What is Miami Art Week? Art Basel Miami Beach and the week around it, explained

"Art Basel" is how most people name the first week of December in Miami. Strictly, it is one fair: about 270 galleries in the Miami Beach Convention Center, selling to collectors for two private days and showing to everyone for three public ones. Miami Art Week is the name for everything else that happens because the fair is in town: the other fairs, the museums' biggest openings of the year, the collectors who open their warehouses, the gallery shows, the art on the beach and the parties after dark. The Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau lists the 2026 week from November 30 to December 6, with 21 fairs (CVB).

The week is less a program than a habit the city formed around the fair over 24 years, and the easiest way to understand it is in the order it grew: the fair, then the fairs around it, then the museums and collections, the galleries and the art outdoors. Each has its own guide; this one shows how they fit together, and ends with the week day by day.

The facts below come from each fair's and museum's own pages, checked on October 23, 2026. Hours change in fair week, so check again before you go.

The fair at the center: Art Basel Miami Beach

Art Basel Miami Beach is an art fair: galleries rent booths, bring the best work they can get, and sell it. The 2026 edition, the 24th, has 272 exhibitors from more than 40 countries, on a floor about 12% smaller than last year's, a change its director, Bridget Finn, calls "a deliberate choice" (Art Basel). The main Galleries sector holds the blue-chip dealers and Modern masters; the smaller sectors, Nova, Positions and Survey, are where newer artists and overlooked historical ones are shown; and Zero 10 is for digital art. What each one is for, and the booths worth finding, are in inside Art Basel Miami Beach 2026.

The fair has two kinds of days. The private days, Wednesday, December 2 and Thursday, December 3, are by invitation: First Choice cardholders from 11 am on Wednesday, Preview cardholders from 4 pm, and the Vernissage on Thursday from 4 to 7 pm (Art Basel). Those days are where most of the selling happens; how the VIP preview works explains who gets in and what a $1,250 pass buys. The public days, Friday, December 4 to Sunday, December 6, run from 11 am to 6 pm, with day tickets at $92 from noon and First Access at $105 from 11 am (Art Basel); everything else is in our tickets guide and dates and hours.

How it began

Art Basel was founded in Switzerland in 1970, and for three decades it had no other fair. Miami Beach courted it through the late 1990s: the collectors Norman and Irma Braman, who went to Basel every June, the developer Craig Robins, and Don and Mera Rubell, who had shown their collection in a Wynwood warehouse since 1993. Two things shaped the deal. The city required any fair at the convention center to fill 1,500 hotel rooms, and Art Miami, then held each January, had a contract barring another fair within 45 days of its dates, which pushed Art Basel into December (Art Basel).

The first edition was set for December 2001 and postponed after the September 11 attacks (e-flux). It opened a year later, in December 2002, with 160 galleries, about 30,000 visitors and 20 young galleries in orange shipping containers on the beach (e-flux). By 2025 it drew more than 80,000. This October the city cut the fair's rent to $500,000 to keep it at the convention center through 2031 (Miami Today). The whole story is in how Art Basel came to Miami Beach.

The fairs around it

Other fairs followed within a year, to catch the same visitors, and they are why the week starts on Tuesday. Most open on December 1, a day before Art Basel's private days. Four are worth planning around: NADA Miami, the dealers' own nonprofit fair for emerging galleries, at Ice Palace Studios Downtown (December 1 to 5); UNTITLED Art, chosen by curators rather than dealers, in a pavilion on the sand at Ocean Drive and 12th Street (December 2 to 6); Design Miami, the fair for collectible design, across the street from Art Basel (December 1 to 6); and Art Miami and CONTEXT, the oldest and biggest fair after Art Basel, on the bay at One Herald Plaza (December 1 to 6). Pinta, Prizm and Aqua serve particular collectors, and InScope, from the team behind SCOPE, is new.

Which matter, and why, is in Miami's art fairs in 2026; each fair also has its own page in our Art section.

