Five Galleries Making Their Frieze London Debut

If you work in art in London, Christmas has come early, as 2026’s Frieze Week is now upon us. As will soon be heard in shopping malls around the country, it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Since it first opened in London in 2003, Frieze has grown into a global brand, with outposts in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seoul, and the inaugural Frieze Abu Dhabi set to open next month. Between Frieze London and its sister fair, Frieze Masters, which focuses on ancient to modern art, together the two will present almost 300 galleries from 48 countries.

Last year saw Frieze London commit to its new floorplan – introduced in 2024 – which gave its Focus section, dedicated to emerging galleries, a newly prominent position at the centre of the fair. While many famous galleries can pay a premium for visibility and being close to the front at other commercial art fairs, Frieze showed its commitment to galleries fresh on the scene by giving Focus greater prominence.

So ahead of this year’s fair, we look at five galleries making their Frieze London debut.

Cob Gallery

Since opening in London’s Camden neighbourhood in 2011, Cob has established itself as a champion of emerging talent across the capital. Last May, the gallery moved to Bloomsbury where its first show in its new location, In Tandem (2025), presented an array of works by represented artists and artists with forthcoming projects across painting, sculpture, photography and mixed media to reflect the gallery’s variety of programming across its exhibitions and international fairs.

Its booth at Frieze, however, will take a different approach by focusing on one singular artist, Katelyn Eichwald. The gallery will show new paintings by Eichwald on linen and canvas which vary in size but remain ‘deliberately intimate in scale’. 

Oil on canvas, Let Me In, 2026. Courtesy of Cob Gallery

Alice Amati

Alice Amati opened her eponymous gallery in June 2023. Drawing on Amati’s own experience of studying and working in various countries, including the Netherlands and Hungary, the gallery brings together British and international artists to explore transnational dialogues around questions within society and art.

As part of Frieze’s curated Artist-to-Artist section, Vienna-based Romanian artist Paul Robas will be presenting multilayered paintings. Now in its fourth year, Artist-to-Artist sees seven international artists select emerging voices for solo presentations in a dedicated section at the fair. Painter Louise Giovanelli has selected Robas, whose practice reflects his fascination with the reproduced image. The artist begins by digitally manipulating photographs of unknown individuals from his personal archive, transforming them with layers of paint and textured surfaces to create scenarios to evoke the sensation of fading memories.

Paul Robas, Long Story, 2026. Courtesy: the artist and Alice Amati.

acb Gallery

acb Gallery was founded in 2003 to represent Hungarian neo-avant-garde art, both in the country and on the international scene. Since new management in 2009, the gallery has since expanded its portfolio to include neo-avant-garde and emerging artists. In an Instagram post, acb noted how being selected for Frieze London reflects the ‘growing international visibility of contemporary art from the region’.

The gallery will have a solo presentation of Selma Selman, an artist from Bosnia and Herzegovina and of Romani origin. The showcase will be a part of The Code Universe, a new section at the fair for 2026. Curated by Carol Yinghua Lu, director of the Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, it brings together artists from Shanghai to New York City to consider mass culture and societal transformation. Selman engages with the curatorial concept by painting on recycled materials and discarded metal to question how society assigns value to material objects, offering a new perspective on the relationships between mass culture and consumption.

Selma Selman, Untitled, 2025. oil on scrap metal 153h x 135w x 20d cm. Courtesy acb Gallery.

Fort Gansevoort

Established in New York in 2015, Fort Gansevoort is a contemporary art gallery with a strong curatorial and research component. The gallery aims to present focused exhibitions of artists whose work warrants greater recognition and an opportunity to be recontextualised.

For its first Frieze, the gallery is featuring a solo presentation by Haitian artist Myrlande Constant of new sequined textile works. Rooted in Vodou spirituality and African lineage, the artist’s compositions aim to confront histories of colonisation while asserting Haitian resilience.

Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort.

Bolanle Contemporary

Launched by Bolanle Tajudeen just two years ago, Bolanle Contemporary is a gallery dedicated to showcasing work from artists often underrepresented in the artworld. While this is the gallery’s first Frieze, it presented at the 2024 and 2025 editions of alternative art fair Minor Attractions. The UK Government Art Collection acquired Journaliste (2024), a painting of Congolese journalist Paul Bazakana Bayete by British-Congolese artist Djofray Makumbu, from the gallery in March 2025.

The gallery will mark its debut with a solo presentation by Afro-Dominican American artist Eilen Itzel do Espírito Santo, also in the Artist-to-Artist section, following her nomination by Dominican artist Firelei Báez. The presentation will feature new paintings on handmade paper and clay sculptures centred around creation and the Yoruba story of Obatala, the eldest figure in Yoruba mythology who was seen as the sculptor of humankind.

Courtesy the artist and Bolanle Contemporary.