# The 12 best gallery shows in Berlin in October 2026

> Walter Dahn at Sprüth Magers, Katharina Sieverding at Thomas Schulte, Alix Cléo Roubaud at Buchholz, Sabine Moritz at Max Hetzler and Martin Margiela’s first show in Germany: the art exhibitions to see in Berlin this month, after Berlin Art Week, and when they close.

Berlin · Best shows · By On View, updated Oct 3, 2026 · Tags: Berlin, Exhibitions, October 2026, Berlin Art Week, Mitte, Potsdamer Straße, Galleries, What to see

Berlin’s galleries open their autumn together. On the evening of September 10, the Gallery Night of Berlin Art Week, more than fifty of them opened new exhibitions at once, and October is the month to see those shows without the crowds. They close in three waves: a few on October 17, a large group on October 24, among them Tuan Andrew Nguyen at Esther Schipper and Grace Weaver at Max Hetzler, and another on October 31, with Sabine Moritz, Alix Cléo Roubaud, Carrie Mae Weems and Wu Tsang. The longest, Walter Dahn at Sprüth Magers and Martin Margiela at Konrad Fischer, run to the week before Christmas.

These are the twelve art exhibitions we would make time for, with dates and addresses from our listings and a link to each show’s own page, where the pictures are. A dozen more follow, and the museums, which open a second season of their own in the middle of the month, are in the questions at the end. For the galleries themselves, see [the 12 best art galleries in Berlin](https://onview.so/guides/best-art-galleries-berlin).

## 1. Walter Dahn: *Let’s Get Married, Let’s Get Lost*

- Sep 11 – Dec 19, 2026 (on view)
- At [Sprüth Magers](https://onview.so/berlin/spruth-magers.md), Mitte · Oranienburger Straße 18 · Tue–Sat 11–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/spruth-magers/lets-get-married-lets-get-lost

![](https://images.onview.so/3166943c07b1f3cf.webp)

The first exhibition of Walter Dahn’s work since his death, and a survey of three decades, from 1982 to 2014. Dahn went to the Düsseldorf academy at seventeen to study under Joseph Beuys, moved to Cologne in 1976 and became one of the wild young painters of the early 1980s, working beside Dokoupil, Rosemarie Trockel and Sigmar Polke. The show has the large spray paintings of 1984, Baselitz-Pop and Baechler-Blues, the sparse, childlike Weltkriegshirsch, and the later work in which painting, silkscreen, photography and drawing count as equals, always with an ear for music and pop.

The title work, of 2006, takes off from a Nadar caricature of Painting and Photography. Through December 19 on Oranienburger Straße, with [Salvo’s night paintings](https://onview.so/berlin/spruth-magers/la-citta) in the window space until October 24, and a panel on Dahn at the gallery on October 8 at 5:30 pm.

## 2. Katharina Sieverding: *Life-Death*

- Sep 11 – Nov 5, 2026 (on view)
- At [Galerie Thomas Schulte](https://onview.so/berlin/thomas-schulte.md), Mitte · Charlottenstraße 24 · Tue–Sat 12–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/thomas-schulte/life-death

![](https://images.onview.so/044de66061ce6a27.webp)

In 1969, while she was a student of Beuys in Düsseldorf, Katharina Sieverding made a twenty-nine-minute film with three other performers about identity as something that changes: male and female, life and death, held in tension. It was shown at documenta 5 in 1972, with a soundtrack Kraftwerk recorded for it in a single improvised session, and it is the center of this exhibition, with the photographic series drawn from it, each a hundred centimeters square, the twelve-part Hanging Boots of 1969 and the two-part Transformer of 1973–74.

Sieverding has spent nearly sixty years on the idea that identity is a transformation, not a fact, and this is where it starts. At Charlottenstraße 24 through November 7; [Kerstin Brätsch](https://onview.so/berlin/thomas-schulte/die-sein-para-psychics-expanded-excerpt) has the corner room.

## 3. Alix Cléo Roubaud: *Si quelque chose noir*

- Sep 10 – Oct 31, 2026 (on view)
- At [Galerie Buchholz](https://onview.so/berlin/galerie-buchholz.md), Wilmersdorf · Fasanenstraße 30 · Tue–Sat 11–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/galerie-buchholz/si-quelque-chose-noir

![](https://images.onview.so/7c671d9035a8cc6e.webp)

Alix Cléo Roubaud took up photography in the summer of 1979 and died in 1983, at thirty-one. In August 1980, over at least ten days in a painter’s studio in the south-west of France, she set her camera on a tripod, marked the frame on the floor and moved naked through the light of a single window during exposures of ten to thirty seconds. She spent months printing the seventeen images of Si quelque chose noir, If Something Black, made each print unique and destroyed the negatives. In the last she lies, half transparent, across the body of her husband, the poet Jacques Roubaud.

