Art Brussels Shrinks to 138 Galleries as Brussels Bets on Quality Over Scale
At its 42nd edition, Art Brussels is making a deliberate case for less. The fair, which runs April 23–26, has 138 participating galleries this year, 26 fewer than in 2025, and director Nele Verhaeren did not soften the message: the downsizing is intentional. The goal, she said, is a more focused fair in which the visitor experience matters as much as the number of booths.
That shift is visible the moment visitors enter Brussels Expo. For the first time in recent years, the fair’s exhibitors fit into one hall rather than 1.5, a change that organizers say should make the event feel more legible and less exhausting. Verhaeren framed the move as part of a broader recalibration in the art-fair sector, where rising operating costs and geopolitical uncertainty are pushing galleries to be more selective about where they show.
The Brussels edition arrives at a moment when the market is still adjusting to a cooler climate. The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026 reported a 2 percent increase in gallery sales in 2025, yet the contemporary segment remained under pressure as buyers gravitated toward safer categories such as Old Masters and Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. In that context, Art Brussels is positioning itself as a slower, more concentrated alternative to the bloated fair model that has defined much of the past decade.
The city itself gives that strategy unusual support. Brussels has long been known for a dense network of mid-sized galleries, relatively accessible art spaces, and collectors who sustain a lively local ecosystem. Dealers and collectors also describe the scene as more international than the word “local” might suggest, shaped by the city’s multilingual character and central European location.
Brussels-based dealer Xavier Hufkens, who founded his gallery in 1987 and has expanded only within the city, said that choice now looks increasingly prudent. He argued that a regional scene is not necessarily a small one, but a workable one — especially when quality is the priority.
The fair is also using its reduced footprint to test new ideas. In a section called Horizons, Devrim Bayar, a senior curator at Kanal-Centre Pompidou, selected seven large-scale works in a space that previously held booths. The section is still young, but it points to how Art Brussels may use its extra room to build a more curated experience.
Elsewhere in Brussels, the pop-up fair Parloir offered a different model altogether: 11 galleries, a flat fee of EUR 1,700, and works ranging from EUR 3,000 to EUR 100,000. Together, these experiments suggest that Brussels is becoming a useful laboratory for a market searching for a more sustainable scale.
