14 best art exhibitions to see in Tokyo in 2026

Celebrating three decades of Ghost in the Shell, one of Japan’s most influential sci-fi franchises, this large-scale exhibition will take over Tokyo Node at Toranomon Hills from January 30 to April 5. The ambitious showcase is set to trace the evolution of the series from Masamune Shirow’s ground-breaking 1989 manga to its acclaimed anime adaptations and, with a new 2026 series from Science Saru on the horizon, into the future.

Organised with the full cooperation of Production IG, the studio behind the franchise’s animation, the exhibition brings together works by directors Mamoru Oshii, Kenji Kamiyama, Kazuya Kise and Shinji Aramaki, offering visitors an unprecedented deep dive into the cyberpunk universe that redefined anime.

Over 600 production materials will be on display, including original drawings, storyboards and concept art. You’ll also be able to look forward to immersive installations and interactive exhibits that explore key philosophical themes from the series such as identity, consciousness and the boundaries between human and machine.

Emerging in the wake of the Margaret Thatcher era, the Young British Artists (YBAs) and their contemporaries embraced shock, irreverence and entrepreneurial flair. While the YBA label (applied after the landmark 1988 ‘Freeze’ exhibition organised by Damien Hirst) was often contested, it came to define a generation that reimagined what art could be. Painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation all became tools for probing themes of identity, consumer culture and shifting social structures. 

The National Art Center’s ‘YBA & Beyond: British Art in the 90s from the Tate Collection’ is the first exhibition in Japan devoted exclusively to British art of the 1990s. Featuring around 100 works by some 60 artists, the show captures a turbulent and transformative period in British culture, when politics, society and art collided to spark a wave of radical experimentation.

Highlights include works by Hirst, Tracey Emin, Steve McQueen, Lubaina Himid, Wolfgang Tillmans and Julian Opie, alongside others who reshaped contemporary art on a global stage.

Having spent over four decades redefining the relationship between art, technology and desire, Hajime Sorayama is one of Japan’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Noted for his iconic Sexy Robot series and his pioneering fusion of human sensuality and mechanical precision, Sorayama’s work has influenced generations of creators across art, design and popular culture – from RoboCop to Dior. His visionary approach, uniting the sensual with the synthetic, has earned him international acclaim and a lasting place in the subcultural art canon.

Opening in spring at the Creative Museum Tokyo, ‘Sorayama: Light, Reflection, Transparency -Tokyo-’ marks the artist’s largest retrospective in Japan to date, following its acclaimed debut in Shanghai. The exhibition traces Sorayama’s artistic evolution from his first robot painting in 1978 to his latest digital and sculptural works. Visitors will encounter highlights such as the original Aibo robot design for Sony, the artwork for Aerosmith’s Just Push Play album, and an immersive installation that embodies Sorayama’s lifelong pursuit of capturing light, air and reflections.

Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911) is one of Lithuania’s most celebrated cultural figures, a visionary who fused painting and music into a singular artistic language. Trained as a composer before turning to visual art in the early 1900s, Čiurlionis created more than 300 works in just six years, drawing on Art Nouveau, Symbolism and Japonisme while grounding his imagery in Lithuanian identity under Russian imperial rule. His dreamlike canvases, rich in myth and cosmology, reveal a rare talent whose life was tragically cut short at the age of 35.

The National Museum of Western Art marks the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth with ‘The Inner Constellation’, running from March 28 to June 14. Presented in collaboration with the National M. K. Čiurlionis Art Museum in Kaunas, the exhibition will feature around 80 major works, including the Japanese debut of The Altar (1909) and the monumental masterpiece Rex (1909), the artist’s largest and most enigmatic painting.

Organised into five thematic chapters, the retrospective also highlights Čiurlionis’s innovations in integrating musical structures into visual art, presenting sonata-inspired series, handwritten scores, and his own compositions playing in the galleries.

Marking a century since the birth of one of the most remarkable people Shimane prefecture has ever produced, the National Art Center, Tokyo celebrates world-renowned fashion designer Hanae Mori with this extensive retrospective.

A comprehensive look at Mori’s astonishing career in high fashion, which took her from one of the most rural corners of Japan to the hallowed halls of Parisian haute couture, the exhibition showcases its protagonist’s signature East-meets-West style and her dedication to traditional Japanese materials and techniques.

Some 400 items, from Mori’s iconic butterfly-adorned dresses to photographs and personal belongings, are used to illustrate the designer’s life, convictions and philosophy of the ‘vital type’ – a vibrant, dedicated and forward-looking woman, reflecting her own approach to life.

