There is an irony to trying to gauge the health of the art market, as so many in the industry are doing now, with New York’s marquee auctions, the inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi and the latest Art Collaboration Kyoto ahead this month. On the one hand, the trade is endlessly driven by emotion. On the other, few broad-based, rigorous read-outs can be found of how the participants actually feel about the state of play.
But one exception that proves this rule was published recently: the September edition of ArtTactic’s report on confidence in the contemporary art market. It adds quantitative heft to the sentiment that has emerged from more and more reporting since the spring. Although the market has not caught fire yet, the findings indicate that significant segments of it have certainly thawed. More importantly, a cross-section of experts with skin in the game expect the (modestly) good times to continue for the foreseeable future.
Confidence game
So what is the Contemporary Art Market Confidence Report? Twice a year, the study asks a cross-section of collectors, advisers, auction house professionals and other market participants whether they feel positive, negative or neutral about aspects of the art trade and the wider economy in the US and Europe. ArtTactic then converts the ratings into a single score, from zero (essentially, no confidence) to 100 (essentially, absolute confidence), for each question, offering a quantified, collective evaluation.
The main takeaway is encouraging but measured. The overall confidence indicator rose from 43 (slightly pessimistic) in March 2026 to 56 (slightly optimistic) in September. It marks only the third time the rating has reached positive territory in more than four years.
However, both previous moments of optimism were short-lived. After hitting a rowdy 75 in February 2022, the rating dropped to 42 that July. And the January 2025 score of 54 plunged to a frightening 30 six months later.
Anders Petterson, the founder and chief executive of ArtTactic, thinks the current bout of positivity is more durable than the last one. In January 2025, he points out, 39% of the survey respondents expected Donald Trump’s return to the White House to produce economic policies that would boost the art market. “Instead, he introduced tariffs and a significant amount of uncertainty, which pulled down confidence for the July 2025 reading,” Petterson says. The difference now is that the “confidence seems to be grounded in a real recovery in sales, rather than just a belief”.
Steady state
Still, the experts polled by ArtTactic are nearly as wary as they are optimistic. Asked whether sales would rise, fall or stay flat over the six months to come, 60% chose the last of these options.
That may not sound great, but it isn’t bad. Remember, a confidence indicator of 56 means most of the respondents believe things are good right now, even if only just. In this context, Petterson says that a flat outlook for the next half year “suggests stability rather than deterioration”.
Some parts of the market appear steadier than others, however. Confidence in the auction market—up to 78 from 69 in March, spurred on by results at the top end—far surpassed confidence in the primary market, which nudged up to 51 from 45. Although this is good news for the trade at large, the visibility of strong hammer results tends not to boost all sellers equally.
“Most of the recovery at auction is still concentrated in the above $1m segment, which is likely to benefit galleries/artists operating at the top end,” Petterson says. “What is less clear is whether, and how quickly, that confidence will make its way down to lower-price-point galleries and artists.”
Galleries may need to do more to help themselves. On the eve of Frieze week, the American adviser Adam Green said he has seen “a noticeable shift” among many of his clients. Offputtingly high and persistent prices for new works have pushed several collectors who often used to buy from primary market dealers toward auction houses and private resellers, both of which “can provide a better opportunity to acquire works closer to their true fair market value”.
Although Green believes market recovery is “broadening to some degree”, he also suspects its full reach will take until the end of the year to become clear. If you wanted to translate the ArtTactic report data into one simple sentiment, it would be hard to do it more efficiently than in that sentence. Now we know this sentiment really is shared by more than just a few industry figures that we journalists happened to ask for comment.