This is the first exhibition of her work in Germany, curated by the writer Hélène Giannecchini, with twenty-eight photographs in all. At Galerie Buchholz on Fasanenstraße through October 31.

## 4. Sabine Moritz: *Rot Gelb Blau Staub*

- Sep 11 – Oct 31, 2026 (on view)
- At [Galerie Max Hetzler, Potsdamer Straße](https://onview.so/berlin/max-hetzler-potsdamer-strasse.md), Tiergarten · Potsdamer Straße 77–87, Mercator Höfe · Tue–Sat 11–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/max-hetzler-potsdamer-strasse/rot-gelb-blau-staub

![](https://images.onview.so/781af9c8ffa0b39b.webp)

Red yellow blue dust: Sabine Moritz’s first exhibition with Max Hetzler is built on twelve large oil paintings in four groups of three, named for earth, air, water and fire. For a decade her painting was abstract, dense fields of worked color; since 2023 the body has come back, and in her first four-part painting, Fragment einer Idylle, female figures surface from the paint. One still life, with three skulls, is called Teach us to number our days.

Upstairs are works on paper from three decades, among them the Helikopter drawings of 2009–12 and the recent Meditations about war. Through October 31 in the Mercator Höfe on Potsdamer Straße; a show of hers opens at the Garden Museum in London on October 8.

## 5. Tuan Andrew Nguyen: *Fire Sermon*

- Sep 10 – Oct 24, 2026 (on view, closing soon)
- At [Esther Schipper](https://onview.so/berlin/esther-schipper.md), Tiergarten · Potsdamer Straße 81E · Tue–Sat 11–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/esther-schipper/fire-sermon

![](https://images.onview.so/3adb6c4067b24f44.webp)

Five new mobiles, in the artist’s first exhibition with Esther Schipper. They look like Calder’s and are made of war: brass artillery shells salvaged in Vietnam, where unexploded ordnance still kills, engraved, hung from steel cable with wooden clappers and tuned so that they ring at frequencies said to heal. The series grew out of Nguyen’s 2022 film The Unburied Sounds of a Troubled Horizon, in which a character turns bombs into bells, and takes its title from the Buddha’s sermon on fire.

Through October 24 on the top floor of the Mercator Höfe. In the next rooms, [David Claerbout’s Repose](https://onview.so/berlin/esther-schipper/repose) shows four video works new to Berlin, one of which lasts almost twenty-five hours.

## 6. *Carrie Mae Weems*

- Sep 11 – Oct 31, 2026 (on view)
- At [Galerie Barbara Thumm](https://onview.so/berlin/barbara-thumm.md), Kreuzberg · Markgrafenstraße 68 · Wed–Sat 12–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/barbara-thumm/carrie-mae-weems

![](https://images.onview.so/d9e8d69f6274a6b9.webp)

Carrie Mae Weems has two exhibitions in Berlin this autumn. The large one is [The Heart of the Matter](https://onview.so/berlin/c-o-berlin/the-heart-of-the-matter) at C/O Berlin, more than a hundred photographs and videos from four decades, the Kitchen Table Series among them. The new work is here, at her Berlin gallery: Seaside, large photographs of the artist seen from behind at an easel on an Atlantic beach while the pages of her sketchbook blow away, and The Law of Diminishing Returns, five oval-framed photographs in descending sizes, on migration and displacement.

It is Weems’s fourth show with Barbara Thumm, on Markgrafenstraße in Kreuzberg through October 31; the C/O retrospective runs to February 3. In the gallery’s other room, [Fiona Banner](https://onview.so/berlin/barbara-thumm/poems-for-helicopter-blades) shows sculptures made from fighter-jet parts.

## 7. Cevdet Erek: *them and us*

- Sep 11 – Nov 7, 2026 (on view)
- At [neugerriemschneider](https://onview.so/berlin/neugerriemschneider.md), Mitte · Linienstraße 155, also Christinenstraße 18–19 · Tue–Sat 11–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/neugerriemschneider/them-and-us

The Istanbul artist has built a piece of a stadium in the gallery: a tiered terrace of compressed earth blocks, modeled on the away section of a football ground, where visiting fans are kept apart, with colored zones marking who stands where and a ten-channel percussive soundtrack beating out of speakers set into the steps. His subject is what sound does to a building and a building to sound, and how both divide people into us and them. Earlier Away Terrace works, in wood and gold leaf, hang nearby.

