The Art Market Grew Last Year. Mostly at the Top.

Every spring, Art Basel and the bank UBS publish the closest thing the art business has to an annual report. The 2026 edition, the tenth, written by the economist Dr. Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics, covers sales in 2025. The headline is good news. The details are a story about who the good news was for.

Global art sales rose 4 percent to an estimated $59.6 billion in 2025, across about 41.5 million transactions. After two soft years, the market grew again.

Dealers, meaning galleries and private sellers, did about $34.8 billion of that, up 2 percent. Public auctions did about $20.7 billion, up 9 percent. Private sales arranged by auction houses fell 5 percent.

The United States is still the biggest market by far, with 44 percent of global sales, about $26 billion. The UK came second at 18 percent and China third at 14 percent.

This is the part worth reading twice. At auction, sales of works over $1 million rose 21 percent, and sales over $10 million rose 30 percent. Sales of works under $50,000 fell 2 percent.

In plain words: the people with the most money came back to the market, and they bought the most expensive things. The segment where most living artists actually sell, and where most new collectors actually buy, did not share in the recovery.

“A good year for the art market and a good year for artists are not the same sentence.”

Online sales fell to $9.2 billion, about 15 percent of the market and the lowest level since 2019. Buyers went back to galleries, auctions and fairs, which together with private sales accounted for most of the market. Art fairs alone made up 35 percent of dealer turnover.

That cuts both ways for an emerging artist. A room still sells work better than a feed. But the rooms that move the most money, the big international fairs, cost galleries tens of thousands of dollars to enter, and an artist without a gallery is not in them.

The report found that women made up 50 percent of the artists represented by galleries focused on the primary market, the first sale of new work, and 45 percent of artists across all dealers, up from 41 percent the year before. Works by women made up 37 percent of sales by value. Representation is catching up faster than prices.

If you make art. The top of the market is not your market yet, and that is fine. The money that changes an artist's year is local and direct: a first solo show, a print edition priced so a neighbour can say yes, a collector who buys twice. Build that list. Fairs and auction records come later, if they come at all, and they come to artists who already have buyers.

If you want to buy. A soft under-$50,000 market is a buyer's market. Galleries are more willing to talk payment plans, and artists at the start of their careers are pricing honestly. Start under two hundred dollars and buy what you want to live with.

If you run a space. The report found 43 percent of dealers expected sales to improve in 2026. Optimism is cheap. A packed opening and a clear price list are better.

The new work on The Wall this month starts at $900 for a photograph from an edition of ten. That is the art market too. It is just not the part that makes the report's headline.