Sonsbeek 2026: Ik hoef geen tuin, ik deel een park
(I don’t need a backyard, I share a park)
July 2–October 11, 2026
Curated by Amira Gad and Christina Li
Assistant Curator: Berber Meindertsma
Commissioner: Orlando Maaike Gouwenberg
The next edition of Sonsbeek, Europe’s oldest recurring public art exhibition, takes place from July 2–October 11, 2026. Across Park Sonsbeek, Arnhem’s city center, and our presentation partners Museum Arnhem, Museum Bronbeek, Omstand, POST, and Rozet, the thirteenth edition includes eighteen artists, twelve of whom contribute new commissions, activating memory as a collective material.
Sonsbeek 2026 approaches memory as a dynamic space, shaped by what we choose, inherit, or must share—especially when memories are vulnerable, contested, or fading. The exhibition unfolds amid persistent conflict and global crisis, in stark contrast with Sonsbeek’s founding after the Second World War, a period of reflection and rebuilding.
Exhibition title
Sonsbeek 2026’s title Ik hoef geen tuin, ik deel een park (I don’t need a backyard, I share a park) originates from the Arnhem-based collective Loesje—one of the participating artists. By adopting this slogan from Loesje’s posters, Sonsbeek 2026 places the park at its center, emphasizing a spirit of collective experience, where meaning is shaped together rather than defined from one perspective.
Just as the park is not neutral, memory is not neutral either. Each is a creation of our infrastructures, be they political or social or cultural, determining what is remembered and what is left out. And so the park, through this edition, becomes the platform where this becomes undone and where the mechanisms of memory are exposed and reengineered. As such, memory is approached as a living action—unstable, incomplete, and continuously reworked. The artists in Sonsbeek 2026 are connected by a conviction that memory is produced through speaking and listening, assembling and disassembling, as the lived practice of coexistence that is anything but passive. Released into the common space of this park, where memory becomes the material through which we orient ourselves, we might contest inherited narratives and make the conditions for a shared future.
Opening program
The Sonsbeek 2026 opening program runs from July 2 to 5, 2026 with performances, talks and activations across Park Sonsbeek and partner venues. Highlights include: Jota Mombaça’s premiere of the performance the long language (Spiral) with an ArtEZ Academy of Music student choir; nasa4nasa performs Promises; Mounira Al Solh leads a procession and tabbouleh picnic for her commission And Europa fled; Museum Arnhem hosts a breakfast conversation on the late Esma Yiğitoğlu’s work; Fanja Bouts offers a family-friendly deep-mapping walking tour in the park; Loesje holds a writing workshop at Plaatsmaken; and Afaina de Jong talks about the significance of placemaking within memory. Celebrations continue through the evening at partner venues POST and Omstand.
Participants of Sonsbeek 2026
Larry Achiampong (b. 1984, London)*, Korakrit Arunanondchai (b. 1986, Bangkok)*, Alvaro Barrington (b. 1983, Caracas)*, Fanja Bouts (b. 1997, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)*, Forensic Architecture (est. 2010, London), Femke Herregraven (b. 1982, Nijmegen, the Netherlands)*, Afaina de Jong (b. 1977, Amsterdam)*, On Kawara (29,711 days), Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (b. 1951, Antwerp)*, Loesje (est. 1983, Arnhem)*, Jumana Manna (b. 1987, Princeton, NJ), Jota Mombaça (b. 1991, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)*, nasa4nasa (est. 2016, Cairo), Ipeh Nur (b. 1993, Yogyakarta), Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, b. 1989, Dallas)*, Sahej Rahal (b. 1988, Mumbai)*, Mounira Al Solh (b. 1978, Beirut)*, and Esma Yiğitoğlu (b. 1944, Zincidere, Türkiye; d. 2009, Rotterdam).
*Newly commissioned works for Sonsbeek 2026
Campaign illustration
The campaign illustration for Sonsbeek 2026 is conceived by Moriz Oberberger and takes Park Sonsbeek as its starting point. Oberberger’s illustration offers a playful interpretation of what Park Sonsbeek can be, showing the many hands that support and shape it, and presenting the park as a living organism.
For the full program, visit sonsbeek.org.
Photo: Moriz Oberberger.