David Hockney returns to Tate Britain for 90th birthday exhibition in 2027
- maxwell museums
- 18 minutes ago
- 2 min read
Tate Britain will host a major David Hockney exhibition in October 2027 as part of celebrations to mark the artist’s 90th birthday.
In a rare move, he will also be given the honour in the same year of creating a new art installation in Tate Modern's famous Turbine Hall to mark his tenth decade.
The two shows have been revealed as part of Tate’s exhibition programme for 2027 announcement, which saw huge exhibitions from Claude Monet, Edvard Munch and Sonia Boyce also revealed for next year.
Curators at Tate Britain are promising over 200 artworks in their Hockney retrospective, that will “focus on the role that family, friends and lovers” have played in his visual storytelling. It will span the entirety of his 70-year career, from “trailblazing 1960s explorations of queer love and desire to tender depictions of his parents and recent works exploring private moments in his home and studio.”
The show comes just ten years after Tate Britain’s last Hockney retrospective, which remains the gallery’s most visited exhibition ever with 478,082 visits across its four-month run in 2017. With Tate’s recent well-publicised financial issues which led to staff strikes, it’s unsurprising a guaranteed blockbuster has been booked so soon after the last.
David Hockney's Tate Modern installation in 2027
Hockney will turn 90 in July 2027. That same summer is when Tate Modern will open its Turbine Hall installation.
It will see Hockney’s many celebrated designs for opera sets and costumes “brought to life” in a multi-media installation. These works — which he has created since the 1970s — will be projected onto vast screens in Tate Modern's iconic space.
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There’s as yet no opening date for this show, but we do know it will close in time for the annual Hyundai Commission in the Turbine Hall to take its traditional autumn slot.
David Hockney has shown no sign of slowing down in recent years. In March 2026, London’s Serpentine North opened a display of Hockney’s 80m iPad-created Normandy frieze that’s inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry.
His largest ever retrospective — titled David Hockney 25 — ran at Paris’ Fondation Louis Vuitton from April to August 2025. He’s also had shows at Royal Academy of Arts, Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, and David Hockney: Drawing from Life was at the National Portrait Gallery in 2023, featuring Hockney’s depiction of Harry Styles.
Other Tate Britain highlights revealed for 2027 include 120 works by Thomas Gainsborough going on show in celebration of the 300th anniversary of his birth, and the Tate gallery's first survey of Tudor art in 30 years too. Tate Liverpool meanwhile, will host the first ever Chila Kumari Singh Burman retrospective.