Van Gogh shows in 2026: America, Japan and the Netherlands

Van Gogh’s Sunflowers: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow at the Philadelphia Art Museum (6 June-11 October) will be top of the bill of exhibitions on the artist in 2026. The Arles Sunflower paintings are very rarely lent, but London’s National Gallery is to loan its version with a yellow background, which will be shown with Philadelphia’s picture with a turquoise background. A few weeks ago we broke the news of this blockbuster show.

Meanwhile, Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum will be presenting an exhibition devoted to yellow pigment. Yellow: Beyond Van Gogh’s Colour (13 February-17 May) will show the work of 15 artists, but of course it will revolve around the Sunflowers (with ten other Van Goghs). The Amsterdam museum has a slightly later version (January 1889) of the London original.

The other great Van Gogh collection is also in the Netherlands, at the Kröller-Müller Museum, set in a national park in the east of the country. It often loans a substantial group of its Van Goghs to East Asian museums, and many are now in Japan (see below). Usually the Kröller-Müller shows around 35 Van Gogh paintings in its own museum, but later this year it will present all its 88 pictures, for the first time since 1984. Van Gogh, All Our Paintings runs from 15 September to 3 January 2027.

At another Dutch venue, the Noordbrabants Museum in Den Bosch will be showing works by the city’s major 20th-century artist, Jan Sluijters, who was strongly influenced by Van Gogh. Jan and Vincent: About Light runs from 18 October to 21 February 2027.

Visitors in Japan will also be well-served by Van Gogh exhibitions, since both the Kröller-Müller Museum and the Van Gogh Museum are currently touring groups of works to Japanese museums. The Van Gogh Museum’s paintings have just arrived at their final exhibition stop, Nagoya’s Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art (until 23 March 2026), in the exhibition Van Gogh’s Home: The Van Gogh Museum.

The Kröller-Müller’s The Grand Van Gogh Exhibition is now at its opening venue, Kobe City Museum (until 1 February). It will then tour to the Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art (21 February-10 May) and Tokyo’s Ueno Royal Museum (29 May-12 August).

Meanwhile two modest exhibitions in Europe are both in historic buildings linked to the artist. The Van Gogh House in Zundert, the artist’s birthplace, is marking the 140th anniversary of the artist’s brief stay in nearby Antwerp. It is showing contemporary works inspired by the master (but no original Van Goghs), in Van Gogh in Antwerp (until 1 March).

At the Maison du Dr Gachet in Auvers-sur-Oise, the house of the doctor who cared for Van Gogh in his last weeks, will be exhibiting paintings by Dr Paul Gachet and his son. The pair signed their artworks with the pseudonym Van Ryssel. Paul and Louis van Ryssel: Forgotten Masterpieces (working title) will run from 18 April to 31 July. The pictures are all on loan from a French private collector. Also in Auvers, the Maison de Van Gogh (the inn where the artist stayed) will reopen to visitors for the season on 4 March.

The Foundation Vincent Gogh Arles is presenting an exhibition inspired by the artist’s letters, with contemporary works. Entitled To Vincent: A Winter’s Tale, it runs until 26 April and includes two Van Gogh paintings: Head of a Woman (December 1885) and Sunflowers gone to Seed (August-September 1887).

A British angle

And a final note about 2026. It marks the 150th anniversary of Van Gogh’s two brief stays in England, in the village of Isleworth in west London and the port of Ramsgate in Kent. Then aged 23, he was working as a junior teacher in small private schools. Soon after his arrival in Ramsgate Vincent wrote to his brother Theo that “giving the lessons isn’t so difficult, but it’ll be more difficult to make the boys learn them”. In his free time, he occasionally made little sketches.

Van Gogh found teaching challenging, soon feeling that his talents lay elsewhere. At Christmas 1876 he returned to the Netherlands, never to return to England.