August

Edinburgh takes the middle of the month, Copenhagen the last weekend, and the islands hold everything else.

The Edinburgh festival ran its first edition from a permanent home in Leith. Copenhagen stacked Chart and Enter into the same closing weekend. In the Ruhr, Manifesta passed 95,000 visits and kept going toward its October deadline.

Show of the month

Emii Alrai's Guardian, a fragmented sculpture in weathered blue-green patina held on dark steel posts against open sky.

Edinburgh Art Festival 2026

Directed by Kim McAleese

14 AUG 92 Constitution Street and across the city Edinburgh

The twenty-second edition, the first run from the festival's own building in Leith. Emii Alrai's Guardian stands on Calton Hill, a fragmented relic in weathered blue with the armature showing, set against the unfinished National Monument. Del LaGrace Volcano's four decades of queer photography hold the new home at 92 Constitution Street. The Gwen John survey at Modern Two is the reason to stay a second day.

Gallery site ↗

Also this month

27 AUG · COPENHAGEN · KUNSTHAL CHARLOTTENBORG

Chart 2026

The Shared Realities edition. After ten years the courtyard architecture competition is retired, replaced by a single commissioned installation, and the fair keeps leaking into the metro.

Gallery site ↗

An installer on a yellow ladder hangs a painting in a gallery at Kunsthal Charlottenborg.

23 JUN · HYDRA · DESTE PROJECT SPACE, THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE

Nari Ward: Until That Day

Nari Ward

Emergency blankets, fire hoses, keys and scorched poplar inside the Slaughterhouse, with a sound work made with Afro-Greek musicians. The title runs from Haile Selassie's 1963 UN address to the Marley song it became.

Gallery site ↗

A flag woven from keys and metal mesh on a dark pole above the sea at Hydra.

24 JUL · SALZBURG · THADDAEUS ROPAC, VILLA KAST

Sean Scully: To Feel

Sean Scully

Festival-season Salzburg. Scully's banded paintings in the villa, with Not Vital holding the Halle across town until the end of August.

Gallery site ↗

27 JUN · SAINT-PAUL-DE-VENCE · FONDATION MAEGHT

Ellsworth Kelly

More than a hundred works chosen with the Kelly studio, some never shown before, and the restored Blue Floor Panel for Leo from 1992 back on a floor.

Gallery site ↗

21 JUN · THE RUHR · TWELVE CHURCHES

Manifesta 16 Ruhr, mid-run

Past 95,000 visits by the middle of August. The Tuymans frieze in Bochum and the Zahedi organ pipes in Duisburg are worth the regional train on their own. Closes 4 October.

Read the review →

The white nave of Christ König church in Bochum with a cluster of dark metal stars suspended from the ceiling.

Footnote

— Calton Hill, 12 August. The eclipse pulled a crowd onto the hill, directly below Emii Alrai's newly installed Guardian. Plenty of people met the sculpture in the background of other people's eclipse pictures before they met it in person.