Eleven artists are installing work in Regent's Park for free

The most expensive week in the London art calendar has one part that costs nothing.

Frieze Sculpture 2026 dates

Frieze Sculpture runs from 16 September to 1 November 2026 in the English Gardens of Regent's Park. Eleven artists are showing, on the theme of hybridity. It is free, and it opens more than two weeks before the fair itself.

Six weeks is a long time for outdoor sculpture

It runs from mid-September to the beginning of November, which in this city means the work will be seen in three quite different conditions: late summer, the two good weeks of autumn colour, and the first genuinely dark afternoons.

Outdoor sculpture is rarely designed for that range. A piece that reads well against green in September can look abandoned against wet bare branches in November, and the ones that survive both are usually the ones that were made with weather in mind rather than with a gallery in mind.

Hybridity, in a park

The theme is doing more work than a theme usually does here. The English Gardens are themselves a hybrid — a designed landscape pretending to be a natural one, in the middle of a city, laid out by an architect. Putting work about mixed categories into a place that is itself a category error is a genuinely good curatorial joke.

The practical point

No ticket, no timed slot, no bag search. During Frieze week the park is the only part of the London art calendar you can walk into on the way to something else.