Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026
16th June – 23rd August 2026
I’m really chuffed to be taking part in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition again this year. It’s my fifth time and it still means as much to me as the first time.
If you are lucky enough to have your work selected, it’s a good show to be a part of. It all starts on Varnishing Day, with the procession of artists down Piccadilly, following the steel band to St James’s Church for the Artists’ Service. Then it’s back to the gallery to find your painting, mingle with old friends and new, sip prosecco and nibble really tiny but tasty canapés.
For the duration of the exhibition, artists are given free access to the show, as well as to the nice little secret Academicians’ Room bar. The Summer Exhibition sales are, for an open submission show, second to none; they invite their huge database of past buyers to special buying previews, hold star-studded VIP events and have a huge number of visitors coming through their doors throughout the summer. This is, of course, very good news for artists (particularly as I’m hearing from more and more artists and galleries that their sales are low at the moment).
The Summer Exhibition artwork is also available to browse online, through their excellent ’Summer Exhibition Explorer’, and they are very visible on social media too, especially when you have 1000 excited artists posting, reposting, hashtagging and all that to share their exciting news!
There is of course a flip side to all this to bear in mind. If your work was one of the 17,000 or so that doesn’t get in (which has happened to me on more occasions than getting selected), you might feel that you are £40 or £80 out of pocket, missing out on all the fun, and having to turn off social media for a while until it has all calmed down. It’s a tough game. When this happens, I just suck it up and go to visit the show to try to gauge what I should have submitted instead, and what I might submit the following year. All in all though, I do feel the RA is doing a great job. It’s a huge undertaking. They are offering something very special. And, to top it off, the profits from the Summer Exhibition are used to fund their free, three year RA Schools Post-Graduate program.
I posted the photos below onto my Instagram page with the following text:
Such a lovely #varnishingday @RoyalAcademyArts seeing old friends as well as meeting lots of nice people for the first time. Totally failed as always to remember to take lots of photographs. Started well then forgot. Huge thanks to @katherinejones_pp for selecting my painting and to this year’s coordinator @ryanjgander for such a great show. So nice to meet up with friends @annettefernandostudio @sumi_perera @dianasandetskaya @shantipanchal @russell_herron_art all selfied here, and to @temsuyanger_longkumer and @johnduffinartist by which time I was enjoying all the chat so much I totally forgot to get the camera out.