His second solo show with neugerriemschneider, on Linienstraße through November 7, alongside [Billy Childish and his children](https://onview.so/berlin/neugerriemschneider/billy-childish-and-the-children-of-the-sect).

## 8. Jeremy Shaw: *Half-Life of Grace*

- Sep 11 – Nov 7, 2026 (on view)
- At [Galerie Neu](https://onview.so/berlin/galerie-neu.md), Mitte · Linienstraße 119abc · Tue–Sat 11–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/galerie-neu/half-life-of-grace

![](https://images.onview.so/32bd24cdf1398720.webp)

Jeremy Shaw, the Canadian artist who lives in Berlin, has long made work about altered states, and his first exhibition with Galerie Neu does it with objects. In the first room are three Klein bottles, the one-sided vessel of mathematics, in flame-worked glass, each holding the residue of vaporized DMT. In the second, twenty-eight zinc pipes from a church organ of 1959, taken out of service, hang on the wall, each in a hand-blown sleeve of uranium glass; hidden ultraviolet light makes the glass glow green in a pattern timed to the sound.

Science, a retired instrument of worship and mildly radioactive glass: the materials carry the argument about belief. On Linienstraße through November 7.

## 9. *Martin Margiela in Berlin*

- Sep 10 – Dec 19, 2026 (on view)
- At [Konrad Fischer Galerie](https://onview.so/berlin/konrad-fischer-galerie.md), Mitte · Neue Grünstraße 12
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/konrad-fischer-galerie/martin-margiela-in-berlin

![](https://images.onview.so/ad2a3835a41fed3e.webp)

Martin Margiela left fashion in 2008 and has worked as an artist since, in the same spirit: anonymous, exact, interested in what is covered and what is missing. This is his first exhibition with Konrad Fischer and his first in Germany. He has closed off parts of the gallery with new walls and painter’s sheeting, and shows sculptures made from everyday things, coat hangers, tiles, carpet, a pallet; the largest, Audience, is a block of stacked cinema seats whose upholstery has been replaced by plaster casts.

On Neue Grünstraße, in Mitte, through December 19, which makes it one of the few shows of the season still on in the winter. Alan Charlton’s Circle Paintings share the building.

## 10. Wu Tsang: *Μέτοικε (Metoike)*

- Sep 10 – Oct 31, 2026 (on view)
- At [Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi](https://onview.so/berlin/isabella-bortolozzi.md), Tiergarten · Schöneberger Ufer 61 · Tue–Sat 12–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/isabella-bortolozzi/metoike

![](https://images.onview.so/399ce553212a0228.webp)

Two installations of moving image and multichannel sound, from the project Wu Tsang has been developing for several years around Carmen: Bizet’s opera of 1875 and the long afterlife of its heroine in music, theater and film. La gran mentira de la muerte dates from 2024; On our way to the general strike, from this year, is shown in Europe for the first time.

It is Tsang’s third exhibition with Isabella Bortolozzi, after shows in 2014 and 2021, in the gallery’s rooms on Schöneberger Ufer, by the canal. Through October 31; the gallery opens at noon.

## 11. Grace Weaver: *Parataxis*

- Sep 4 – Oct 24, 2026 (on view, closing soon)
- At [Galerie Max Hetzler, Bleibtreustraße](https://onview.so/berlin/max-hetzler-bleibtreustrasse.md), Charlottenburg · Bleibtreustraße 45 · Tue–Sat 11–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/max-hetzler-bleibtreustrasse/parataxis

![](https://images.onview.so/11edf483fe2a9de0.webp)

New paintings of tall, sloping figures in rooms, performing the small ceremonies of a day: sitting in high-backed chairs, gathering at a table, lifting a glass. Weaver builds her grounds in layers and paints the final image in one wet session, in cobalt blues she took from Mycenaean frescoes; the figures have the outlines of the ancient vessels they hold. The title is the Greek for placing side by side, and it describes the exhibition, which is in two galleries at once.

Part is at Max Hetzler’s apartment gallery on Bleibtreustraße, in Charlottenburg, and part at [Soy Capitán](https://onview.so/berlin/soy-capitan) on Lindenstraße, in Kreuzberg. Both through October 24.

## 12. Austin Martin White: *The lie, the larp and the lusophile*

- Sep 10 – Oct 17, 2026 (on view, closing soon)
- At [Capitain Petzel](https://onview.so/berlin/capitain-petzel.md), Mitte · Karl-Marx-Allee 45 · Tue–Sat 11–6
- The show on On View: https://onview.so/berlin/capitain-petzel/the-lie-the-larp-and-the-lusophile

![](https://images.onview.so/0fb5b87040915a65.webp)

The first of these to close, on October 17. The Philadelphia painter’s subject is Aleijadinho, the eighteenth-century Brazilian sculptor whose biography is part record and part legend, and whose soapstone prophets stand outside the church at Congonhas. White paints them, and the woodcut imagery of the cheap printed booklets of north-east Brazil, in acrylic, rubber, pigment and spray paint worked through screen mesh. The question is how an uncertain story hardens into history.

