…The 2026 edition of Lagos Gallery Weekend is built around a simple idea — contemporary art in Lagos belongs to everyone. And this year, that mission is clearer than ever.
If you have lived in Lagos long enough, you have probably driven past a gallery without stepping inside. Not because you were not curious, but because galleries can feel like they operate on a frequency you have not quite tuned into. Lagos Gallery Weekend was set up to change that. From March 5 to 8, twenty spaces across Victoria Island, Ikoyi, Lekki, Lagos Island, and Yaba will open their doors for four days of exhibitions, talks, workshops, tours, and performances. What unites them is not geography. It is the principle — that access to contemporary art should not depend on who you know, what you studied, or how confident you feel walking into a white-walled room.
That principle shows up in the details. Most events are free and even the paid ones start from as little as ₦2,000. About two thirds of the programme is designed with first-time visitors in mind so that anyone can walk in and feel comfortable exploring. For those unsure where to start, the LGW Hub at Alliance Française | Mike Adenuga Centre in Ikoyi is the perfect launch point to pick up a map, meet the team, and plan your Weekend.
This year also introduces Insider Routes. Four industry figures, including an artist, a publicist, and a dealer, share the specific gallery trails that shaped their careers. Visitors can find these routes on the website before leaving home.
The festival’s programming is deliberately broad. A Third Space is running conversations on creative agency, including sessions for professionals in careers like law or tech who want a way into the creative industry. Other talks cover how to engage with art when you are unsure what to do, collectors’ sessions for those curious about patronage, and discussions on women in the creative industry, timed for International Women’s Day Weekend.
The organisers feel strongly about gender representation in the arts. Female artists often step back from their practice once life gets complicated. While men tend to continue pursuing their careers, women face pressures such as motherhood and societal expectations, which limit the time and energy they can devote to their art. Over the years, this has created a noticeable gap in the professional art world, even though male and female students begin their education in roughly equal numbers.
“You start art school with men and women in roughly equal numbers. But at some point, there is a sharp drop in the number of women who continue. If you visit any professional art space, you can see it for yourself,” Sunshine Alaibe, Director of Lagos Gallery Weekend, says.
Beyond talks, the festival offers hands-on experiences. Visitors can join live drawing sessions of the human form and everyday objects, experiment with 3D art using ceramic wheels and plaster casting, take part in a collage workshop, try data-driven poster design via linocut and RISO printing, or attend a printmaking class for children at O’DA Art Gallery.
Saturday brings a curated experimental cinema screening by Angels and Muse, followed by a sound session featuring poets, singers, and instrumentalists, both amateur and professional. Heritage tours to Jaekel House, and the National Theatre run across the weekend, giving attendees a chance to explore the city’s architectural history alongside its creative spaces.
Friday is largely dedicated to students from primary school through university, with tours across multiple galleries and a conversation about what it means to be creative. Not as a career path, Sunshine Alaibe says, but as a way of thinking. The entire Friday student programme is free.
The focus, she explains, comes from a memory that shaped her approach. Last year, a group of university students, some from the arts department, attended a tour. After returning to campus, several sent messages saying the visit had reminded them why they wanted to create. Most had never been inside more than one gallery in the city. For Alaibe, it was a striking reminder that access, not talent, is often the barrier. The Friday programme exists to open those doors and make engagement with art intentional, welcoming, and free.
Eight guided tours run with Chisco Transport over the weekend, each focused on a different neighbourhood. A shuttle from +234 Art Fair at Eco Bank covers eleven locations on Saturday with twenty-minute stops, all for one flat fee. Alternatively, visitors can use the interactive map on the website to build their own route and move through the city at their own pace.
Art For All is more than a theme. It is a challenge — to the industry, to the city, and to anyone who has been putting off going to a gallery for reasons that might not hold up under scrutiny.
In ten or fifteen years, the students coming through on Friday may be the ones shaping this industry. Lagos Gallery Weekend is, in part, a bet on that future.