The museums

Miami's museums save their biggest openings for the week, and they are the calmest places in the city while it lasts. PAMM, on the bay Downtown, has Picasso, Klee and Matisse from Berlin's Museum Berggruen and ten Basquiats; it is the only one of the big four open on Monday, November 30, and it is free on Thursday, December 3 after 5 pm. ICA Miami in the Design District is free every day it is open and opens five shows, led by a Carroll Dunham survey. The Bass, a short walk from the convention center, has Yuko Mohri's first US museum show. The Wolfsonian–FIU in South Beach collects design and propaganda from 1885 to 1945 and is free for everyone on Friday, December 4 from 6 to 9 pm. Hours, prices and the shows are in Miami museums to see during Art Basel.

The collectors' warehouses

Private collections are part of why Art Basel came, and visiting them is how many collectors still start the week. The Rubell Museum in Allapattah is the biggest, with two Yayoi Kusama installations and late hours on Friday and Saturday; the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Wynwood reopens for the season on November 4, with kinetic sculpture by Yuko Mohri; and El Espacio 23, the collection of Jorge M. Pérez, is free. Older guides still list the de la Cruz Collection, which closed in 2024. All three, and MOCA North Miami, are in Miami's private collections during Art Week.

The galleries

Wynwood was the first art district. The Rubells and Margulies opened their warehouses there in the 1990s, galleries followed in the 2000s, and in 2009 the Wynwood Walls turned the outside walls of a block of warehouses into an open-air museum of murals (Wynwood Walls). This year the Walls are showing ten murals made for the video game Grand Theft Auto VI, and since October Miami-Dade residents get in free. The gallery scene has since spread north to Little River and Little Haiti, where Nina Johnson (which began in Wynwood as Gallery Diet), Locust Projects, Dimensions Variable and Central Fine now show, and west to Allapattah, beside the Rubell. Several Miami galleries, Nina Johnson and Fredric Snitzer among them, also show at Art Basel this year. Start with Wynwood during Art Basel.

Art in the open

Some of the best art of the week costs nothing. In Collins Park, beside The Bass, Public Art Fund's Between Tides sets out six playable ping-pong tables made by artists, from November 29 to December 6 (The Bass). Art Basel and the Turrell Art Foundation will unveil a new outdoor work by James Turrell, free; the site had not been announced when we checked. Behind the Faena Hotel, Faena Art puts Christopher Joshua Benton's A Lore Supreme, a mirrored sphere about 28 feet tall, on the sand from December 1 to 6 (The Art Newspaper). And the City of Miami Beach's No Vacancy program puts work by 12 artists in 12 hotels from November 12 to December 19 (City of Miami Beach).

Where it all happens

Miami Beach is an island, and the week happens on both sides of the bay. On Miami Beach: Art Basel, Design Miami, UNTITLED, InScope, The Bass, the Wolfsonian and Faena. On the mainland: NADA, Art Miami and CONTEXT, and PAMM Downtown; ICA and the galleries of the Design District; the Rubell, El Espacio 23 and the galleries of Allapattah; the Margulies and the Walls in Wynwood; and the galleries of Little River further north.

Crossing is the hardest part of the week. The free Miami Beach trolley stays on the island, and a free water taxi crosses the bay; the options are on our getting around page. Group what you see by side of the bay, and stay close to where you will spend most of your time. The weather is on your side: the normal high on Miami Beach in fair week is 77°F (National Weather Service).

The week, day by day

How to plan it

Most people try to do too much. A few rules that work:

• Fairs early, museums later. Most fairs open on Tuesday, and three of the four big museums are closed on Monday and Tuesday. Use the start of the week for NADA, Art Miami and the beach fairs, and Wednesday onward for museums and collections.
• Art Basel on a public day, early. Unless you are buying, a First Access ticket on Friday at 11 am gives you the fair at its quietest. Give it half a day.
• One side of the bay a day. Pair Art Basel with Design Miami, The Bass and Collins Park; pair NADA with Art Miami and PAMM; pair the Rubell, El Espacio 23 and the Margulies in one afternoon.
• Evenings are for openings. Gallery openings and parties are mostly free with an RSVP; ask early, and book your ride back. The rest of the free list is in the questions below.