Once again, Madrid will become the major meeting point for contemporary art with the celebration of Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend from 11 to 14 September 2025. Its 16th edition, which is particularly significant as it coincides with the 25th anniversary of Arte Madrid, will mark the start of the art season with the participation of the 55 galleries that form part of the Madrid Art Galleries Association.
For sixteen years, Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend – which attracted more than 24,000 visitors in its last edition – has grown exponentially to become an unmissable event showcasing the work of established and emerging national and international galleries.
This year’s edition will feature 9 group exhibitions and 46 solo exhibitions by 95 leading national and international artists such as Joan Miró, Esther Ferrer, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Juan Manuel Castro Prieto, Manuel Rivera, Martín Chirino, Aurèlia Muñoz, Patricia Gadea, Daniel Canogar and Cristina Lucas, as well as other mid-career and emerging artists such as Paula Anta, Los Bravú, Irene Molina and José Luis Valverde. With 58% of the artists being international, figures such as Julie Mehretu, Cy Twombly, Miriam Bäckström and Chant Avedissian will also be present.
In addition to the joint opening of the galleries, Apertura is rounded off with a programme of free activities and extended opening hours throughout the event: Thursday from 1:30 pm to 10 pm, Friday and Saturday from 11 am to 8 pm, and Sunday from 11 am to 2 pm.
Established as a benchmark in the city’s artistic and cultural calendar, Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend will put contemporary art centre stage at different locations throughout the city for four days, thanks to a programme of exhibitions that seeks to bring art closer to the general public and strengthen dialogue with other cultural disciplines.
‘Madrid beats to the rhythm of an incomparable creative energy. From painting to performance, digital art and installations, in Madrid the traditional meets the contemporary, the classic meets the experimental, giving rise to a unique context in which artists can explore, rethink the world and propose new possible futures,’ says the association’s board of directors.
Art in every corner of the city
A wide range of activities will take place in different neighbourhoods of the capital during Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend, which will add new features to the programme in different galleries, such as the Apertura Kids programme, a tour of the exhibitions aimed at children aged 8 to 14, and an open-air exhibition in the garden of the Lázaro Galdiano Museum, where 14 sculptures by artists represented by the association’s galleries will be on display.
Another highlight is the ARCO GalleryWalks programme, organised in collaboration with the ARCO Foundation, which invites visitors to discover the contemporary art ecosystem in an intimate and participatory way with new guided tours of the galleries. The Pablo Palazuelo Foundation will also offer guided tours of the Bankinter headquarters and the Open-Air Sculpture Museum on Paseo de la Castellana.
On the other hand, following last year’s excellent reception, the Gallery Notebook is back, an initiative in collaboration with the Community of Madrid and ARCO that invites visitors to explore the work of galleries in depth. This limited edition notebook aims to encourage knowledge of the city’s gallery scene, accompanying visitors on their tour and offering the chance to participate in a draw for a ticket to ARCOmadrid 2026.
To help the public organise their route and enjoy the artistic offerings, Arte Madrid has its own app—free and available all year round on Google Play and the App Store—where you can consult the full programme and information about the event and related activities. To complete its digital presence, Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend once again has its own event on Exhibify, a tool developed by ITGallery that is the first free online art sales portal for galleries.
In addition to the gallery exhibitions, there is a programme of activities designed to promote contemporary art in other spaces around the city. This year, La Casa Encendida joins the tour, an institution that will inaugurate Oro tejido con paja (Gold Woven with Straw) on 10 September. The exhibition, which is actually two exhibitions, brings together the work of Elena Mendizabal and Joan Rom, two artists whose practice is mainly sculptural, very active in their respective contexts, the Basque Country and Catalonia, in the 1980s and 1990s. Each exhibition brings together a selection of their most recent works, some of which are unpublished, in dialogue with a piece from an earlier period.
Strengthening ties with Latin America
This year, Apertura will place special emphasis on strengthening ties with Latin America and positioning Spain as a gateway for Latin American art to Europe. To this end, leading professionals, agents and institutions will be in attendance to gain first-hand knowledge of our art scene and facilitate connections between institutions and contexts in an effort to pave the way for the artists in our galleries. In this way, the city becomes the epicentre of art through the diverse exhibition programme offered by the event.
The promotion and revitalisation of the contemporary Spanish art scene is one of the values of Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend, which joins the gallery weekends in Barcelona and Valencia through the consecutive celebration of the three events in the same month: Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend, from 11 to 14 September; Barcelona Gallery Weekend, from 18 to 21 September; and Abierto Valencia, from 25 September to 3 October. This is a joint effort to strengthen the recognition and visibility of Spanish contemporary art nationally and internationally and to highlight the role of galleries as a point of connection and cultural exchange capable of transcending borders and offering a global vision of the contemporary art scene.
In short, Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend is not just an annual event: it is the gateway to a city where art is present all year round, and whose galleries are always ready to welcome anyone who wants to visit them. ‘Here, art is not just a form of expression, but a living language that connects the city with the world, generating the critical thinking that mobilises our society,’ says the board.
Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend is supported, collaborated with and sponsored by private companies as well as the Ministry of Culture and Sport, the Community of Madrid, Madrid City Council, Fundación ARCO, ARCOmadrid, Alhambra, Museo Lázaro Galdiano, La Casa Encendida, Fundación Pablo Palazuelo, Arte al límite, Arte informado, Arte en Diálogo, Umbigo, Seaya, Exhibify, IT Gallery, Options and Bodegas LAN.
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