October has an advantage: it lets us return to museums without feeling guilty about the sunny days we could have spent outdoors. And the autumn season of 2026 starts off strong with a multitude of exhibitions not to miss. Milan revives the Brueghels, Florence ponders the beauty of broken things, Rome lights up with Keith Haring. Then there is photography, fashion, Pasolini, Tutankhamun and a Mestre that brings together Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and Body Art. In short, if you’re seeking a true art immersion, you have plenty of opportunities.
Here are the 10 best exhibitions in Italy in October you absolutely should not miss.
The Brueghels in Milan
Snowy landscapes, rural feasts, storms, battles, still lifes. At Palazzo Reale arrives the first major Milanese exhibition devoted to the Bruegel dynasty, with over eighty works spanning paintings, drawings, and prints. It begins with Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the artist who brings everyday life into grand painting, and moves on to his sons Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder. But the interesting point is another: understanding how a family managed to transform subjects, models, and workshop into something we would today almost call a brand. The route, curated by Carlotta Striolo and designed by Bernard Aikema, narrates the birth of many genres that would come to dominate the pictorial art of the European Seventeenth Century.
- Date: September 29, 2026 – January 31, 2027;
- Where: Palazzo Reale, Milan;
- Prices: full-price ticket from 19 euros.
Marc Riboud and Robert Capa in Cuneo
180 photographs and fifty years spent watching the world without shouting. At the Filatoio di Caraglio arrives the grand retrospective dedicated to Marc Riboud, built with the Musée Guimet of Paris. China occupies a large portion of the show, but it is not the only protagonist. There are people, works, streets, details, small gestures. Riboud possessed that rare ability to wait for something to happen within the frame. The exhibition also includes contact sheets, correspondence, magazines and working materials. Not only perfect images, therefore, but the behind-the-scenes of a gaze.
At the Castiglia of Saluzzo a hundred photographs from the International Center of Photography in New York reconstruct the path of Robert Capa. Here the distance between photographer and event almost disappears. Wars, escapes, people overwhelmed by events: Capa enters history as it happens. The show is divided into seven sections and blends famous images with lesser-known photographs. If you also visit Riboud, the comparison comes almost by itself: one observes the world, the other is often carried away by it.
- Date: October 22, 2026 – March 29, 2027
- Where: Castiglia di Saluzzo and Caraglio, Cuneo
- Prices: Free admission
Tutankhamun in Bologna
Palazzo Belloni leans into immersion. The exhibition dedicated to Tutankhamun reconstructs the discovery of the pharaoh’s tomb through more than one hundred certified reproductions of the artifacts, scenographies, sections on mummification and virtual reality. Do not expect a classic archaeological display with cases and original artifacts: here the aim is to make you enter into the Howard Carter narrative and the 1922 discovery. The opening on October 3 also features a decidedly popular guest for those following Egyptology: Zahi Hawass, a key figure at the inauguration.
- Date: October 3, 2026 – May 2, 2027;
- Where: Palazzo Belloni, Bologna;
- Prices: Full tickets from 16 euros, reduced from 13 euros.
The Body of the City in Turin
Turin told through the bodies that inhabited it. This isn’t a metaphor: Palazzo Madama brings together paintings, sculptures, photographs, documents and more than forty garments from Turin tailoring houses. The route spans almost eighty years, from the grand exhibitions at the end of the 19th century up to 1961. In between, silhouettes change, women’s work, the industrial city, art, Via Roma, and the relationship with Paris. It’s certainly a fashion show, but also a study of urban planning, society and identity.
- Date: October 15, 2026 – February 22, 2027;
- Where: Palazzo Madama, Turin;
- Prices: Full from 14 euros, reduced 12 euros.
