miart celebrates its thirtieth edition in the new South Wing venue at Allianz MiCo, bringing together 160 galleries from 24 countries and confirming its position among the leading international art fairs.

Under the title New Directions, inspired by John Coltrane, the fair looks to jazz as a creative model, transforming its structure into a space for improvisation and dialogue between languages, generations and artistic perspectives.

Renewed sections, special projects, awards and collaborations with institutions and partners shape a programme driven by a shared rhythm, extending the experience from miart into the city and strengthening Milan’s role within the global art landscape.

miart celebrates its thirtieth edition in the new South Wing venue at Allianz MiCo, bringing together 160 galleries from 24 countries and confirming its position among the leading international art fairs.

Under the title New Directions, inspired by John Coltrane, the fair looks to jazz as a creative model, transforming its structure into a space for improvisation and dialogue between languages, generations and artistic perspectives.

Renewed sections, special projects, awards and collaborations with institutions and partners shape a programme driven by a shared rhythm, extending the experience from miart into the city and strengthening Milan’s role within the global art landscape.

With the title Divided into three sections–Like a jazz improvisation that brings together memory and innovation in a vibrant dialogue, historic sections and new perspectives take centre stage in a renewed layout organised across three distinct levels, designed to guide visitors through a progressive experience of discovery.
Welcoming the public on the entrance floor is Emergent, the starting point of the exhibition path, offering the opportunity to discover the latest trends in contemporary art through a selection of galleries whose programmes are dedicated to experimentation. Curated by Attilia Fattori Franchini, the section expands this year to include 29 galleries from around the world, once again confirming its international standing. The 26 exhibition projects address themes such as identity, memory, the body, social structures and climate change through painting, sculpture, ceramics, textile works, video and photography, with a strong presence of women artists presenting solo shows and site-specific installations conceived especially for the fair.

The historic section Established will host, on Level 0 of the South Wing, 111 galleries whose projects organically span twentieth-century art through to the present, placing masters of modern art in dialogue with contemporary research and projects linked to collectible and authorial design. Within this broad horizon, Established reaffirms the fair’s distinctive vocation: bringing together different times, media and genealogies in a narrative where contemporaneity is shaped through continuity, deviation, return and new openings. Among the stands emerges a plurality of visions, from monographic solo presentations to intergenerational dialogues, from comparisons between modern and contemporary to focuses on movements, geographies and materials. The result is a true constellation of projects in which painting, sculpture, installation, ceramics and photography become tools for investigating transformations in the present.

On the upper floor, the new section Established Anthology takes shape, bringing together 20 international galleries around a shared aim: to narrate the complexity, trajectories and transformations of time. The works on display explore cycles, metamorphosis, memory, temporal leaps and possible futures, creating an ongoing dialogue between modern languages and the most current practices. Through thematic exhibitions, monographic focuses and generational juxtapositions, the projects celebrate both historical figures and contemporary artists, exploring dimensions of time, space and cultural transformation. Established Anthology thus reinforces miart’s long-standing approach, which views art history not as a linear sequence but as a living horizon of returns, rewritings and anticipations.

miart 2026 also sees the debut of the special project Movements, dedicated to the moving image and developed in collaboration with the St. Moritz Art Film Festival. Curated by Stefano Rabolli Pansera, the programme presents 20 films by artists represented by 15 galleries, exploring for the first time at miart the poetic and experimental language of video and artist film.

The theme of Movements: If Music investigates the relationship between music and cinema as a space of possibility, where film becomes not narrative but vibration, rhythm and resonance. The works presented show how sound can transform perception, space and the body, generating new forms of experience.
Organised into five movements, the programme unfolds across: Matter and landscape, where images and sounds emerge as fields of resonance; Voice and translation, in which dissonance becomes a collective and political space; Rhythmic space, transformed into architectures of loops and repetition; Choreography, where the body becomes score, memory and living archive; Rhythm of labour, revealing the transformative power of everyday gestures.
As a whole, Movements: If Music proposes a new way of seeing and listening: music does not accompany images, but generates them, opening up a polyphonic territory to inhabit.

miart 2026 composes a score of heterogeneous visions, in which each project becomes a note within a broader chord, generating a dialogue between times, languages and generations, and giving rise to a collective experience where the past, present and future of art resonate together, opening new directions and creative possibilities.

On the occasion of its thirtieth edition, miart strengthens its dialogue with partners and sponsors, like a jazz ensemble in which each voice contributes to a shared rhythm, giving life to a vibrant programme of awards, acquisition funds and special initiatives celebrating collective creativity.

The collaboration with Gruppo Intesa Sanpaolo is renewed, supporting miart as main partner. International outlook, excellence and attention to the cultural development of the territory are the values linking miart to the banking group, with the aim of consolidating Milan’s central role both nationally and internationally and offering the city a further driver of economic, cultural and civic growth.

For miart 2026, the Bank presents the project Standard/Variations, curated by Nicola Ricciardi, which explores the dialogue between painting and jazz in the 1960s, connecting the early works of Robert Ryman and Mario Schifano with the evolution of modal jazz inaugurated by Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The project – also realised with works from the Luigi and Peppino Agrati Collection and spread between the Bank’s lounge at the fair and the vault of the Gallerie d’Italia in Piazza Scala – interprets jazz not as mere conceptual decoration but as a paradigm of modernity: innovation arises from working within rules, transforming form without destroying it. Ryman’s white canvases and Schifano’s monochromes show how the standard can become both threshold and resource, offering a reading of experimentation as intensity distributed over time and harmony between structure and freedom. Within the fair space, two emblematic monochromes are displayed: Schifano’s red Analogo (1961) and Ryman’s white Winsor 20 (1966).

