It has been hard to keep track of the cascade of good news about the Arts, so we've done it for you

In April, V&A East will open in the former Olympic Park in Stratford, east London. This is the third major development to be unveiled by one national collection alone in less than two years, following Young V&A in Bethnal Green and V&A East Storehouse, also in Stratford.

Regular readers of our Athena column are unlikely to be upbeat about the financial state of the cultural sector, but the V&A’s achievement is not an isolated success: 2026 is shaping up to be a spectacular year for the visual arts in Britain. It has been hard to keep track of the cascade of good news about Arts funding.

On top of the Government’s £1.5 billion for capital projects, the Courtauld Institute has received £10 million from the Blavatnik Family Foundation for two new contemporary art galleries (to open in 2029) and the National Trust has been given £10 million by the philanthropist Humphrey Battcock — the largest single cash donation in its history.

Even this astonishing generosity is dwarfed by the coup announced late last year by the National Gallery: £150 million each from the Crankstart Foundation and the Julia Rausing Trust towards the cost of its highly ambitious new wing.

Such remarkable philanthropy has a major impact on global perceptions of attitudes to the Arts in Britain: this is a country where many artists and galleries want to do business. Frieze remains the leading brand for blue-chip art fairs and confidence in London is demonstrated by the fact that Hauser & Wirth is opening a new flagship gallery in the former Thomas Goode building on South Audley Street. Also, by the way Bloomsbury is being colonised by young, cutting-edge galleries — Herald St, Union Pacific and A. Squire have all opened there since 2016.

Perhaps more by chance than design, 2026 will be a national celebration of British art, with, among others, major exhibitions on Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery; Gwen John at the National Museum Cardiff and, later, National Galleries of Scotland; 20th-century British landscape painting at Pallant House, Chichester, West Sussex; and J. M. Whistler (American, but an honorary British artist) at Tate Britain.

The choice of Lubaina Himid promises one of the strongest British pavilions for years at the Venice Biennale and the excitement generated by the forthcoming retrospectives of Dame Tracey Emin at Tate Modern and Sir Anish Kapoor at the Hayward Gallery demonstrates the perennial appeal of the country’s most eminent contemporary artists.

The exhibition of the year? That must surely be the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum — the return of a great British work of art to this country after being on loan for more than 900 years will be an unforgettable climax to a memorable year.

This article is from the February 11 Fine Art issue of Country Life, which is on sale now. For more information on how to subscribe, click here