October 2026
October 2026 at a glance: 17 exhibitions opened, 10 closed, and 17 more were on view across the city.

Triennale MilanoFree
American Neo-Conceptualist Peter Halley brings three decades of prints, installation and new digital works to the spaces of Cucina Triennale.

Pinacoteca Ambrosiana
For the 800th anniversary of St Francis's death: four paintings, engravings and drawings of his life, many shown for the first time, including sheets from the Codice Resta.

Pinacoteca di Brera
Centenary of the Amici di Brera: paintings, sculptures, drawings and documents that entered the Pinacoteca through the Association's gifts, many not normally on view.

Museo del Novecento
Notebooks, magazines, letters and recordings from critic Tommaso Trini's archive, from Domus to his magazine DATA, in the Archivi Ettore e Claudia Gian Ferrari.

Castello Sforzesco
About a hundred works by the Brescia metalworker Nino Ferrari in silver, copper and pewter, with archive letters, photographs and his collaboration with Gio Ponti, in the Sala della Balla.

MUDEC Museo delle Culture
About 100 works tracing how African, Islamic, Russian, Pacific and Chinese art reshaped Henri Matisse, with objects and fabrics from his own collection.

Pirelli HangarBicoccaFree
Retrospective of Luciano Fabro in the Navate: about fifty sculptures and installations, many rebuilt as environmental "habitats", tracing his five-decade inquiry into space and perception.

Palazzo Citterio
First major posthumous retrospective of Carlo Maria Mariani: about seventy paintings and large cartoons, from the 1940s to 2019, on the second floor.

Palazzo Reale di Milano
Italy's largest ever Francis Picabia show: 170+ paintings, drawings, photos and archive pieces exploring night as a metaphor for desire and reinvention.

PAC Padiglione d'Arte ContemporaneaFreePast
Photography by and about migrant and refugee women: displacement, motherhood and resilience, curated by Diego Sileo. Free entry.

PAC Padiglione d'Arte ContemporaneaFreePast
Visual-anthropology project on sub-Saharan women's migratory journeys in North Africa and the violence of forced immobility. Free entry.

Triennale MilanoFree
Free show of the winning photographers of the 2026 Deloitte Photo Grant, an international award for contemporary documentary photography, in the Impluvium.

Palazzo Reale di MilanoFreePast
Free group show from Giovanni Caccamo's youth project: works by Cattelan, Pistoletto, Kapoor, Gormley, Penone and more, inspired by young people's visions of change.

Museo Teatrale alla Scala
Rare photographs from the Pina Bausch Foundation archive of the rehearsals for Le Sacre du printemps, ahead of its first staging by the La Scala Ballet.

Museo Poldi Pezzoli
Dossier show on Titian's ties to Milan, built around a canvas never shown publicly, on long-term loan from a private collector; three autograph works and one copy.

Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria Martini
A single-masterpiece loan from Capodimonte: Artemisia's 1630 Annunciation, her first known work painted in Naples, showing her at full maturity.
Palazzo Citterio
For the Brera Academy's 250th anniversary, works by its 20th-century and contemporary teachers, from Wildt and Carrà to Marini and Fabro, in the Sala Stirling.

Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria MartiniPast
Winners and finalists of the 2026 World Photography Organisation awards, chosen from 430,000+ entries, including Photographer of the Year Citlali Fabián.

Triennale MilanoPast
With Fondation Cartier, a monographic show on designer and theorist Andrea Branzi seen through Pritzker laureate Toyo Ito, including an installation on No-Stop City.

Triennale MilanoFreePast
A solo show turning the space into a domestic setting of hybrid art-design works, reconfigured four times over the run.

ADI Design MuseumPast
Michele Tranquillini's drawings of overlooked city details in Milan and Tokyo, from manhole covers to abandoned bikes, with a participatory sticker section.

Museo Diocesano Carlo Maria MartiniPast
Retrospective of the Swiss Magnum photojournalist: 200 vintage prints plus contact sheets, from 1930s Switzerland through postwar Europe and Asia to the Americas.