Broken. The Power of the Fragment, Florence
Can a head without a body convey more than a whole statue? Palazzo Strozzi starts from this question and builds a journey that winds from ancient Egypt to Greece, from Michelangelo to Rodin, and on to Louise Bourgeois, Francesco Vezzoli and Danh Vo. There are over eighty works, drawn from loans from museums such as the Louvre, the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The fragment, in short, stops being viewed as simply what remains. It becomes artwork, memory, trauma, possibility. A show that is very physical and at the same time deeply contemporary.
- Date: September 25, 2026 – January 24, 2027;
- Where: Palazzo Strozzi, Florence;
- Prices: Full ticket from 16 euros, 20 euros with an audio guide.
Keith Haring, Rome
Radiant Baby, barking dogs, bodies in motion. The visual vocabulary of Keith Haring arrives at Palazzo Braschi with over 140 works and materials, including major loans from the Nakamura Keith Haring Collection. The itinerary begins with 1980s New York, passes through the Subway Drawings, political posters, paintings and sculptures, and reaches the artist’s final years. The risk with Haring is thinking you already know everything because those figures are everywhere. The exhibition exactly aims to prove the opposite: to place them back in their proper context.
- Date: October 6, 2026 – April 11, 2027;
- Where: Museo di Roma – Palazzo Braschi;
- Prices: Prices from 17 euros for full, 15 euros for reduced.
Pasolini in Rapolano Terme (SI)
The Pasolini you may know less has brushes, papers and colors before him. At the Antica Grancia di Serre di Rapolano the exhibition looks at the painterly production of the writer and director, placing it in dialogue with landscape, cinema and biography. There are self-portraits, human figures, library materials, documents and drawings related to his filmmaking, including those produced around Medea. The relationship with Roberto Longhi and that with Giuseppe Zigaina become two essential threads. And the landscape does not merely serve as a backdrop: it enters directly into Pasolini’s reflection on the changing Italy.
- Date: November 11, 2026 – January 10, 2027;
- Where: Antica Grancia di Serre di Rapolano, Rapolano Terme;
- Prices: From 5 to 8 euros for full, 3 euros for reduced.
Song of the Sirens in Milan
Big noses. Ears. Butts. Oversized flowers. Stop-motion animations in dimly lit rooms. Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg return with a show that uses the body as fragment, fetish and almost mythological creature. The desire remains right there, just out of reach. The clay figures seem about to do something that never actually happens. Rather than viewing a sequence of works, you find yourself inside a strange, sensuous, somewhat unsettling environment.
- Date: October 1 – December 19, 2026;
- Where: Gió Marconi, via Tadino 15, Milan;
- Prices: Free admission.
Van Gogh, Modigliani and more, Parma
60 works, 13 rooms and over two centuries of female imagery. Palazzo del Governatore brings to Parma a selection from the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art that features Van Gogh, Modigliani, Boldini, Savinio, Picasso and Giosetta Fioroni. Do not expect a simple gallery of pretty portraits. The thread is identity: real women and idealized figures, aristocratic, actresses, intellectuals, almost anonymous characters. Among the most anticipated works is Picasso’s Nu Debout, a recent acquisition by the Gallery.
- Date: October 2, 2026 – March 8, 2027;
- Where: Palazzo del Governatore, Parma;
- Prices: full 12 euros; reduced 8 euros; concessionary 5 euros.
Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka in Mestre
The beautiful, fragile, erotic, wounded body. Then the body that becomes directly art. The new show at the MUVEC starts from Vienna’s Secession and Gustav Klimt’s Judith II, traverses through Schiele and Kokoschka and arrives at Body Art, with Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Ana Mendieta and Gina Pane. There are 47 works including paintings, drawings, graphics, sculptures and photographs from international museums and foundations. The temporal leap works because the theme remains the same but changes its skin: first the body is represented, then displayed, used, transformed and becomes political terrain. A show that begins in the twentieth century but speaks quite a bit about how we view ourselves today.
- Date: September 26, 2026 – February 14, 2027;
- Where: MUVEC – Casa delle Contemporaneità, Mestre;
- Prices: Full 7 euros, reduced 3.50 euros.
