2025 has been a year in which an already interconnected cultural landscape has only grown more so in nature, with the points at which the worlds of art, film, architecture, sport and pop culture meet multiplying. We’ve seen Hollywood-style awards ceremonies find a footing in the art world, major brand sponsorships of niche tennis tournaments and films produced by heritage brands up for Oscars.
Looking to the year ahead, the cross-pollination of cultural disciplines is a trend that is only set to continue, bringing with it a bounty of moments and events for luxury brands to hot-stamp their identities across. Though opportunities may be plentiful, the expectations for brands to demonstrate meaningful connections to the worlds and communities with which they seek to engage — or at least clear intentions to forge them — have never been higher.
In today’s cultural strategy playbook, that means looking beyond the first degree — thinking beyond the global-tier marquee events and adopting a more localized approach, while meeting audiences where they are, on their own terms.
Here, we offer you a run-through of some of the highlights of 2026’s global cultural calendar.
Art fair expansions
As Kabir Jhala, art market editor at The Art Newspaper, aptly puts it: “We are well past the stage where the comingling of art and fashion causes clutched pearls,” a fact that was insistently proven over the past year at some of the art world’s tentpole moments. In London, both Frieze London and Frieze Masters played host to newly minted partnerships with jewelry giants Tiffany and De Beers, while in Paris, Louis Vuitton deepened its collaboration with Art Basel, using the recent Paris edition as a launch platform for its latest Artycapucines collection of limited-edition handbags, created in collaboration with Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.
The latter fair, in particular, has become a fertile ground for brand partnerships, and will return to the Grand Palais in October under the fresh directorship of Karim Crippa, the fair’s former communications director. Now, regarded as an anchor point of the city’s already brimming cultural calendar after just four editions (two of which have taken place in the grand Beaux-Arts monument), “there’s a sense that the fair has come into its own remarkably quickly, developing a distinctly Parisian identity: open to the world, playful, elegant, interdisciplinary — and a bit irreverent,” Crippa says. He notes how the city’s “rich history of artistic experimentation, intellectual tradition, and the unique interplay of art, heritage, literature, fashion, gastronomy and design, has come to inform and shape the unique identity of Art Basel Paris”.
Its location has also naturally positioned it as a key broker of relationships between the worlds of contemporary art and luxury. While this may not be by any means new, Crippa notes that the landscape “is evolving rapidly”. “Over the past 10 years, leading houses and designers have given more visibility to the artists they are inspired by or collaborate with — and I believe it’s been for the better, as it’s also dissolved some barriers between disciplines that were largely artificial to begin with,” he says. “These collaborations will only grow richer over the coming years through new partnerships, commissions and forms of cultural patronage. Paris sits at the global epicenter of this convergence, providing a uniquely dynamic context for the fair to operate in.”
Everything you need to know about the art fair’s latest edition under the nave of the Grand Palais.
While Art Basel Paris may have emerged as a key node in the global art fair ecosystem, there’s one region in particular that warrants close observation over the year ahead. “All eyes focus on the Gulf next year, thanks to the inaugural Art Basel Qatar and Frieze Abu Dhabi,” Jhala says. The world’s biggest art fair brands will set up shop in the region in February and November, respectively, “hoping to convert its growing wealth into art collectors and deepen ties with its impressive and fast-growing institutional infrastructure”.
“The region sits at the intersection of three powerful dynamics,” says Vincenzo de Bellis, Art Basel chief artistic officer and global director of fairs, noting the emergence of a culturally plugged-in audience among the region’s younger generations, noteworthy cultural investment in museums and festivals, and a steadily growing collector base. “The Gulf has one of the fastest-growing concentrations of high-net-worth individuals worldwide, with strong traditions of private collecting and increasing international visibility,” he says, noting the appeal of “the convergence of Qatar’s cultural ambition, the region’s expanding high-value audience and a rapidly expanding market. The Middle East continues to outperform global luxury growth, and its consumers are sophisticated, design-driven and deeply engaged with culture.”
“Frieze Abu Dhabi represents a moment of both continuity and evolution within our global network,” says Frieze executive director Kristell Chadé. “By bringing Frieze’s international outlook and audience with the cultural strength and institutional leadership that define Abu Dhabi, this new fair will create a vital meeting point for the region and our community of galleries, collectors and institutions. The UAE has become one of the most dynamic and engaged centers for the arts, shaped by long-term cultural investment and a rapidly maturing arts ecosystem,” as attested by the presence of world-beating museums like the Louvre and the Guggenheim, the latter of which will open its doors at the start year.