Did you even have a childhood if you didn’t turn the hole-punched pages of The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Originally published in 1969, this children’s classic will be celebrated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, marking 50 years since the book’s Japanese release (Japan was the first place the beloved caterpillar ever appeared in print).

Prepare to feast your eyes upon 180 objects – all bursting with bold bright colours, playful patterns and Eric Carle’s specially curated collages. Over 27 picture books will also feature, offering a deep dive into the ingenuity of Carle’s imagination. The late American author and illustrator was famed for his fresh take on storytelling; simple shapes are layered with textured hand-painted tissue paper, resulting in whimsical works that were deceptively clever and remain iconic to this day.

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) forged a singular path apart from the dominant movements of his time. While abstract expressionism, pop art and neo-Dada reshaped post-war American art, Wyeth turned inward, devoting his life to depicting the people and landscapes surrounding his homes in Pennsylvania and Maine. His meticulously rendered paintings, often executed in tempera and watercolour, transcend realism to reveal the quiet poetry of solitude, memory and introspection.

Marking the 100th anniversary of the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, ‘Boundaries or Windows’ is the first major retrospective of Wyeth’s work in Japan since the artist’s death. The exhibition explores one of his most persistent motifs: the boundary, embodied by windows, doors and thresholds that separate interior and exterior worlds, yet invite reflection on the spaces between life and death, self and nature, and perception and imagination.

Over ten works, including Winter Fields (1942, from the Whitney Museum of American Art), Cooling Shed (1953, Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Departure Party (1984, Philbrook Museum of Art), will be shown in Japan for the first time.

Ron Mueck has long been celebrated for redefining figurative sculpture through extraordinary craftsmanship and emotional acuity. After early work in film and advertising, the Australian-born, UK-based artist emerged on the contemporary art scene in the mid-1990s, gaining international attention with Pinocchio (1996) and Dead Dad (1996-97).

Over the decades, his meticulously crafted human figures, rendered at startlingly altered scales, have probed themes of vulnerability, solitude, resilience and the fragile complexity of existence. With a rare and limited oeuvre of about fifty works, each sculpture distills months or even years of observation and reflection, resulting in pieces that feel at once hyper-real and quietly enigmatic.

From April 29 to September 23, the Mori Art Museum hosts the artist’s first solo exhibition in Japan in eighteen years. Organised in collaboration with the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, the exhibition gathers eleven works tracing Mueck’s evolution, including six making their Japanese debut. Its monumental centrepiece is the Japan premiere of Mass (2016-17), an immersive installation of 100 giant skulls reconfigured to reflect the museum’s architecture. Other highlights include Angel (1997), Woman with Shopping (2013) and the iconic In Bed (2005), each inviting viewers into a deeply intimate emotional space.

When the boundless imagination of Pablo Picasso meets the vibrant creativity of Sir Paul Smith, fireworks follow. Picasso (1881–1973), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, revolutionised modern art with his radical innovations in form and colour. British designer Smith, noted for his playful approach to tailoring and his masterful sense of colour and pattern, brings his unique sensibility to the table, transforming the NACT’s galleries into a dialogue between art and fashion, and tradition and reinvention.

‘Adventure of Playful Spirits’ offers a fresh encounter with approximately 80 works from the Musée National Picasso-Paris. Following the success of the 2023 Paris exhibition ‘Picasso Celebration: The Collection in a New Light!’, this Japan edition invites visitors to rediscover the painter’s creative evolution from his early Portrait of a Man to the tender Paulo as Harlequin, through Smith’s imaginative spatial design.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is one of Japan’s most internationally acclaimed contemporary artists, whose practice spans photography, architecture and stage production. At the core of his work lies a profound engagement with analogue silver gelatin photography, a medium he has elevated through rigorous conceptual frameworks and extraordinary technical mastery, even as it faces obsolescence in the digital age.

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo now offers a major survey that traces the evolution of Sugimoto’s photographic practice from the late 1970s to the present. Featuring approximately 60 silver gelatin prints, the exhibition brings into focus a medium the artist recognises as endangered, while asking broader questions about truth, memory and time.

Structured into three chapters, the exhibition spans 13 series, from early works that established Sugimoto’s reputation to later bodies of work that probe abstraction, perception and the limits of representation. Newly unveiled pieces, including additions to the Diorama series, offer fresh insight into themes Sugimoto has pursued for more than half a century.

