Royal Academy of Arts, London
16 June – 23 August 2026
This summer marks a special moment for Martha Freud, whose work has been selected for the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition for the first time.
Now in its 258th year, the Summer Exhibition remains one of the most enduring fixtures in the British art calendar. Since 1769, its galleries have brought together Royal Academicians and internationally recognised names alongside emerging and previously unseen artists, creating an annual snapshot of contemporary artistic practice.
For her debut, Freud presents her Playing Cards — a work characteristic of an artist whose practice has long explored the possibilities of light, language and the everyday object.
There is a playfulness to Freud’s work that often belies its intimacy. Familiar forms become carriers for words, ideas and emotion; illuminated text turns objects into something quietly communicative. Her work invites us to look twice, finding significance in materials and objects we might otherwise overlook.
That approach feels particularly at home in this year’s Summer Exhibition.
Coordinated by artist Ryan Gander RA, the 2026 exhibition takes Interconnectedness as its theme, exploring the unexpected associations that can emerge between seemingly disparate things. Painting, sculpture, print, architecture and other media are deliberately brought into conversation rather than separated — encouraging visitors to discover their own connections as they move through the galleries.
Within the extraordinary density of the Summer Exhibition, there is something particularly fitting about encountering Freud’s Playing Cards: an everyday object reimagined through an artist’s distinctive visual language.
Freud joins an exhibition that spans generations and approaches, continuing one of the Royal Academy’s most compelling traditions — placing established voices alongside new discoveries and allowing unexpected relationships to emerge between them.
For Freud, however, 2026 represents something more personal: a first appearance within an exhibition that has been celebrating artists for more than 250 years.
And a very welcome one.
Martha Freud’s Playing Cards is exhibited as part of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2026, at the Royal Academy of Arts until 23 August.
