The Hungarian National Gallery, the country’s largest public collection dedicated to tracing the birth and evolution of Hungarian fine art, rolls out a packed program through late 2025 and early 2026. Expect major exhibitions, guided tours in multiple languages, themed programs, family days, festivals, and concerts. Kids get hands-on with creative workshops, art education sessions, and summer camps. The headline act: a sweeping celebration of painter Lajos Tihanyi at 140, alongside guided explorations of turn-of-the-century nudes, architecture walks from crypt to dome, toddler-friendly adventures, and abstract art experiences.
Lajos Tihanyi at 140: Rebel Forms, Bold Colors
December 27–30, 2025 and January 9, 11, 17, 2026, Budapest
Rebel Forms, Bold Colors – The Art of Lajos Tihanyi marks the 140th anniversary of the artist’s birth with a special career-spanning show. Visitors will see his most important paintings and graphics, plus personal items that bring the story closer. Losing his hearing as a child, Tihanyi conjured colors and forms from silence and forged a singular voice in paint. Without academic training, he developed an extraordinary visual language that made him a defining member of the Nyolcak (The Eight) and one of the most original figures in 20th-century Hungarian painting. Several dates include guided tours to deepen the dive into his work and context.
From Crypt to Dome: An Architecture Walk
January 3, 2026, Budapest
The former Royal Palace building hides wonders few visitors fully grasp. Join a guided architectural walk to discover the National Gallery’s story and collections as you descend to the Habsburg Palatine Crypt and ascend to the panorama-rich dome, with detours through other special corners of the landmark. It’s a behind-the-scenes perspective on the palace-as-museum that pairs views with history.
Kids Track: Detectives, Colors, and Winter Magic
January 7, 14, 21, 2026, Budapest
The Recolor It! museum workshop invites children to a playful investigation sweeping through the Gallery’s spaces. This January, the mission is to track a great painter—Lajos Tihanyi—by scrutinizing dozens of his works for hidden clues. The goal: piece the puzzle together and reveal the mystery. Along the way, kids get creative: crafting playful “forgeries,” sketching composite “phantom images,” and experimenting with photo manipulation. On January 13, toddlers get their own winter wonderland: Snowflake Dance outfits them in the softest gloves and warmest boots for songs, stories, and dancing, while discovering what colors still shimmer in a snowy landscape.
English, Italian, and Family-Friendly Tours
January 8, 2026, Budapest
Look at that, Mom! – Sunny Days takes families through the exhibition Pictures of Tranquillity, spotlighting Adolf Fényes (1867–1945) alongside works from the permanent collection.
January 9, 2026, Budapest
Visita guidata in italiano leads visitors through Hungarian art’s most famous masterpieces, from the Middle Ages to today, with a special focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. With luck, you might even bump into Dante in the galleries.
Adolf Fényes and Silent Moments
January 10, 2026, Budapest
Adolf Fényes’s art opens doors to rooms flooded with sunshine, fairy-tale lively market scenes, and the everyday given the same weight as history painting. As one of the most sensitive Hungarian painters at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, he draws us close to quiet moments—and ourselves. Expect talk of how a peasant courtyard sits comfortably in the shadow of French Impressionism, what connects a Szolnok veranda to Paris, and what these century-old genre scenes tell us about simple joys and sorrows back then.
Curators, Critics, and Subjective Takes
January 15–17, 2026, Budapest
TIHANYI 140: Curator Mariann Gergely leads a tour revealing how, until the 1970s, Tihanyi’s works were mostly known in Hungary via black-and-white reproductions, and how his legacy made a dramatic journey from Paris to the National Gallery’s collection 55 years ago.
Mama, Look! – The Silence Speaks explores how Tihanyi’s childhood illness and resulting deafness shaped a uniquely powerful artistic language.
The Person Behind the Palette features art historian Gergely Barki guiding visitors through Tihanyi 140 with an offbeat lens.
Embroidered in Concrete welcomes writer and art historian Rita Halász for a personal, subjective tour.
Make It Abstract
January 17, 2026, Budapest
Create! – Abstract Experience Painting celebrates abstraction’s playground of color and form—from geometric rhythms to free-flowing brushwork. The session introduces heavyweight voices like Sean Scully, Judit Reigl, and Simon Hantaï, then moves to the studio for participants to paint their own striking abstract works inspired by the gallery walk.
Nudes at the Turn of the Century
January 18, 2026, Budapest
Nude sculpture is one of art’s oldest subjects, in paint and stone alike, forever evolving with the ideals of its day. Take a guided tour of the renewed exhibition of nude sculptures from the 19th–20th centuries and trace how bodies—and beauty—changed with the times.
New Year, New Style
January 21, 2026, Budapest
Mental Fitness – New Year, New Style focuses on artists’ stylistic shifts. Some, like János Vaszary, József Rippl-Rónai, and Aurél Bernáth, worked in multiple modes—sometimes so varied you’d hardly believe the paintings are by the same hand in different periods. After the gallery walk, the workshop channels that spirit with a Rippl-Rónai–inspired studio session, turning observation into practice.
All events take place in Budapest at the Hungarian National Gallery, where 2025–2026 promises a vivid blend of discovery, creation, and conversation—across languages, ages, and art forms.
