Upcoming 2026 Exhibitions In The Netherlands Art Lovers Should Know About

Sure — Paris, Rome, and London tend to hog the headlines when it comes to museums. After all, The Louvre, the Vatican Museums and The British Museum are Europe's most visited, respectively. But art experts (and former art museum staffers, such as myself) will happily tell you, the Netherlands is the place to be for gripping, thought-provoking exhibitions. The year of 2026 is shaping up to be an exciting time in the small but mighty Northern European nation, with institutions across the country pulling out all the stops. I scoured the websites of my favorite museums in the Netherlands and consulted local tourism board updates to gather the crème de la crème of what's on and what's coming up. 

If you have a trip to Amsterdam planned, tag some of these sister cities onto your itinerary to make the most of the curatorial offerings. In the capital, the Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk, which display classics and contemporary arts, are keeping the standard high with shows that span the ages. The Hague's powerhouse art museums have shows that'll whet your appetite. The Dordrechts Museum just outside Rotterdam is a love letter to J.M.W. Turner this spring and summer, while the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem sees Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn go head to head. It's big names, big themes, and guaranteed excellent exhibitions sweeping the country.

A visit to the Rijksmuseum should top the list of any art lover heading to Amsterdam, a beautiful European capital that's delightfully eco-minded and an absolute treasure trove of museums. The vast, red-brick Rijksmuseum is a cathedral of culture. The largest art gallery in the Netherlands, its textile-lined walls display 8,000 works from their mindbogglingly vast collection that spans through the ages, from medieval times to modern times. The unmissable highlights of its permanent features include sublime masterpieces from Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Johannes Vermeer. And this year the Rijksmuseum will present two special exhibitions running from Feb. 6, 2026, to May 25, 2026 –Metamorphoses and FAKE!

Fans of the classics will be jazzed to check out the former, an exhibition inspired by Ancient Roman poet Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Drawing on tales of transformation, the show brings together themes of passion, desire, and trickery. More than 80 works will be on display, on loan from collections across the world, including pieces by artists like Caravaggio and Titian through to more modern pieces from artists including Bourgeois and Magritte, all cannily curated to show how ancient stories have shaped creative thinking across centuries.

Running at the same time is FAKE!, an exhibition that feels oh so timely but looks deep into the past. Image editing and AI-generated art may dominate current debates, but this show traces the history of altered images long before the digital age. Using over 50 photographs and prints from the museum's own collection spanning 1860 to 1940, it examines how and why images were manipulated.

The political capital of the Netherlands, the Hague (reported as one of the world's safest places to travel in 2026) has a standout exhibition coming up to put on your bucket list this year. The prestigious Mauritshuis – which is home to the world famous masterpiece "The Girl with The Pearl Earring," sees new arrival show BIRDS winging its way to town. 

It's a show that focuses on our feathered friends, on display from Feb. 12 to June 7, 2026, curated by much-loved British art historian and TV presenter Simon Schama. Set inside the 17th-century palace the Mauritshuis, the exhibition looks at how people view, admire, and control birds. 

Inspired by Schama's book "Foreign Bodies," the show places Carel Fabritius' "The Goldfinch" at its center and builds seven themes around birds as companions, symbols, and messengers. Paintings sit alongside film and a large projection of a starling murmuration, bringing movement and tension into a museum known for works by Vermeer and Rembrandt.

Just a 20-minute drive south from Rotterdam city center, The Dordrecht Museum, in the historical and ever-so-pretty city of Dordrecht, is one of the oldest art galleries in the country, having first opened to the public in 1842. Its hefty collection of Grand Master paintings might seem unexpected in such an under-the-radar destination, but the city was historically a wealthy trading hub, so patrons of the arts were commissioning the big names of Dutch painting left, right, and center. Consequently, the Dordrecht Museum's walls are graced with work that covers six centuries of local and national talent, as well as a couple of very famous Brits -– royal painter Thomas Gainsborough and the illustrious romantic painter J.M.W. Turner.

