The Royal Academy exhibitions this winter are Painting the French Riviera, in the Main Galleries until 31 January 2027, and Peggy Guggenheim in London, opening on 21 November 2026. Both are at Burlington House on Piccadilly, W1J, according to the Royal Academy’s own programme, read on 17 October 2026.
One of them has a Mayfair address at its centre. In January 1938 Peggy Guggenheim opened her first gallery, Guggenheim Jeune, at 30 Cork Street. The Royal Academy describes the street as just around the corner from its own front door, and 88 years on the story comes back to the same few blocks of the West End.
A practical change is missing from most listings. Until autumn 2027 the Burlington Gardens entrance at the back of the building stays shut, so every visitor goes in from Piccadilly. What follows covers dates, published prices, free displays and how the two paid shows differ. For the commercial galleries nearby, see our page on Mayfair art galleries open on a Sunday.
What Royal Academy exhibitions are on this winter
From 21 November 2026 to 31 January 2027 the Royal Academy runs 2 paid exhibitions at once. Painting the French Riviera fills the Main Galleries from 2 October 2026 to 31 January 2027. Peggy Guggenheim in London takes the Jillian and Arthur M. Sackler Wing from 21 November 2026 to 14 March 2027.
Free displays run alongside, and none of them needs booking, according to the RA’s pages. In the John Madejski Fine Rooms, working rooms normally closed to the public, works from the RA Collection hang until 29 January 2027. Gainsborough, Laura Knight, Lowry and David Hockney are among the names.
Out in the Annenberg Courtyard stands Nicole Eisenman’s sculpture Stack. It is more than 8 metres tall and stays until 5 February 2027. A smaller show, Day, by RA Schools students in the Weston Studio, closes on 8 November. All 3 are free.
One exhibition is on its way out. Richard Dadd ends in the Sackler Wing on 25 October 2026, and the Guggenheim show follows it into those rooms on 21 November.
So the season splits into 2 halves. Until late November, the Riviera has the building almost to itself. After that, both Royal Academy exhibitions share Burlington House for 10 weeks.
Painting the French Riviera in the Main Galleries
“Swimming in blue air.” Claude Monet’s phrase for the light of the Côte d’Azur opens the RA’s page for the show.
Georges Braque called that coast a “joyful revelation”. André Derain went further and compared its blues to sticks of dynamite. Organised with the Cleveland Museum of Art, the larger of the 2 Royal Academy exhibitions follows that light from the 1870s to the 1960s through more than 160 works, among them paintings, sculpture, travel posters and film.
Picasso and Matisse lead the names on the page, with Cézanne, Renoir and Yves Klein among the rest. Published images run from Matisse’s Interior at Nice, of about 1919, to Klein’s ANT 84 from 1960. Later rooms turn to the Riviera as a holiday destination and a film location. That is where the posters come in.
Films carry the theme further. The RA lists screenings of A propos de Nice on 10 November, To Catch a Thief on 20 November and La Baie des Anges on 15 January 2027. On Fridays and Saturdays, ticket holders can have Provence rosé or Champagne for £12, or coffee and a madeleine for £8, in the RA Café and the Hugh Casson Room.
Critics quoted by the RA are warm. The Independent gave 5 stars, and the Financial Times called it “London’s most rhapsodic autumn exhibition”. We have not walked the rooms ourselves, and we would rather say so than describe them.
Peggy Guggenheim and the gallery on Cork Street
Peggy Guggenheim in London tells the story of Guggenheim Jeune, the gallery the American collector ran at 30 Cork Street, Mayfair, from 1938 to 1939. In about 18 months it held more than 20 exhibitions, according to the Royal Academy, including Kandinsky’s first UK solo show and the first exhibition of collage in Britain.
A sculpture exhibition there became a national scandal, the RA says. Its partner on the show, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, names the curators as Gražina Subelytė of the Collection and Simon Grant, guest curator.
Artists in the London rooms include Eileen Agar, Salvador Dalí, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Piet Mondrian and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Rita Kernn-Larsen and Cedric Morris, far less familiar names today, are there too. Among the images released is Yves Tanguy’s The Sun in its Jewel Case, from 1937.
Cork Street was not empty when she arrived. Fred Mayor had founded the Mayor Gallery in 1925, and it reopened at 18 Cork Street in 1933, according to the gallery’s own history. It gave Paul Klee and Alexander Calder their first showings in England. Today the Mayor Gallery trades from Bury Street in St James’s.
For a street that still sells art, it is an unusually local subject among Royal Academy exhibitions. London is the second stop: the show ran in Venice from 25 April to 19 October 2026 and travels to the Guggenheim in New York from 16 April 2027.
The Riviera or the Guggenheim show
10 weeks of overlap. Two very different visits.
Painting the French Riviera is the larger show and the dearer one. More than 160 works fill the Main Galleries, and Royal Academy tickets for it cost £24 to £26 before the optional donation. Its subject is colour and place, across almost a century of painting. Its run also ends first, on 31 January, so anyone who wants it has fewer weeks than the calendar suggests.
Peggy Guggenheim in London is narrower and cheaper, at £17. Its subject is 18 months on one Mayfair street, when the British art establishment of the late 1930s met Surrealism and abstraction head on. It stays open until 14 March 2027, 6 weeks after the Riviera rooms have closed.
Friends of the RA go free to both, according to its pages. For the Guggenheim show, Friends preview days fall on 18, 19 and 20 November, before the public opening.
For a visitor with one afternoon in December, timing settles it. Pick the Riviera for the larger show, because it leaves first. Pick the Guggenheim show for the Mayfair story, knowing it will still be there in February. Seeing both in a single day is possible on a Friday or Saturday, when the building stays open until 9pm.
Royal Academy opening times, tickets and the Piccadilly entrance
Details for both Royal Academy exhibitions come from the RA’s visit and exhibition pages, as read on 17 October 2026.
- Royal Academy opening times. Closed on Mondays. Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday 10am to 6pm; Friday and Saturday 10am to 9pm. Saturday late opening runs throughout Painting the French Riviera.
- Prices. Painting the French Riviera £24 to £26, or £26.50 to £28.60 with a donation. Peggy Guggenheim in London £17.
- Free rooms. Fine Rooms open 11am to 4pm, until 9pm on Fridays and Saturdays, and closed on 6, 7, 18 and 19 November and 4 December 2026.
- Entrance. Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BD. Burlington Gardens is closed until autumn 2027.
- Getting there. Piccadilly Circus and Green Park are the nearest Underground stations.
- On arrival. Expect extra security checks at the door. Backpacks and suitcases cannot go into the galleries, and the building is cashless.
Burlington House sits on the southern edge of Mayfair, in the City of Westminster. Burlington Arcade and Albemarle Street run north from Piccadilly beside it, with Cork Street just beyond. To see what those streets show today, our survey of art galleries in Mayfair is the place to start.
So the choice comes down to dates. Painting the French Riviera closes on 31 January 2027; book it before the new year if colour and the Côte d’Azur are the reason for going. Peggy Guggenheim in London runs to 14 March 2027 and costs less. Of the Royal Academy exhibitions this season, it is the one with Mayfair itself as its subject.
A gallery at 30 Cork Street lasted 18 months and, in the RA’s words, helped redefine London’s contemporary art scene. Both shows open on Sundays and stay late on Fridays and Saturdays, and until autumn 2027 the way in is from Piccadilly.
Main image: Anthony O’Neil, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
