The Hungarian National Gallery, the country’s largest public collection documenting the birth and evolution of Hungarian visual arts, rolls into 2026 with a packed calendar. Expect permanent and temporary exhibitions, guided tours in multiple languages, themed programs, family days, festivals, and concerts. Kids get creative clubs, art education workshops, and summer camps. The big spotlight this month: the 140th anniversary of Lajos Tihanyi, a trailblazing figure of the Hungarian avant-garde who turned silence into color and form.
For the littlest visitors
January 13 and 27: Toddlers – Snowflake Dance. Pull on your warmest mittens and snow boots for a wintry adventure inside the Gallery. Little ones explore how forests turn white, what colors hide in snowy landscapes, and join the snowflakes for songs, stories, and dance. Location: Budapest.
Kids’ creative sleuthing
January 14, 21, 28: Recolor It! – museum workshop for children. January’s sessions invite kids into a mystery woven through the Gallery’s halls. Young detectives track a great painter—Lajos Tihanyi—and uncover his secrets. They’ll scrutinize dozens of his works to spot every hidden detail that matters, piecing together a larger puzzle. Alongside the investigation, there’s hands-on making: playful “forgeries,” composite portraits, and experiments with photo manipulation. Location: Budapest.
Tihanyi’s life, silence, and style
January 15 and 29: Mama, look! – The Silence Speaks. Tihanyi’s childhood illness left him deaf and mute, shaping his life and art. This program digs into how a seeming disadvantage became a defining force, making his work strikingly unique. Location: Budapest.
Curators, historians, and a legacy’s journey
January 15: TIHANYI 140. Curator Mariann Gergely leads a tour tracing how Tihanyi’s works were known mostly through black-and-white reproductions in Hungary until the 1970s. Fifty-five years ago, his estate took a dramatic route from Paris to the National Gallery’s collection. Location: Budapest.
Italian-language highlights
January 16: Visita guidata in italiano. Explore the main masterpieces of Hungarian art with an Italian-language guide. The route spans from the Middle Ages to today, with a special focus on the 19th and 20th centuries—keep an eye out for a surprise Dante among the paintings. Location: Budapest.
The person behind the palette
January 16: The Human Behind the Palette | guided tour by art historian Gergely Barki within the TIHANYI 140 exhibition. Expect an unconventional, expert-led walkthrough. Location: Budapest.
Lajos Tihanyi: rebel forms, bold colors
January 17, 18, 23, 25, 29, 31: A special career retrospective marks Tihanyi’s 140th birthday, featuring his key paintings, graphics, and personal objects. Losing his hearing in childhood, Tihanyi forged a singular voice in the language of painting, conjuring color and form out of silence. Without academic training, he built a remarkable visual idiom that made him a leading figure of the Nyolcak (The Eight) group and one of the most original painters of 20th-century Hungary. Several dates include guided tours; January 25 offers a sign-language-interpreted, accessible tour. Location: Budapest.
Abstract art, then make your own
January 17: Create! – Abstract experience painting. Abstract art lets imagination run: sometimes it’s geometric patterns, other times free-flowing brushstrokes. Meet giants like Sean Scully, Judit Reigl, and Simon Hantaï—artists who shaped the field. After a gallery walk, participants paint striking abstract canvases themselves. Location: Budapest.
Writer’s-eye tour
January 17: Embroidered in Concrete – writer Rita Halász leads a subjective tour, blending literature and art history. Location: Budapest.
Nudes at the turn of the century
January 18: Nude Sculptures from the Fin de Siècle. The human nude is one of art’s oldest themes, and its representation keeps shifting with each era’s ideals. Explore the renewed exhibition of 19th–20th-century nude sculpture with a guided tour. Location: Budapest.
New year, new style
January 21: Mental Fitness – New Year, New Style. A gallery walk zeroes in on artists’ stylistic pivots. Painters like János Vaszary, József Rippl-Rónai, and Aurél Bernáth worked across multiple styles, and you might be shocked that the same artist created two paintings from different periods. After the tour, the workshop dives into making, trying out one of Rippl-Rónai’s styles. Location: Budapest.
See Tihanyi from home
January 22: Online guided tour of the Tihanyi exhibition. Mark the Day of Hungarian Culture with a deep dive into Tihanyi’s painting—without leaving the couch. Location: Budapest.
Family explorations
January 24: Adventure in the Gallery – Peculiar Faces. Two age-friendly guided tours: 10:30–11:15 for ages 6–9, and 11:30–12:15 for ages 10–13. Location: Budapest.
Lecture: doubles and gaps
January 24: Two or None. Doublings and Hiatuses in Lajos Tihanyi’s Oeuvre | a lecture by art historian Gergely Barki examining repetitions, missing links, and the layered evolution of Tihanyi’s body of work. Location: Budapest.
The Hungarian National Gallery’s January is a full-spectrum immersion—from toddler dance to abstract painting, from historical nudes to the vivid, hard-won voice of Lajos Tihanyi. Whether on-site or online, there’s an entry point for every kind of art lover in Budapest.
