The Hungarian National Gallery, the country’s largest public collection dedicated to the birth and evolution of Hungarian visual arts, rolls into 2025–2026 with a packed slate of exhibitions, guided tours in multiple languages, themed programs, family days, festivals, concerts, and creative workshops for kids, including summer camps. The museum’s permanent and temporary shows anchor a season that pairs heavyweight retrospectives with hands-on art experiences across Budapest’s historic former Royal Palace.
“Rebel Forms, Bold Colors” – The World of Lajos Tihanyi
From December 28 to 30, 2025, and on multiple dates throughout January 2026, the Gallery celebrates the 140th anniversary of Lajos Tihanyi’s birth with a special career-spanning exhibition showcasing his most important paintings, graphics, and personal belongings. Losing his hearing as a child, Tihanyi summoned a universe of color and form from silence, forging a singular voice in the language of painting. Without academic training, he built an extraordinary visual idiom that made him a defining figure of the Nyolcak (The Eight) artists’ group and one of the most original Hungarian painters of the 20th century. Several guided tours invite visitors deeper into his practice, with special curator-led walks and thematic approaches that bring his biography and stylistic changes into sharp relief.
From Crypt to Dome: Architecture Walk
On January 3, 2026, the museum’s building tour opens the doors to corners of the former Royal Palace most visitors never see. The route takes in the Habsburg Palatine Crypt, the sweeping city views from the dome, and other architectural highlights while tracing the history of the institution and its collections.
Kids’ Workshop: Color It Anew!
Throughout January 2026, the “Color It Anew!” museum workshop turns children into detectives on the trail of Tihanyi’s secrets. Young sleuths scrutinize dozens of works to uncover hidden details and assemble the bigger picture. The investigation folds into art-making: kids “forge” paintings, craft composite portraits, and experiment with photo manipulation—learning by doing and playing.
Look at that, Mom! – Sunny Days
On January 8, 2026, an English-language guided visit explores the Pictures of Tranquillity exhibition and pairs it with a focused look at Adolf Fényes (1867–1945), whose quietly luminous interiors and everyday scenes glow with a warmth that threads through the museum’s permanent displays.
Guided Tours: From Italian to Avant-Garde
January 9, 2026, offers a double bill. One tour revisits Tihanyi’s exhibition with a deeper dive into his radical color and form. Another, in Italian, surveys major Hungarian masterpieces from the Middle Ages to today, spotlighting the 19th and 20th centuries—and maybe even a Dante cameo among the canvases.
Adolf Fényes: Light in Everyday Life
On January 10, 2026, a tour devoted to Adolf Fényes moves through sun-drenched interiors, vibrant market scenes, and intimate genre paintings. Along the way, it asks how a peasant courtyard converses with French Impressionism, what links a veranda in Szolnok to Paris, and what these century-old works still say about simple joys and quiet sorrows.
Toddlers’ Time: Snowflake Dance
On January 13, 2026, the Gallery becomes a winter wonderland for the tiniest visitors. Pull on soft gloves and snow boots for songs, stories, and a dance with snowflakes, while discovering the surprising colors tucked into a white-cloaked forest.
Curators, Historians, Writers: Voices on Tihanyi
January 15 brings a curator-led tour by Mariann Gergely, tracing how Tihanyi’s works were known mostly through black-and-white reproductions in Hungary until the 1970s, and how his estate made a dramatic journey from Paris to the museum 55 years ago. The same day, Mom, look! – The Silence Speaks examines how Tihanyi’s childhood deafness shaped his art into something uniquely resonant. On January 16, art historian Gergely Barki leads an unconventional tour titled The Person Behind the Palette, and on January 17, writer and art historian Rita Halász guides a subjective walk, Concrete Embroidery.
Create: Abstract Experience Painting
On January 17, 2026, the studio turns abstract. After a gallery walk through the world of Sean Scully, Judit Reigl, and Simon Hantai—giants of abstraction—participants paint their own striking nonfigurative works, playing with geometry, gesture, color, and rhythm.
Nude Sculpture at the Turn of the Century
January 18, 2026, focuses on one of art’s oldest subjects: the nude. A guided tour of the renewed exhibition of 19th–20th-century nude sculptures traces how ideals of the human body shift with the times, and how each era reshapes a timeless theme.
Mental Fitness: New Year, New Style
On January 21, 2026, the museum spotlights artists who reinvented themselves. János Vaszary, József Rippl-Rónai, and Aurél Bernáth all worked across styles, sometimes so dramatically that paintings from different periods feel like different authors. After the gallery walk, the workshop channels Rippl-Rónai through hands-on creation.
Online Tour: Tihanyi from Home
On January 22, 2026, celebrate the Day of Hungarian Culture with an online guided tour of the Tihanyi exhibition, bringing his color-charged silence and rebellious forms straight to your screen—no matter where you are.
All programs take place in Budapest at the Hungarian National Gallery, unless noted otherwise. The season blends scholarship with play, grandeur with intimacy, and history with hands-on discovery—an open invitation to look closer and see more.
