ART SG
Late January · Marina Bay Sands, Singapore · Four Days · Since 2023 · Art
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Arranged by the Court
- Dates22 to 24 January 2027
- WhereMarina Bay Sands, Singapore
- DressLounge suit
- AdmissionOpen to the public
- The weatherIn January Singapore reaches about 31°C by day and 24°C at night, and rain falls on about one day in two.
- The tableThe Court dines afterwards at Les Amis, 1 Scotts Road, Shaw Centre, Singapore (lesamis.com.sg).
- Of noteMarina Bay Sands is linked to Bayfront station on the Circle and Downtown lines, and the public days run from Friday 22 to Sunday 24 January.
- In companyA member who means to go says so to the Secretary, and the Court seats its members together where the engagement allows.RSVP tells the Secretary that a member means to attend. Send passes the engagement’s name, its date and the address of its page to whomever the reader chooses, or, on a computer, copies the address; the Court itself sends and keeps nothing.RSVP
Art SG is four days of contemporary art at Marina Bay Sands, and Singapore’s third attempt at an international fair. It also opens the art year, being among the first fairs of consequence anywhere.
Around a hundred galleries from thirty countries. Some forty thousand people through the doors.
The Bet
The fair launched in January 2023 and was the largest art event the region had seen in a decade. Singapore had tried twice before. Art Stage Singapore opened in 2011 at the same address and cancelled its 2019 edition days before it was due to open, and a smaller show had closed the year before. Art SG itself was announced in 2018 and postponed four times before it opened.
It was a wager on Singapore. The city has money, English, rule of law and a position in the middle of everything, and what it lacked was a market. Magnus Renfrew, who had built the Hong Kong fair that Art Basel later bought, set out to give it one. UBS backed it from the start.
And MCH Group, which owns Art Basel, took a fifteen per cent stake in Art SG a year before the first edition opened.
That last fact is worth sitting with. The parent company of Art Basel Hong Kong, which runs in March, holds a share of the fair that runs in January.
The Sectors
The floor divides into three, and the divisions are the fair’s argument about itself.
Galleries is the main body: established international and regional names showing their strongest work.
Focus is for curatorial risk, weighted toward digital and new media and toward artists in the middle of their careers rather than at the top of them.
Futures is the interesting one. It is open only to galleries less than ten years old, showing work made in the previous eighteen months that has not been exhibited anywhere before. There is a prize attached to it now. A visitor who wants to see what has not yet been decided goes there first.
What to Know
The fair anchors Singapore Art Week, which runs about ten days across the city. The fair is four of them, and the rest deserves more time than most visitors give it.
There is a preview and vernissage the evening before the public opening. That is where the selling happens.
Singapore in January is hot and wet. The city is built to be walked indoors and the art week is not.
The fair has grown smaller rather than larger since it opened, which is not the same as failing. A hundred galleries that sell is a better fair than a hundred and sixty that do not.
The mistake is treating it as a stop on the way to Hong Kong in March. The regional work here is shown nowhere else, and it is the reason to come.
Questions
When is ART SG 2027?
ART SG’s fifth edition is open from Friday 22 to Sunday 24 January 2027 at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands. The VIP Preview is on Thursday 21 January from 2 p.m., and the Vernissage follows from 6 to 9 p.m. The fair opens at noon on the Friday and at 11 a.m. at the weekend.
How do you buy tickets to ART SG?
Tickets are sold online. As of October 2026, a full-price 2027 adult day ticket costs S$40 on the Friday and S$44 at the weekend, less if bought early. The Vernissage ticket is S$94 and the Signature Pass, with the VIP Lounge, S$185, booking fees apart. Children aged 16 and under enter free on a registered $0 ticket.
How do you get into the ART SG VIP Preview?
The VIP Preview, on the Thursday afternoon before the public days, is by invitation through the fair’s VIP programme, which also gives the onsite VIP Lounge and further private events. Collectors and art professionals apply through the VIP enquiry form on artsg.com. The Vernissage that evening can be bought, in limited numbers.
Is there a dress code at ART SG?
ART SG publishes no dress code. The fair is held indoors, in a convention centre linked directly to Bayfront MRT station. The Court wears a lounge suit.
How do you get to ART SG?
The fair is at the Sands Expo and Convention Centre, 10 Bayfront Avenue. Bayfront MRT station, on the Circle and Downtown lines, is linked directly to Marina Bay Sands, and Exit E leads to the Expo. By taxi or ride-hailing app, the destination is the MBS Expo & Convention Centre. Changi Airport is about twenty minutes away by car.
The Court
Art SG is not the Court’s own. Preview passes, introductions to particular galleries and places at the collectors’ dinners are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay, and the table afterwards.
How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.
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