Gallerie d'Italia MilanoPast
Beauty versus ugliness in the Renaissance: Botticelli, Michelangelo, Titian, Dürer and Cranach, from classical ideals to realist portraits, monsters and caricature.

Gallerie d'Italia MilanoPast
Some 45 works trace six decades of Arnaldo Pomodoro's sculpture, from his 1950s beginnings to 2000s experiments, with archive material and displays inspired by his own.

Museo Bagatti ValsecchiPast
Hyper-real contemporary ceramics by Bertozzi & Casoni (still lifes, animals, remains) set among the Renaissance rooms, on memory, time and fragility. Curated by Alberto Mattia Martini.

Palazzo CitterioPast
Site-specific AI-driven digital installation by poet-artist Sasha Stiles on Palazzo Citterio's LED wall, turning the Lorem Ipsum placeholder text into "impossible translations".

Fondazione PradaPast
Site-specific project at Osservatorio: a new Hito Steyerl film and video installation on flooding, science fiction and quantum leaps through time.

MUDEC Museo delle CultureFreePast
First Italian solo show by Singaporean artist Charmaine Poh: video, photography and performance on memory, identity, power and digital visibility.

Castello SforzescoPast
Masterpieces from the Gabinetto dei Disegni's 30,000+ works on paper, from Leonardo and Tiepolo to Boccioni and Keith Haring, in the Salette della Grafica.

Fondazione Prada
Site-specific project in the Cisterna: three installations built on Hatoum's web, map and grid motifs, reflecting on the turmoil of our times and the precariousness of existence.

Villa Necchi Campiglio
44 of Piero Portaluppi's key drawings, from youthful caricatures to villas and public buildings, curated by Roberto Dulio in the villa's newly restored attic.

Armani/Silos
About 150 haute couture creations from two decades of Giorgio Armani Privé, including red-carpet gowns, filling all four floors of the museum. Extended to 20 December 2026.

Museo Teatrale alla Scala
Period photographs trace La Scala's rebuilding after the 1943 bombing, up to Toscanini's historic reopening concert of 11 May 1946, 80 years on.

Triennale Milano
The latest in a series of Sottsass shows around Casa Lana, drawing on works from the Museo del Design Italiano collection.

GAM Galleria d'Arte Moderna
Mumbai artist Shilpa Gupta's new works on language, censorship, borders and hope, set in dialogue with GAM's 19th-century collection across the courtyard and five ground-floor rooms.

Palazzo Reale di Milano
Centenary retrospective of photographer and writer Carla Cerati: Milan street life, the asylum exposé Morire di classe, portraits, theatre and the body.

Pirelli HangarBicoccaFree
Two decades of Aki Sasamoto's installations, sculptures, videos and performances in the Shed, using graphs, diagrams and rotating mechanisms to probe human connection.

Palazzo Reale di Milano
Italy's first major show on the Brueghel dynasty: 80+ paintings, drawings and prints tracing how they shaped landscape, still life, peasant and battle genres.

Palazzo Reale di Milano
Over 200 paintings, drawings, photos, garments and jewels trace Salvador Dalí's surrealist collaborations with fashion designers, photographers and maisons.

Gallerie d'Italia Milano
Photographs from major archives chart 80 years of Italian women's gains, from the 1946 vote through work, feminism, divorce and abortion rights, to contemporary artists.

Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci
Sergio Raffaele and Tiziano Demuro's photographs of Milan's metro as a hidden, metaphysical city, shown among the trains of the Railway Pavilion.

Museo Teatrale alla Scala
Fifty years after his death, costumes, sketches, photos and archive papers retrace Visconti's Scala productions, from the 1955 Callas Traviata to his unrealised Ring.

Pinacoteca di Brera
The "travelling gallery" of Count Sommariva: 99 miniature enamels (1810-1825) copying Neoclassical masterpieces from his collection, carried with him across Europe.

Pinacoteca di Brera
Twelve restored plaster busts by Antonio Canova, lent by Banca Ifis, join a marble Vestal back at Brera after a century, celebrating the museum's Neoclassical roots.
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.