Though the presence of luxury brands in the region is longstanding and profound in nature, the arrival of two of the art world’s most esteemed brands offers natural calendar highlights for more culturally skewed activations, similar to those that take place within and parallel to the fairs’ marquee events elsewhere in the world. “We can help brands access this exciting young, international and culturally literate audience — and situate them within a region whose creative output is increasingly shaping global conversations,” de Bellis says. “What brands find compelling is the alignment: here, culture drives lifestyle — not the other way around.”
Beyond the big fairs
Of course, there are other developments in the art world to take note of beyond the expansion of its two big fairs. Indeed, this expansion in itself speaks to a growing trend toward localization, as is underscored by the increased eminence of fairs such as Art SG in Singapore and Zona Maco in Mexico City, both of which will take place in the early months of 2026 and cater directly to booming collector bases in South East Asia and Latin America, respectively.
There are also several biennials to mark on the agenda, including the most important of them all. “The Venice Biennale remains a branding mecca for major fashion and luxury houses,” Jhala says, with this year’s iteration expected to be a particularly noteworthy edition. Taking place between May and November, the world-famous exhibition will be executed by the close team of the ubiquitously respected curator Koyo Kouoh, who suddenly passed in May 2025. The former museum director’s ubiquity in the art world, not to mention that she will have been the first African woman to curate what is widely regarded as the art world’s most prestigious event, will make this edition of the Biennale one worth noting.
Other important contemporary art biennials will open in September in Gwangju, South Korea, under the curatorship of prolific Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen; in October in Thailand, with the Bangkok Biennale helping to consolidate the Thai capital’s growing reputation as a rising global contemporary art hub; and in Lagos, Nigeria, offering a focal point for its booming arts infrastructure, and a no-brainer of a context for luxury players keen to stage activations in a largely untapped market.
Back in Venice, there’s the Biennale Danza, a major dance festival that will be overseen by British dancer and choreographer Wayne McGregor during the summer months. While dance, in recent history at least, has been an artistic medium that hasn’t benefited from brand patronage to the same degree as, say, contemporary art, recent major programs and sponsorships from the likes of Chanel and Van Cleef Arpels have cast it in the spotlight, making it a creative discipline to keep front of mind for luxury sponsors in 2026.
The era of fash-tainment
As ever, entertainment will naturally remain a key arena for luxury players over the year to come, with 2025’s circuit of awards and film festivals set to be one of the most watched in recent memory from a fashion perspective. That’s because it’s there that we’ll see a plethora of fashion houses’ new talent line-ups — selected by the new cast of creative directors — take shape. With the likes of 070 Shake and A$AP Rocky recently announced as global ambassadors at Dior and Chanel, respectively — and with the couture debuts of both brand’s freshly appointed head designers to come in January — 2026 is already shaping up to be a year where the red carpet’s status as a de facto runway will be consolidated.
Beyond film festivals in Toronto, Venice and Berlin; your Emmys, Oscars and Golden Globes, events worth pencilling in include the AFRIMA Awards, a celebration of contemporary Africa music, in Lagos on January 7. There will also be a strong presence of African talent at the Grammys, taking place in Los Angeles on February 1, with Burna Boy, Wizkid, Tyla and Ayra Starr all nominated in this year’s Best African Music Performance category. In June, Tokyo will host the sophomore edition of Music Awards Japan, a pan-Asian awards ceremony that debuted last year in Kyoto, while the MAMA Awards, K-Pop’s most significant gong, and the Latin Grammys, dedicated to music hailing from Latin America, are both slated for the end of the year.
Of course, awards ceremonies and film festivals aren’t the only red carpets worth aligning with. The boom in so-called “method dressing” has made film press tours lucrative opportunities for brands, with the visibility around major releases often reaching a point of hysteria — just look at the buzz around Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande and Jonathan Bailey’s looks on the Wicked: For Good press tour, with the film’s media campaign delivering an estimated $330 million in earned media value (EMV), or around Alexander Skarsgård’s kink-suffused outfits on the ongoing Pillion tour. Forthcoming film releases worth highlighting include Wuthering Heights, the Emerald Fennell-directed period drama starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, which releases on Valentine’s Day; The Devil Wears Prada 2, which reunites the original cast of the fashion industry cult classic — Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci all return — and already set the internet ablaze when Meryl Streep took a front row seat at the Spring/Summer 2026 Dolce Gabbana show in character as Miranda Priestly; Dune 3, the conclusion of the Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya-starring sci-fi epic trilogy; and The Moment, A24’s Aidan Zamiri-directed mockumentary, marking Charli XCX’s big-screen debut.
