Last Thursday, in a basement at No. 9 Cork Street in Mayfair, mega-dealer Thaddaeus Ropac was on hand to launch the 2026 edition of London Gallery Weekend (LGW). The occasion was a panel discussion with Pale Horse Gallery cofounder Emma Hodgson and Kate MacGarry, who runs an eponymous space in Shoreditch. The on-the-nose title: “How is London’s contemporary commercial gallery scene thriving in times of flux?”
The flux is real. Over the weekend, news that Pace Gallery—which operates eight locations worldwide—had cut 50 staff members and dropped 50 artists was ringing in everyone’s ears. Today, the Financial Times reported that the mega-gallery is also planning to downsize its London operation.
A decade on from the Brexit vote, and two years since the Labour Party retook power under Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the UK economy remains shaky. New tax rules instituted last year have led many of the ultra-wealthy to leave London; many top collectors appear to have chosen Art Basel Paris over recent editions of Frieze London; and, to top it off, stalwart gallery Stephen Friedman closed and entered insolvency proceedings earlier this year. These headlines, perhaps unfairly, have dominated recent discourse about the city’s art scene.
“London needs some lobbying,” Ropac said at Thursday’s panel, whose subterranean setting gave the discussion the feel of a resistance movement gathering. “I’m always surprised by how persistent the narrative of London’s decline remains. It seems to be a story people enjoy repeating, often regardless of the facts.”
When one journalist mentioned that Pace CEO Marc Glimcher said last week that the “current gallery model isn’t only broken, it’s unfixable,” Ropac raised his eyebrows and smiled wryly. He opened his sixth international gallery in Milan at the end of last year—there was no need to ask if he disagreed with Glimcher. Hauser & Wirth’s new, 15,000-square-foot flagship gallery in Mayfair, currently under construction, also appears to counter Glimcher’s stance.
Sarah Rustin, Ropac’s global senior director, and Jeremy Epstein, a director at London’s Edel Assanti gallery, have taken up the task of lobbying for London. The pair launched LGW in 2021, and this year signed up 120 galleries across the city, including nine first-timers and several with new or expanded spaces. There were also more than 80 free public events, from talks and workshops to book signings and parties. The galleries were connected through a series of routes led by curators and notable arts figures, including Lauren Cuthbertson, a principal dancer with London’s Royal Ballet, and memoirist Alice Hattrick. Each year, LGW strives to distill the city’s sprawling gallery scene into easily traversable sections, and in turn increase footfall outside of Mayfair, where the majority of contemporary spaces are located. “We’re encouraging people to visit parts of the city they might not otherwise explore,” Epstein said.
“LGW has been an incredible opportunity to connect with other curators in London, nationally and internationally,” one of the visiting curators, Gaynor Seville, who is creative director at the Whitaker Museum in Lancashire, told ARTnews. “Getting to meet so many peers, visit so many galleries, and meet such a varied mix of artists over a short time period is rare and valuable.”
To describe London’s gallery scene as “thriving,” as the panel’s title suggested, seems a stretch. (Is the gallery scene booming anywhere right now?) As Hodgson, who only launched Pale Horse Gallery last year, attested, soaring business rates, rent, and energy bills are serious obstacles—not to mention collectors tightening their purse strings on account of geopolitical and economic uncertainty. One solution, she told the audience, was for gallerists to be braver in their choice of artists and to raise the quality of programming and curation. That’s not a surefire path to success, however. “The market has softened and collectors are taking fewer risks,” Hodgson said. “For emerging galleries and the artists they represent, the impact has been particularly acute.”
As seen at marquee sales in New York and London over the past few months, collectors are increasingly drawn to safer, more household names. So-called “wet paint” artists are out of fashion at auction.
Rustin and Epstein—who recently opened an intimate second space in London for Edel Assanti—were under no illusions. “We don’t want to sugarcoat anything,” Rustin told me. “We don’t shy away from discussing the challenges; there are headwinds. A core aim of LGW is to draw deserved closer attention to the evolving make-up of the very diverse gallery sector across the city.”
The spirit of cooperation among London’s galleries is harder to quantify, but there are signs of a growing support network. In some gallery districts outside the city center, groups of dealers reportedly pooled resources to cover the participation costs for a single gallery, allowing the wider area to benefit from the increased footfall generated by the weekend. This year’s sign-up fee started at £550 ($737), rising to £3,630 ($4,862) for galleries with more than 15 staff members. Larger galleries were also encouraged to make anonymous contributions to a central fund that helped support LGW’s running costs and subsidize participation across the network.
Hainsworth added that he didn’t meet many new collectors, noting that “the idea that LGW functions like a city-wide art fair isn’t quite correct.” The best opportunities for sales through LGW, he said, are the acquisition opportunities from the Government Art Collection and the Arts Council.
Hector Vidal, the founder of Untitled Gallery who is building what he calls “a new operating system for the art world” through a platform called Art Circles, told me he thinks LGW does actually “function like an art fair.” “LGW is wall-to-wall, shoulder-to-shoulder, everyone competing for the same collectors and the same press,” he said. “The galleries that win aren’t necessarily selling the most during the weekend—they’re winning brand equity. LGW brings the community together, but the question of whether it converts into serious sales is still open.”
Timothy Taylor, who has run his eponymous gallery in Mayfair for the past three decades and recently closed his New York Space, told me LGW “has become a defining moment in London.” As part of the event, he opened a show by France-based Jiab Prachakul.