FRIEZE LONDON AND FRIEZE MASTERS

Frieze London and Frieze Masters are two art fairs held at once in the Regent’s Park for five days in mid-October: Frieze London, of contemporary galleries, in the south of the park off Park Square West, and Frieze Masters, of art made before 2000, from antiquities and old masters to the twentieth century, on Gloucester Green in the north-east corner, by the Zoo. They are a quarter of an hour apart on foot, with Frieze Sculpture in the English Gardens between them. The first day is by invitation. Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips time their autumn sales of contemporary art to the same week.

When Masters was announced in 2011, a critic wrote: “Lo and behold, the art world has discovered that time is not flat.”

The Magazine

frieze began as a magazine, launched in 1991 by Amanda Sharp, Matthew Slotover and the artist Tom Gidley, and first thought of as an alternative to more established magazines such as Artforum. In 2003 Slotover and Sharp parted ways with Gidley and held the first Frieze Art Fair, in the Regent’s Park: a hundred and twenty-four galleries, 27,700 visitors and sales of twenty million pounds, with space let at £180 a metre. The next year there were a hundred and fifty galleries, more than a thousand had applied, the public paid £12, and forty-two thousand came. Frieze stopped reporting its sales in 2006.

It was among the first fairs to commission work from artists and to hold talks while it was open. In its first year Outset set up, with Tate and Frieze, “the world’s first acquisitions fund connected to an art fair”. The opening night of 2005 had Claudia Schiffer, David Bowie and Alexander McQueen among its guests. In 2007 Gavin Brown’s Enterprise turned its booth into a flea market; in 2017 Hauser & Wirth had Mary Beard open a museum of false antiquities bought on eBay.

Frieze Masters was announced in May 2011 with Frieze New York, and both were first held in 2012, under Victoria Siddall. It was to show about seventy galleries with work made before 2000, from antiquities and old masters through to the art of the twentieth century, and had the backing of Dr Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery. Frieze Sculpture has stood in the English Gardens since the same year. By 2016 a hundred and five thousand people came.

Endeavor took control of Frieze in 2016, and in 2025 Ari Emanuel agreed to buy it in a deal valued at two hundred million dollars. There are Frieze fairs now in New York, Los Angeles, Seoul and, from 2026, Abu Dhabi, and in 2023 it bought The Armory Show and EXPO Chicago.

The Two Fairs

The Wednesday is for invitations only. On the Thursday the members and invited guests have the morning, and the doors open to tickets at one; Frieze London closes at five that day, and Masters at seven. The Friday is a ticketed preview, and the Saturday and Sunday are open to all who hold a ticket. A free shuttle bus runs between the two fairs about every quarter of an hour.

Frieze London has its main section of galleries, solo stands at the entrance, Focus, for galleries founded within the last twelve years, Artist-to-Artist and Editions. Frieze Masters keeps a section called Spotlight, of solo shows by artists of the twentieth century, and another called Reflections. Frieze Masters “has always resisted the idea of a single art history,” says its director, Emanuela Tarizzo. At Masters in 2025 Hauser & Wirth sold a painting by Gabriele Münter for 2.4 million Swiss francs.

The 2026 fairs run from 14 to 18 October, with almost three hundred galleries from forty-eight countries and regions: a hundred and seventy-two at Frieze London and nearly a hundred and forty at Masters, some at both. Frieze London adds a section called The Code Universe, curated by Carol Yinghua Lu of the Inside-Out Art Museum in Beijing, and its entrance stands go to Márcia Falcão and Agata Ingarden. Masters, in its second year under Tarizzo, gives Spotlight its largest edition yet, under new curators, Dr Devika Singh and Dr Sofia Gotti, and opens a new thread, Queering Modernism. Frieze Sculpture, in its fourteenth year, shows eleven artists, curated by Fatoş Üstek, from 16 September to 1 November.

What to Know

The fairs run for five days in mid-October, from a Wednesday to a Sunday. The 2027 dates have not been announced.

Tickets are sold online only, in advance, for a set day and time, and there is no box office. A weekend ticket for one fair is about fifty pounds, and for both about ninety; a ticket for the first preview on the Thursday is a hundred and fifty pounds. The Wednesday is by invitation, and is reached through Frieze’s own membership. Children under two go free.

A lounge suit. No code is published, so far as the Court can find, and the preview days set the register.

Regent’s Park station is under five minutes’ walk from Frieze London; Baker Street and Great Portland Street are close. Camden Town and Mornington Crescent are about ten minutes from Masters. Stay in Marylebone or Mayfair, where rooms cost more in fair week.

The mistake is to see Masters first on the Thursday. Frieze London closes at five that day and Masters at seven; and a general admission ticket does not allow re-entry, so lunch is taken inside.

The Court

Frieze London and Frieze Masters are not the Court’s own. Invitations for the Wednesday, when both fairs are open only to guests, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Marylebone or Mayfair, and the table afterward. PAD London is in Berkeley Square the same week, and Art Basel Paris follows the week after.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.