His second show with Capitain Petzel fills the glass pavilion on Karl-Marx-Allee, a building worth the trip on its own.

## Also worth seeing

- [David Claerbout: Repose](https://onview.so/berlin/esther-schipper/repose.md) at Esther Schipper (on view, closing soon, Sep 10 – Oct 24, 2026): Four video works on duration, among them a woodcarver filmed as the forest around him thins; through October 24.
- [Lin May Saeed: Séance](https://onview.so/berlin/meyer-riegger/seance.md) at Meyer Riegger (on view, Sep 11 – Oct 31, 2026): Styrofoam reliefs, paper silhouettes and late bronzes by the artist, who died in 2023, some never shown before.
- [Michel Majerus: TRON](https://onview.so/berlin/michel-majerus-estate/tron.md) at Michel Majerus Estate (on view, May 2, 2026 – Mar 21, 2027): Ten wall paintings from the 1999 series, at the artist’s estate in Prenzlauer Berg; open on Saturdays, until March.
- [André Derain: Modell für Malerei](https://onview.so/berlin/michael-werner/modell-fur-malerei.md) at Galerie Michael Werner (on view, Sep 11 – Nov 7, 2026): The former Fauve’s late paintings of the 1940s and 1950s, bathers, a portrait and a still life, in Charlottenburg.
- [Andreas Eriksson: Horizontal Fold](https://onview.so/berlin/barbara-wien/horizontal-fold.md) at Galerie Barbara Wien (on view, Sep 11 – Dec 24, 2026): A sixteen-meter frieze of paintings and photographs, Walking the Dog, with bronze birds; his show with Kim Chong Hak is at neugerriemschneider.
- [Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press: Poems for Helicopter Blades](https://onview.so/berlin/barbara-thumm/poems-for-helicopter-blades.md) at Galerie Barbara Thumm (on view, Sep 11 – Oct 31, 2026): A Harrier tail fin turned loudspeaker and helicopter blades published as books, on language and war.
- [Leiko Ikemura: de sensu](https://onview.so/berlin/contemporary-fine-arts/de-sensu.md) at Contemporary Fine Arts (on view, closing soon, Sep 11 – Oct 24, 2026): New paintings and a bronze in rooms painted green, after her Albertina show last year; closes October 24.
- [Monira Al Qadiri: The Archaeology of Beasts](https://onview.so/berlin/konig-galerie/the-archaeology-of-beasts.md) at König Galerie (on view, Sep 9 – Nov 8, 2026): Egyptian gods as black sculptures, a video and her first virtual-reality work, in the chapel of St. Agnes.
- [Julia Wachtel: Return to Content a/b](https://onview.so/berlin/klemm-s/return-to-content-a-b.md) at Klemm’s (on view, closing soon, Sep 10 – Oct 24, 2026): The Pictures Generation painter’s first comprehensive solo show in Germany, half of it new work; closes October 24.
- [Renate Bertlmann: Zärtlichkeit als Widerstand](https://onview.so/berlin/levy-galerie-alexander-levy/zartlichkeit-als-widerstand.md) at Levy Galerie / alexander levy (on view, closing soon, Sep 10 – Oct 17, 2026): Five decades of the Viennese feminist’s work on tenderness, sex and power, in Moabit; closes October 17.
- [Exquisite Corpse](https://onview.so/berlin/pace-die-tankstelle/exquisite-corpse.md) at Pace, Die Tankstelle (on view, Sep 10 – Nov 8, 2026): Loie Hollowell curates four painters of the body as machine around Kiki Kogelnik, in the converted petrol station on Bülowstraße.
- [Symptoms](https://onview.so/berlin/galerie-nordenhake/symptoms.md) at Galerie Nordenhake (on view, closing soon, Sep 10 – Oct 24, 2026): Sixteen artists from Edvard Munch to Frida Orupabo open the gallery’s new space on Goethestraße; closes October 24.

