Art Basel Paris Unveils Highlights, With ‘Emily in Paris’ Star Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu to Organize Oh La La! Initiative

Art Basel Paris unveiled today a few juicy highlights for its forthcoming edition, which will gather 211 galleries under the glass-ceilinged Grand Palais, open to the public from October 23 to 25.

For starters, Emily in Paris fans will be happy to learn that Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, the actress who plays Emily’s effortlessly chic boss, Sylvie Grateau, is trying her hand at another kind of leading role—this time in the visual arts. She is the guest art director of Art Basel Paris’ annual Oh La La! program, a phrase one can easily imagine Grateau saying, cigarette in hand, to her wide-eyed American ingénue.

Oh La La! was designed as a whimsical initiative to draw people back to the fair for a second or third look by inviting galleries to rehang their booths during the final weekend of the fair. Typically, they do so in response to a curated theme. This year’s chosen topic is “Myths and Legends,” with presentations exploring metamorphosis, dreams, ritual, and the cosmos.

Avant-Première access, for those uber-VIPs with a personal invitation from a gallery, is also back for the second time. It will take place on October 20, the day before the usual VIP preview date. The initiative aims to reduce traffic in the Grand Palais, though last year, the aisles felt almost as busy as ever.

The 2026 edition will see 32 galleries participate in the fair for the first time. Isabella Ritter in Paris and Chertlüdde in Berlin made the cut, along with Consonni Radziszewski (of Lisbon, Milan, and Warsaw), to name but a few. Also of note: a record 24 galleries have opted to team up and share their booths. Meanwhile, 64 participating galleries operate in France, including a few who have moved up to the main section from the Emergence category, such as Petrine (Paris and Düsseldorf) and The Pill, (Istanbul and Paris).

Visitors who come as much for the fair as the French capital will also have a particularly extensive landscape of public artworks to peruse, thanks to an expanded public art program. They include large-scale sculptures by Tracey Emin showing women in different stages of rest, installed at the Trocadéro, across from the Eiffel Tower. Other public commissions and large-scale installations include pieces by Kennedy Yanko, Kutluğ Ataman, Cosima von Bonin, Boz Deseo Garden, Lionel Sabatté, Robert Indiana, Alicja Kwade, Carmen Herrera, Keita Miyazaki, Manfred Pernice, Marcello Maloberti, Niki de Saint Phalle, Simone Fattal, and Yinka Shonibare.

In other news, the fair’s popular Premise sector, which focuses on unusual curatorial displays that hope to broaden our understanding of art history, is expanding this year to include 12 participating galleries, nine of them being newcomers. Additionally, Alice Diop is taking on this year’s Miu Miu commission at the Palais d’Iéna and the fashion brand’s runway show, as previously reported by ARTnews.

Lastly, this year’s talks will move into the Grand Palais’ auditorium for the first time, with an art-star-studded line-up that includes conversations between curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and the artist Simone Fattal; artist Eva Jospin with collector and founder of the new Le Large art center, Laurent Dumas; and Centre Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon and Louvre president Christophe Leribault will discuss the future of their respective museums.

The City of Light has managed to keep a tight grip on its position as the leading art hub in the European continent, with $4.5 billion in sales made in France in 2025, accounting for eight percent of the global art market, according to Art Basel & UBS Global Art Market Report 2026. In many ways, helped by Brexit, Art Basel Paris has become a favorite event within the Art Basel fair franchise, drawing over 73,000 visitors plus representatives from over 240 museums, according to organizers.