It's the latter who is taking center stage at the Dordrecht Museum this year –- the dazzling new exhibition "Water & Light" coincides with what would have been Turner's 250th birthday. Opening on Feb. 8, 2026, and running until June 14, 2026, the show will see many paintings by the titan of landscape painting displayed in the Netherlands for the first time ever. The keystone of the exhibition is Turner's painting "Dort or Dordrecht: The Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam Becalmed," which will be on loan from Yale Center for British Art -– a scene of the local docks painted by Turner after his visit to Holland in 1817. An additional, very exciting feature of the show is that the work of a contemporary Dutch artist, Nicky Assmann, will juxtapose and contrast with Turner's famous paintings -– Turner's figurative scenes of docks and the sea representing the "Water" element of the show's title, while Assmann's huge, colorful kaleidoscopic installations represent "Light." So be prepared to experience Turner's work in a way you've never seen before.

The capital is currently graced with a tribute to one of the Netherlands' most influential artists of the 21st century, Erwin Olaf — "Freedom." The show currently showing at the Stedelijk Museum until March 1, 2026, is the first retrospective since Olaf's unexpected death in 2023. 

Spanning his career, this exhibition brings together well-known photographic series, lesser-seen works, and his final unfinished video project. Olaf built an international reputation for carefully staged works that explore freedom, identity, sexuality, gender, and social equality.

Aptly shown at the Stedelijk, a cutting-edge arts institution long associated with experimental and socially engaged art, the exhibition places Olaf's mixed-media work in a broader cultural context with this focused look at an artist who shaped Dutch photography and used images to question who is seen, who is heard and who gets space.

Haarlem, just a 10-minute train ride away from Amsterdam, is a great city to tag on to any trip to the capital. Rick Steves recommends a visit to Haarlem as a "quintessentially Dutch gem." A key cultural spot in downtown Haarlem, the Frans Hals Museum, is home to the largest collection of paintings by its namesake Frans Hals, who lived and worked in Haarlem during the 17th century. As well as displaying a permanent collection of Dutch Master paintings by Frans Hals and other Haarlem artists such as Judith Leyster and landscape painter Jacob van Ruisdael –- the museum hosts strong short-term shows.

The current exhibition, which is open until March 1, 2026, is a moving retrospective of works by Coba Ritsema, an early 20th century Dutch painter from Haarlem who was –- wait for it -– a woman. The show of 35 paintings gives a very rare look at the role of the female artist in Europe at this time and how their expected positions in society limited their success.

If you're visiting later in the year, the museum will host a mega exhibition of work by two titans, Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn, which opens on November 6, 2026. Both painters lived within a short distance of each other, working at the same time, but no record confirms if they ever met. The exhibition plays with that mystery, placing works by Hals and Rembrandt side by side, focusing on their meaty group portraits. If you want to add to the experience, take the museum's city walking tour that traces Hals' life across Haarlem using a QR code for your phone.

It's always a joy to write about Europe's museums and galleries. Prior to embarking on my current career as a travel writer, I'd worked in London's museums and art galleries for eight years, attending conferences around Europe on museology and completing my postgrad in Museum Studies at London's esteemed University College London (UCL). As well as reading trusted sources such as "The Art Newspaper," the travel magazine "Wanderlust" and websites of excellent institutions in the Netherlands, I gathered together this list of what's on by scouring websites of museums in the Netherlands and included the best of 2026's shows that, in my opinion, should not be missed if you're heading to the Netherlands.

Amsterdam's powerhouse art museums Rijksmuseum and the Stedelijk span centuries. The Hague's glorious institutions are some of the finest in the world, and as a huge fan of Simon Schama (yes, I have a selfie with the man himself) I would head to the Maurithuis as a matter of urgency. The Dordrecht Museum just outside Rotterdam is an under-the-radar institution with top caliber shows, and their spotlight on J.M.W. Turner this spring and summer will not disappoint. But I'm most excited to head to Haarlem to see Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn go head to head. I hope you enjoy these shows as much as I plan to. And, if you're hungry after all of these art exhibits but want to visit another unique museum, head to the Dutch Cheese Museum in Alkmaar, which Rick Steves says is worth a trip.