While the film essentially documents a spoofed version of the Brat star’s life on the road, there are a number of IRL musical tours worth keeping on your radar. The latter half of 2025 brought with it a litany of big music releases that look primed to carry over into the new year. Among them were the onstage return of Robyn, by way of a concert supported by Spotify and Acne Studios in Los Angeles, celebrating the release of the Swedish artist’s first single in seven years; and the release of immediately viral albums by the likes of Rosalía, Lily Allen and Olivia Dean, all of whom have announced major tours set to unfold across 2026. As was proven by Charli over the course of Brat’s reign — and by artists like Addison Rae, who became something of a poster girl for Dario Vitale’s short-lived but applauded tenure at Versace, or Tate McRae, who announced Parisian designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin as her 360-degree creative director — the potential for brand alignment here is exponential when savvily executed.
Sports
As was widely predicted from the outset, 2025 was a year in which luxury’s relationship to the sporting world grew more nuanced and profound, whether through the inking of lucrative ambassadorships and dressing deals, partnerships between sporting giants and independent design talents, or the sponsorships of sporting events and tournaments.
This year, though, promises to be something of a blockbuster year for sport — and for partnerships within the sporting world — on account of a litany of major happenings. Over a fortnight in February, the Winter Olympics will unfold between Milan and the Italian alpine resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo — the star-making potential of the games aside, there’s also the simple fact that both locations are luxury retail hubs (Milan, in particular). Whether they’re official partners of the games, brands would be remiss not to entice the influx of spending power by staging parallel activations and shopping experiences.
July will bring the Commonwealth Games, one of the world’s most significant multi-sport tournaments, to Glasgow, and with it “a chance to check on certain athletes’ progress and discover new names to know” in the run up to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, says Felicia Pennant, founder of Season, a zine dedicated to the confluence of luxury and sport. On the soccer front, all eyes are on the US, which — in partnership with Canada and Mexico — will host the 2026 Fifa World Cup between June 11 and July 19, billed as the largest edition of the tournament to date.
Granted, the sociopolitical backdrop against which the games will unfold will naturally become a topic of conversation in the run up to the tournament — particularly in light of Trump’s receipt of the much-questioned inaugural ‘Fifa Peace Prize’ at an initial draw for the tournament in Washington DC “Much like Qatar [2022] and Russia [2018], there are polarizing feelings about how it’s going to play out under the Trump presidency — there are many storylines and potential plot twists in store,” Pennant notes.
Irrespective of politics, potential of the American market for luxury players — and the desire to activate it — is irrefutable, and the number of headline-making moments in the waiting will no doubt make this tournament a must-watch, spurring on ticket sales and viewership figures. “England have everything required to finally win it again — star players, a world-class coach, sheer self-belief — but will they get over the line?” Pennant says. “Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi in action, possibly for the last time on the world’s biggest stage; and Curaçao is the smallest nation to ever qualify. How this tournament is activated culturally on the ground and documented in the media in this political and social climate will shape the zeitgeist.”
Beyond the world’s biggest soccer moment, another tournament that bears highlighting is the African Cup of Nations, the final of which will take place on January 18 in Rabat, Morocco. “Not all of Africa’s football superpowers have qualified for the World Cup,” Pennant says, noting Nigeria as an example. “So these teams can make amends by performing well in their continental competition — and be cheered on at home and by diasporic communities across the world.” The most recent edition drew almost two billion viewers over its run, with this record widely expected to be shattered during the forthcoming edition.
Two sports that Pennant foresees developing in profitability are tennis and Formula One, with the Grand Slam and race track circuits now key points on brands’ activation calendars, fueled by the fact that both sports “naturally attract more affluent audiences”, Pennant notes. In recent years, that’s been attested by luxury brands’ eagerness to ink ambassadorships with new-gen tennis stars like Jannik Sinner (Gucci) and Carlos Alcaraz (Rolex), or LVMH’s 10-year global deal with Formula One, which commenced this year. In the case of the latter, the sport’s appeal is only amplified by the ongoing diversification of its audience, which has seen “growing popularity among women, sparked by a combination of factors, including the Netflix series Drive to Survive,” she continues.
Acknowledgement of this diversifying audience — and making efforts to cater to the wants and needs of its various demographic segments — is key to the successful engagement of luxury brands in the sporting world. “Experiences and products need to diversify to engage different demographics and generations with different expectations,” Pennant says. She’s speaking specifically of the historical alienation of female fans from men’s soccer, but her words resonate across the entire sporting spectrum: “There’s real opportunity there, if the approach is premium, customizable, authentic and intersectional.”
