The medalists for the Art Basel Awards have just been announced. The initiative is entering its sophomore year with a list of artists, patrons, thinkers, and creatives that is more ambitious and wide-reaching than ever. ‘This year’s cohort represents a field that is increasingly interconnected, cross-disciplinary, and global, reflecting how art is produced and experienced today,’ affirms the Global Director of Art Basel Fairs, Vincenzo de Bellis. The 2026 lineup is peppered with visionaries who not only respond to our fast-evolving world, but lead the way for tomorrow.

In the Established Artist category, those affirming Black history and upending a white male, Euro-American-centric art canon include Cuban-born, Tennessee-based Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons. Trained in post-revolutionary Cuba’s new art schools, her investigations of cultural heritage, migration, slavery, and women’s lives span mediums as diverse as large-format Polaroids, glass, painting, and ritualistic performances, infused with the practices of her birth country’s Santería religion. There is the cinematographer-turned-artist Arthur Jafa, whose videos exploring race relations in America are bold rallying calls, their compelling, poetic combination of original and found footage and music appealing to both heart and head.

The polymath Theaster Gates, meanwhile, is as well-known for his sculptural installations, which draw out the buried stories and significance of materials, be it in his ‘Afro-Mingei’ works or a scuffed sports-hall floor, as he is for his urban projects. ‘The future of art,’ Gates told Art Basel in response to a medalists’ questionnaire, ‘is the history of art.’ Having developed overlooked sites in Chicago’s South Side for creative use by the Black community, his upcoming undertakings include a public artwork at the city’s planned Barack Obama Presidential Center.

The list of 2026 medalists reflects an art world sharply attuned to cultural politics’ most pressing concerns. Fostering communal agency has long defined the participatory art of another Established medalist, the relational aesthetics figurehead Rirkrit Tiravanija. His DIY kitchens are a deceptively simple invitation to act that has grown ever more relevant since he and some friends first cooked up Pad Thai at Paula Cooper Gallery in 1990. Those who have picked up his baton include Precious Okoyomon, the Nigerian American artist, poet, and chef among six Emerging Artist medalists this year. Yet while Okoyomon has cooked with the Thai artist, she has most recently made her mark with installations mixing childhood’s comforters with disturbing gewgaws of cultural violence, like the cuddly toys and racist dolls that she suspended from the ceiling at the Kunsthaus Bregenz and this year’s Whitney Biennial. ‘I’m for chaos, mischief, and letting a lot of love in,’ she told Art Basel.

A number of artists in the Emerging category draw on cultural heritage and local identity, and in notably diverse ways. Farah Al Qasimi’s photography, for example, captures everyday Islamic life both in America, where she teaches, and her home country, the UAE. Set designer-turned-artist Aziza Kadyri, who works between London and Tashkent, explores her Uzbek roots and childhood memories of Moscow in textile-based theatrical installations. The ecologically focused sculptures of Paris-based Carla Gueye, conjuring hybrid mother goddess figures in lime and clay, draw on her Senegalese origins.

These younger artists’ thoughts on art’s future hold true for many on this year’s list. ‘I don’t think art fixes the large systemic issues, but it can reveal them and create space for people to imagine something different together,’ Kadyri told Art Basel. It is a sentiment echoed by Gueye: ‘What matters to me is how art can create spaces of connection between people. We are moving toward more collective practices, where authorship becomes more porous and listening as important as the act of creating.’

These globally connected outward-looking artists are matched by the international spread of the jury itself, from Hans Ulrich Obrist, Director of Serpentine in London, to Hoor Al-Qasimi, President and Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation. Following the tragic loss of jury member Koyo Kouoh, the late curator and pioneering force for art networks in Africa, the jury has also welcomed a new member this year: Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Chief Curator of Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and curator of the most recent São Paulo Biennial.

The Awards honor art’s one-offs too, like Established Artist nominee Apichatpong Weerasethakul, whose surreal, mysterious art films and video installations draw on multiple genres while flouting categorization. Another artist to create her own language is Barbara Kruger, a medalist in the Icon category, whose spiky combinations of word and image turn advertising’s appeal to individualism against itself.

Like all creative accolades, the Art Basel Awards are also a barometer, identifying those who best respond to – and often determine – the cultural weather. Its uniquely industry-wide remit means that it’s particularly well placed to do so. Not only are 15 artists recognized with medals across three separate categories, but three patrons, institutions, cross-disciplinary creators, allies, curators, and storytellers are also celebrated.

When it comes to shaping how art is seen and experienced, homage is paid to a host of innovators. Patron, a category that recognizes those whose support shape cultural discourse, includes Mercedes Vilardell, who works to increase museum collecting and visibility for African art with roles at Tate, Centre Pompidou, and the Fundación Reina Sofía. 

Curator medalists include Diana Campbell, who, in her work with the Samdani Art Foundation and Hartwig Art Foundation, has brought art from underrepresented regions into the spotlight. ‘We’re moving past the idea of the individual genius maker,’ she tells Art Basel, ‘into more expansive possibilities as artists collaborate with practitioners from other disciplines, communities, and the environment, bringing art closer to life.’

The institutions in this year’s list include pioneers of different kinds. Under the directorship of Hamza Walker, The Brick in Los Angeles has confronted lightning-rod issues, as with its recent ‘MONUMENTS’ exhibition examining the difficult history of Confederate-era statues toppled or decommissioned in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests. The Diriyah Biennale Foundation in Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has become a nexus for the region’s rapidly developing cultural scene.

A high proportion of this year’s medalists wear many hats, be it Media and Storyteller medalist Siddhartha Mitter, who, in addition to being a renowned critic, is helping to realize the late Koyo Kouoh’s vision for the Venice Biennale, or the Icon, Howardena Pindell, whose six-decade career as a painter was offset by years working as a curator at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Those acknowledged with medals for being a Cross Disciplinary Creator are star turns from other creative fields and scarcely need an introduction: the experimental music legend Laurie Anderson for instance, or Sumayya Vally, the young architect whose South African studio, Counterspace, is redefining urban design for Africa, hinged on African and Islamic culture, community-building, and ecology. According to Vally, art’s future is ‘in the places we’ve been told not to look,’ and she points out that, ‘there are an infinite number of artistic universes.’

For de Bellis, the Art Basel Awards 2026 mark a step change. ‘With the second edition, we begin to see the initiative take shape in practice – through new commissions, long-term support, and continued engagement with our growing medalist network,’ he says. ‘Our ambition is not only to recognize these practices, but to create the conditions for them to develop further.’

The 2026 Art Basel Awards medalists will be celebrated at an event at Basel’s historic town hall, the Rathaus, during Art Basel’s Swiss edition. A selection of medalists will headline a public, artist-led Conversations series, offering audiences direct access to some of the most influential voices shaping contemporary culture today, including Arthur Jafa, Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, Mercedes Vilardell, and Precious Okoyomon.

The awardees will be presented with the Art Basel Awards trophy, designed by Jacques Herzog in collaboration with Glassworks Matteo Gonet, at Art Basel Miami Beach in December.