London’s June art season is back with unusual force in 2026
A heatwave may have settled over the city, but the sharper temperature in London this week is being set by the market. Major auctions and a cluster of fairs are drawing collectors, dealers and curators back into the capital, even as the post-Brexit reshaping of the June calendar continues to thin the field compared with a decade ago.
At Sotheby’s on June 24, the Lewis collection — assembled by British billionaire Joe Lewis and his daughter Vivienne Lewis — goes under the hammer with an estimate of £150 million to £200 million. The sale is being described as the most valuable single-owner collection ever offered for sale in the UK. Among the headline lots is Amedeo Modigliani’s *Nu assis au collier* (1917), estimated at more than £45 million.
Christie’s is also leaning into the season with 106 contemporary works from the collection of Anita and Poju Zabludowicz. The group, which includes works by Rose Wylie, Damien Hirst and Philip Guston, will be split between a live sale on June 25 and an online auction running through June 30. The overall estimate is more than £15 million.
The fair calendar is smaller than it once was, but it is not empty. Treasure House Fair, now in its fourth edition at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, runs from June 24 to 30 with 60 exhibitors, down from 72 last year. Thomas Woodham Smith, one of the fair’s co-founders, said the event has kept fees unchanged despite rising costs, even as some dealers have stepped back in a difficult trading climate.
That contraction is paired with a notable turnover. Roughly a third of Treasure House exhibitors are new for 2026, reflecting a broader generational shift in the trade. Woodham Smith pointed to younger dealers such as Ed Foster of Foster and Gane and Joe Chaffer of Vagabond Antiques, as well as the influence of Rose Uniacke, whose mix of periods has helped shape a new taste for dealers working across categories rather than within rigid historical lanes.
Classic Art London, launched after the cancellation of London Art Week, is also back for a second edition from June 22 to July 3, with 16 participants spread across Mayfair, St James’s and Cecil Court. And Studiolo, a one-day group exhibition on June 26, adds another layer to a week that suggests London’s summer market has not disappeared so much as recalibrated. The city’s June season is smaller, more selective and more expensive to stage — but in 2026, it is once again impossible to ignore.