Also in the Bank’s lounge area, Intesa Sanpaolo Private Banking will be present with its art advisory service, dedicated to those who view art as an opportunity for diversified wealth growth and seek highly specialised guidance in selecting, evaluating and managing collections or individual works of art.

The Fondazione Fiera Milano Acquisition Fund, established in 2012, is also confirmed. Worth €100,000, the fund is dedicated to acquiring artworks that will enrich the Foundation’s collection, now housed in the Palazzina degli Orafi and currently comprising over 140 works representing different artistic languages. The works are available on: https://www.fondazionefieramilano.it/it/il-patrimonio/patrimonio-artistico.html.

Now in its eleventh edition, the Herno Prize awards €10,000 to the stand presenting the most outstanding exhibition project, while the LCA Studio Legale Prize for Emergent, valued at €4,000 and established in collaboration with LCA Studio Legale, is granted to the gallery distinguished by the strongest presentation within the Emergent section.

Also confirmed for its fourth edition is the Orbital Cultura – Nexi Group Award, the only award entirely dedicated to photography, together with the Matteo Visconti di Modrone Prize, established in memory of the President of Fonderia Artistica Battaglia. The latter awards €10,000 to an artist selected through an open call, offering the opportunity to realise their work within the foundry with the support of master craftsmen. This year the foundry also introduces a Special Mention worth €1,000, enabling the selected artist to undertake production or experimentation within the foundry.

The SZ Sugar miart commission is renewed, developed in collaboration with SZ Sugar, a publishing house dedicated to contemporary classical music. This edition’s project, also involving CAM Sugar – the most extensive and prestigious catalogue of Italian original film scores – focuses on two key works from 1960: Audace colpo dei soliti ignoti by Piero Umiliani, created with the collaboration of American jazz musician Chet Baker, and Invenzione su una voce per nastro magnetico by Bruno Maderna, one of the most influential composers and conductors of the twentieth-century Italian musical avant-garde. Participating galleries are invited to have their artists intervene directly on the tapes of these works, reworking and transforming them into new artistic productions.

On the occasion of the thirtieth edition, the Archivorum Publication Award for miart is also launched, supporting the development of an original editorial project created in close collaboration between the selected artist and an independent publisher, with the aim of going beyond the traditional catalogue format and encouraging experimentation with new editorial languages – including, but not limited to, the artist’s book. The chosen artist will be selected within the presentations of the Emergent section, and the award carries a value of €20,000.

Also confirmed are the Rotary Club Milano Brera Award for Contemporary Art and Young Artists, established in 2009 as the first award within the context of miart and now in its sixteenth edition, which involves the acquisition of a work by an emerging or mid-career artist to be donated to the Museo del Novecento, and the Massimo Giorgetti Prize, now in its fourth edition. Born from the desire of designer and collector Massimo Giorgetti to support young artists at the start of their careers, the award grants a prize valued at €5,000.

The awarding of these prestigious prizes will be guided by the contribution of leading international directors and curators, who will serve as jurors, including: Clément Delépine, Director, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; Helena Kritis, Chief Curator, WIELS Centre for Contemporary Art, Brussels; Arturo Galansino, General Director, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence; Vittoria Matarrese, Independent Curator, Paris; Edward Gillman, Director, Chisenhale Gallery, London; Alessio Antoniolli, Director, Triangle Network, London & Curator, Fondazione Memmo, Rome.

For miart’s thirtieth edition, further strategic partnerships are renewed, including the one with the fashion brand MSGM, founded and directed by Massimo Giorgetti, which has commissioned artist Alessandro Di Pietro (Messina, 1987) to create a site-specific animated work produced in collaboration with OGR Torino and conceived specifically for the outdoor LED screen in the South Square of Allianz MiCo, a space of connection and access to the fair’s new entrance. The project, titled Buena vista, is an animated short film featuring Testa di Casa, a character created by Di Pietro and first appearing in FRANKENSTEIN Magazine in 2023: a Milanese youngster with a roof in place of their head who, following an eviction, finds themselves confronting a new condition and the most basic needs, such as eating and resting—Milan becomes their bed and the symbols of the city their nourishment. Through a sequence of everyday episodes with a tragicomic tone and pared-down backgrounds in the style of La Linea by Osvaldo Cavandoli, the work addresses the right to housing, placing it at the narrative and political core of the piece.

Maison Ruinart also confirms its commitment to art and sustainability, presenting, within the Ruinart Lounge and for the first time in Italy, works by Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata, protagonist of the Conversations with Nature 2026 series. Known for his works and installations made from wood and fragments of furniture, the artist invites viewers to observe the vibrations of nature, a fundamental element in the harmony of champagne.

Elle Decor Italia and Kartell, meanwhile, enhance the space of the VIP Restaurant by Cracco; the renewed collaboration with the Associazione Italiana Ambasciatori del Gusto narrates the meeting and cross-pollination between two forms of excellence, art and food; while the new partnership with Radio Monte Carlo, the fair’s official radio, reinforces and amplifies the jazz-driven identity of miart 2026. The collaboration with ITA – Italian Trade Agency for the promotion abroad and internationalisation of Italian companies – is renewed for the fourth consecutive year, continuing to provide significant support to the fair’s international development. ICE’s backing makes it possible to expand miart’s visibility abroad and encourage international participation, consolidating the event’s role within the global art landscape.

The Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture also returns to miart with an institutional space open to dialogue with professionals, institutions and stakeholders. This provides an opportunity to present the programmes shaping public policy for contemporary art — Italian Council, Strategia Fotografia, PAC – Piano per l’Arte Contemporanea — across their various fields of action, from the production and international promotion of Italian artists to the strengthening of public collections. Within the space, visitors will also be able to consult publications illustrating some of the research developed through these initiatives.