Tate pairs blockbuster exhibitions on Frida Kahlo and Tracey Emin

Frida Kahlo and Tracey Emin anchor Tate Modern's 2026 programme, with one major show built around Kahlo’s rise to global icon status and another around Emin’s 40-year career. The pairing, announced on 24 March 2025, makes women artists the defining feature of a season that also includes Ana Mendieta, Julio Le Parc and Whistler.

Emin’s exhibition traces four decades of work across painting, video, textiles, neons, writing, sculpture and installation. Tate calls it the largest survey of her work ever mounted, with pieces never exhibited before, and the exhibition centers the bodily themes that have defined her career. Emin rose to prominence in the 1990s with My Bed, the Turner Prize-nominated work that sparked fierce public debate, and the show uses the female body to explore passion, pain and healing.

Kahlo’s exhibition, Frida: The Making of an Icon, opened on 25 June 2026 and runs to 3 January 2027. Tate calls it the first major exhibition to examine how Kahlo became a global phenomenon, and it includes more than 30 works by Kahlo, rarely seen self-portraits, photographs, personal artefacts and more than 200 commercial objects in a final section titled Fridamania. The display was developed with the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and places Kahlo alongside artists she influenced, including modern and contemporary figures, as well as Diego Rivera and María Izquierdo, to show the artistic exchanges around her practice.

Among the works on view are Self-Portrait (With Velvet Dress) from 1926 and Self-Portrait with Loose Hair from 1938. André Breton called Kahlo “a self-made Surrealist” after her invitation to exhibit in Paris in 1938.