## Frequently asked questions

### Which Berlin gallery shows close in October 2026?

October 17: Austin Martin White at Capitain Petzel and Renate Bertlmann at LEVY. October 24 is the big day: Tuan Andrew Nguyen and David Claerbout at Esther Schipper, Jean-Luc Mylayne and Salvo at Sprüth Magers, Grace Weaver at Max Hetzler and Soy Capitán, Leiko Ikemura and Walter Pichler at Contemporary Fine Arts, Julia Wachtel at Klemm’s and Symptoms at Nordenhake. Lúcia Koch closes at carlier | gebauer on October 28. October 31: Sabine Moritz at Max Hetzler, Alix Cléo Roubaud at Buchholz, Carrie Mae Weems and Fiona Banner at Barbara Thumm, Wu Tsang at Isabella Bortolozzi and Lin May Saeed at Meyer Riegger. Cevdet Erek, Jeremy Shaw and Katharina Sieverding run to November 7.

### What opens in Berlin in October and November 2026?

The museums first. On October 9 the [Hamburger Bahnhof](https://onview.so/berlin/hamburger-bahnhof-nationalgalerie-der-gegenwart) opens Next Door, with Tacita Dean, Thomas Demand, Olafur Eliasson and Tomás Saraceno, the [Gropius Bau](https://onview.so/berlin/gropius-bau) opens Christoph Schlingensief and the [Berlinische Galerie](https://onview.so/berlin/berlinische-galerie) Lovis Corinth. The [Kupferstichkabinett](https://onview.so/berlin/kupferstichkabinett) opens Rubens, Jordaens and van Dyck on October 10, the [Gemäldegalerie](https://onview.so/berlin/gemaldegalerie) its portraits from Botticelli to Lempicka on October 16, and the [KW Institute](https://onview.so/berlin/kw-institute-for-contemporary-art) Susan Hiller, Koo Jeong A and Rafik Greiss on October 17. Among the galleries, Sara Cwynar opens at Esther Schipper on November 5, Dana Schutz at Contemporary Fine Arts on November 7 and Sean Scully at Max Hetzler on November 20.

### What are the best museum shows in Berlin in October 2026?

The [Neue Nationalgalerie](https://onview.so/berlin/neue-nationalgalerie) has Maurizio Cattelan, this year’s winner of the Preis der Nationalgalerie, Glenn Ligon’s Double America until October 11 and Fujiko Nakaya’s fog sculpture in the garden until October 25. The [Hamburger Bahnhof](https://onview.so/berlin/hamburger-bahnhof-nationalgalerie-der-gegenwart) has Ryuichi Sakamoto’s installations of sound and time. [C/O Berlin](https://onview.so/berlin/c-o-berlin) has Carrie Mae Weems’s retrospective, and the [Gropius Bau](https://onview.so/berlin/gropius-bau) a history of art and migration in Kreuzberg since 1960. From October 22 the [Alte Nationalgalerie](https://onview.so/berlin/alte-nationalgalerie) sets Gursky, Sarah Lucas, Miró and Warhol among its nineteenth-century paintings.

### Did I miss Berlin Art Week 2026?

The festival itself, yes: Berlin Art Week ran from September 9 to 13, 2026, its fifteenth edition, and the next is from September 8 to 12, 2027. But the exhibitions that opened for it are what it leaves behind, and nearly all of them are on through October, some until December. Gallery Weekend Berlin, the spring counterpart, is next held from April 30 to May 2, 2027.

### How do I see the most in one day?

Start at 11 on Potsdamer Straße, where Esther Schipper and Max Hetzler share the Mercator Höfe, and walk to Isabella Bortolozzi and Barbara Wien on Schöneberger Ufer, which open at noon. Take the U-Bahn to Kreuzberg for Barbara Thumm and carlier | gebauer, next door to each other on Markgrafenstraße, then to Mitte for Thomas Schulte, Sprüth Magers, neugerriemschneider and Galerie Neu, all within a twenty-minute walk. Charlottenburg, with Buchholz, Contemporary Fine Arts and Hetzler’s Bleibtreustraße gallery, is a second day, with C/O Berlin. [The map](https://onview.so/berlin/map) has every gallery and its hours.

Everything on view in Berlin, at every gallery and museum, is on [the list](https://onview.so/berlin) and [the map](https://onview.so/berlin/map), with the openings coming up under Events. For the galleries themselves, read [the 12 best art galleries in Berlin](https://onview.so/guides/best-art-galleries-berlin). The weekly email, under Resources, has each week’s openings and closings.

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Published Oct 3, 2026; the text was last revised on Oct 3, 2026. The addresses, hours and dates are from On View's listings for Berlin as of Wednesday, October 14, 2026. This page: https://onview.so/guides/best-gallery-shows-berlin-october-2026. All the guides: https://onview.so/guides.md. Every gallery and museum in Berlin: https://onview.so/berlin.md. All of On View: https://onview.so/llms.txt