The Fourth Plinth changes hands on 10 September

Trafalgar Square has three permanent statues and one argument. The argument moves on again this month.

The commission

Tschabalala Self's Lady in Blue is unveiled on the Fourth Plinth on 10 September 2026 and remains until summer 2028.

Nearly two years is the interesting number

Most public art in London is temporary in the sense of a season. The Fourth Plinth works on a scale of roughly two years, which is long enough for a work to stop being news and become part of the walk to Charing Cross.

That transition is the whole point of the commission and the part nobody photographs. A sculpture is judged in its first week by people who came to see it and in its second year by people who did not. Very few survive the second audience.

Why the plinth was empty in the first place

It was built in 1841 for an equestrian statue that was never funded. London spent more than a century and a half failing to agree on what should stand there, then solved the problem by deciding nothing permanent ever would.

It is difficult to think of a better solution to a disagreement about national memory than a rota.