The exhibition’s title refers to a deeper meditation on what is disappearing from contemporary visual culture. As digital images become infinitely mutable, Sugimoto reasserts photography’s original power as a medium of evidence and presence. Through its breadth and philosophical depth, ‘Extinction’ is set to offer a rare opportunity to reflect on photography’s past, and its uncertain future, through one of its most rigorous practitioners.

From July 4 to August 26, Hikarie Hall in Shibuya invites you to reconsider the history of Japanese photography through the eyes of women artists. Presented in Japan in an expanded form following an acclaimed international tour, ‘I’m So Happy You Are Here’ brings together around 200 works by approximately 30 photographers spanning more than seven decades.

Through works ranging from post-war documentary photography to contemporary experiments with installation, collage, video and photobooks, the exhibition offers a vital counter-narrative to a photographic canon long dominated by male figures. It reveals how Japanese women photographers have consistently challenged social norms, explored identity and memory, and expanded the definition of the medium. Delicate observations of everyday life sit alongside incisive critiques of gender roles and bold formal innovation, creating a richly layered portrait of both personal and collective experience.

Featuring internationally celebrated figures such as Miyako Ishiuchi, Mao Ishikawa, Rinko Kawauchi, Tomoko Sawada and Lieko Shiga, alongside artists whose contributions have received less public recognition, the exhibition emphasises intergenerational dialogue and continuity. Curated by Mariko Takeuchi with Lesley A Martin and Pauline Vermare, the show invites audiences to rethink Japanese photographic history – and photo history at large – through a more inclusive, expansive lens.

Continuing its 100th anniversary celebrations, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum hosts an exceptional exhibition showcasing masterpieces borrowed from one of the world’s most iconic institutions. Founded in 1753, the British Museum houses the most comprehensive collection of Japanese art outside Japan, reflecting over a century and a half of fascination with Japanese aesthetics.

‘Edo in Focus’ brings together a carefully curated selection from the museum’s 40,000-piece collection, including folding screens, hanging scrolls and narrative handscrolls from the Edo period. You’ll also encounter celebrated ukiyo-e prints by eight masters, including Utamaro, Sharaku, Hokusai and Hiroshige, that capture the vibrancy of Edo culture.

Beyond the artworks themselves, the exhibition sheds light on the history of Japan-UK cross-cultural exchange and the figures who shaped it, such as the surgeon and early collector William Anderson.

From August, the Yokohama Museum of Art will unveil a dazzling exhibition dedicated to one of history’s most iconic queens. Known as the ultimate symbol of elegance and excess, Marie Antoinette (1755–1793) transformed the aesthetics of 18th-century France and continues to shape fashion, design and visual culture today.

Curated by London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and making its Japan debut in Yokohama, the exhibition traces how the young queen’s refined taste, from her ornate gowns and glittering jewels to her whimsical interiors at Versailles and the Petit Trianon, established a new mode of sophistication that bridged courtly grandeur and personal fantasy.

Through exquisite dresses, jewellery and furniture from her era, ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ explores the queen’s bold creativity and her role as a forerunner of modern self-expression. It also reveals how her image has been endlessly reinvented in art, cinema and haute couture, from rococo opulence to contemporary runways.

Minami Tada (1924–2014) was a quietly radical figure in post-war Japanese art whose practice unfolded across sculpture, relief, lighting and architectural space. Working at the intersection of art, design and emerging industrial technologies, Tada developed a distinctive visual language that embraced transparency, reflection and light – materials and phenomena closely tied to Japan’s rapid economic growth. As a pioneering female artist operating in a male-dominated field, her work anticipated many later conversations around spatial perception and the expanded field of sculpture.

From August 29 to December 6, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo presents the artist’s first solo exhibition in Tokyo in 35 years. This long-overdue retrospective traces the arc of Tada’s career, from early paintings to her most emblematic sculptural works, as well as large-scale pieces created for architectural settings. Drawing on industrial materials and contemporary technologies, her works explore how light interacts with form and space, producing effects that shift with the viewer’s movement.

The exhibition also includes archival materials that shed light on the artist’s process and intellectual context, situating her practice within broader developments in post-war Japanese art and design. At a moment when interest in overlooked modernist figures is growing both in Japan and internationally, ‘Tada Minami’ offers a timely reassessment of an artist whose work feels strikingly current. Elegant, experimental and forward-looking, the exhibition reintroduces Tada as a vital voice in the history of contemporary art.