modern's retrospective is the month's one genuine event: the most influential body of work most people have never seen in person.

Barbican Centre · Closes 31 July

Delcy Morelos

Morelos builds landscapes indoors — tonnes of soil worked with cinnamon and clove until the room smells like somewhere else entirely. You don't look at it so much as stand in it. It leaves the Barbican at the end of the month, and work this physical doesn't travel; when it's gone, it's gone.

Serpentine Gallery · Free • to 23 Aug

David Hockney

In May we said the queue would find its length by July. It has. The fix is unchanged since: go on a weekday, go at opening time, and do the show twice in an hour — once for the colour, once for the looking. Still free, still in Hyde Park, still the easiest great hour in London.

Tate Modern · To 31 Aug

Tracey Emin: A Second Life

The late Emin is a different artist — the paintings since her surgery have a rawness the nineties notoriety never prepared anyone for. It's been running since February, which means everyone has stopped talking about it, which means now is the time. Five weeks left after July ends; don't let it become an August regret.

Tate Modern · Book ahead

Frida: The Making of an Icon

The one everyone's asking about. Timed tickets, long lead times, and a show about how an image gets built — the photographs, the wardrobe, the unsent letters. A July weekday is the easiest slot you'll find before Christmas. Book it now and forget about it.