GAMA Week 2026: Six Openings in One Night

Events & Exhibitions · Mexico City

The Mexico City gallery season does not drift back after the summer. It stops on a Sunday and restarts on a Thursday. This year those two dates are 30 August and 3 September, and six galleries open on the same night.

By Josh Stein · Founder, Art of NOMA, Mexico City · writing on the emerging-art market since 2023

The turn of the season

Most art calendars tell you what is open. Very few tell you when the season actually changes, which is the more useful fact if you are deciding when to fly in. In Mexico City this year the change is unusually sharp. On Sunday 30 August a cluster of the city's biggest museum shows closed together. Four days later, on Thursday 3 September, the commercial galleries reopen at once under GAMA Week.

That is not a coincidence of scheduling. The galleries coordinate their autumn openings so that visitors, curators and collectors arriving for the week see new work rather than the tail end of the summer programme. The museums, on a different cycle, tend to close their long summer runs at the end of the month. The result is a genuine hinge: the last weekend of August is the last chance for one set of shows, and the first Thursday of September is the first night of the next.

If you can only make one trip to Mexico City this autumn, the first week of September buys you more new work per day than any other week before February's art week.

What closed on 30 August

Four significant exhibitions ended on Sunday 30 August — all four confirmed on their institutions' own sites. They are listed here because the closings define the shape of the season, not because they can still be seen.

Los grupos y otras revueltas artísticas is the largest of the four, occupying five of MUAC's galleries since February. It is a survey of the collective, politically engaged artist groups that reshaped Mexican art from the 1970s onward — the kind of exhibition a university museum mounts once a decade.

GAMA Week, sixth edition

GAMA — the association of Mexican art galleries — runs its gallery week for the sixth time from Thursday 3 to Sunday 6 September 2026. Unlike February's art week, which is built around fairs in convention halls, GAMA Week happens in the galleries themselves. Nothing is trucked into a booth. You see the spaces, and you see the work hung the way the gallery intended.

Admission is free and the galleries cluster tightly enough to walk: San Miguel Chapultepec, Juárez and Roma, and a Polanco group. That geography is the whole point — it is a walking week, not a queueing week.

A date warning. Three different sets of dates for GAMA Week are circulating online. The dates "19–22 September" belong to the fourth edition, in 2024, and are still being reproduced by secondary write-ups as though current. The sixth edition is 3–6 September 2026.

The six openings on 3 September

This is what makes the date real rather than promotional. Six Mexico City galleries open new exhibitions on Thursday 3 September. Every one below was confirmed on the gallery's own website, not from a listings aggregator.

Two of these deserve singling out. Galería de Arte Mexicano — founded in 1935 and the oldest gallery in the city — pairs Francisco Toledo with the Dutch-Mexican artist Jan Hendrix, two printmakers who built a long friendship around the medium. It runs until January, so it is not a week-only show. And Patricia Conde, the city's photography gallery, opens a twenty-one-year survey of Alejandro Cartagena, whose work on suburban sprawl and commuting in northern Mexico is among the most widely collected Mexican photography of the period.

Encontrar se at Terreno Baldío is the one with a deadline. It runs only for the four days of GAMA Week, 11am to 7pm, and includes the French artist ORLAN alongside seven others. If you are in the city that week it is the show that will not be there afterwards.

How to actually walk it

Thursday evening is the opening night, and the two timed receptions do not clash: Galería de Arte Mexicano opens at 5pm, Patricia Conde at 7pm. Start in San Miguel Chapultepec, then move on. Friday and Saturday are for the Juárez and Roma galleries, which sit close enough together to cover on foot. Sunday is the last day, and it is the quietest — the right day for the shows you want to look at slowly rather than the ones you want to be seen at.

One practical note that catches visitors out: several of these openings are the gallery's only evening event of the season. Galleries in Mexico City generally keep daytime hours and close on Sunday afternoons. Check individual hours before the last day.

What opens after

The season does not stop on the 6th. Three more dates are already fixed:

Museo Jumex's Richard Prince survey is the largest institutional show of the autumn and runs into February, which means it overlaps with next year's art week. If you are choosing between September and February, that one you can see either way.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Galería de Arte Mexicano — Toledo + Hendrix dates and opening time
• Patricia Conde Galería — Alejandro Cartagena dates and opening time
• Galerie Nordenhake — lagartijas tiradas al sol, Mexico City space
• Terreno Baldío Arte — Encontrar se, GAMA Week dates and hours
• House of Gaga — Pulitzer and Zhu opening date
• Museo Jumex — closing and autumn opening dates
• MUAC UNAM — Los grupos closing date
• Museo Franz Mayer — Fútbol closing date
• LABOR — Candela Capitán dates
• Onda MX — Galería de Arte Mexicano reception time

All dates were read from each venue's own website on 27 August 2026. Exhibition dates change; confirm with the venue before travelling.