Kunsthal Rotterdam

Record-breaking exhibitions, a rich diversity in both our programme and audience, and the intensive work behind the scenes that makes it all possible. Above all, we close 2025 with gratitude and a fantastic result: over 372,000 visitors and an average visitor rating of 8,2.

The Kunsthal in 2025 in a few figures. Download the annual report for more information.

The various programme components – including talent development, major international exhibitions in collaboration with renowned global partners, as well as Rotterdam-based initiatives – allow us to cover a wide range of content with an intentional focus on artists with migration or non-western backgrounds, women artists, and multivocal perspectives. This resulted in a varied programme covering everything from intimate presentations to impressive, largescale exhibitions. Swipe through the images for an impression of last year’s exhibitions, and explore the Kunsthal annual report for a complete overview of all exhibitions and activities.  

With Friday Night LIVE, the Kunsthal offers space for cultural collaboration, talent development, and audience expansion, strengthening its role as a connecting cultural institution in Rotterdam. In 2025, thanks to the support of the VriendenLoterij and together with many wonderful Rotterdam partners, we realised nine successful editions of Friday Night LIVE.  

For a large and activating summer programme, the Kunsthal invited Rotterdam-based design duo Kwannie Tang & Man-Yee Mok of Studio MAKY. The brief: design an interactive and playful installation on the stairs of the Auditorium, in the heart of the Kunsthal. The result? The Grand Summer Art Croquet: a fantastical croquet course in which art and play come together.

Education and public activities bring the Kunsthal programme to life; visitors are activated, invited to learn, and introduced to other perspectives. In 2025, this focus was realised through guided tours, Artist Talks. Look&Do tours for children, and activities for families in the pop-up KunsthalLAB, a space where experimentation and playful learning are central.

In 2026, the Kunsthal will once again present a diverse programme in which contrast and diversity take centre stage, with room for different disciplines, makers, and stories. We offer a mix of emerging and established talent, with both local and international perspectives.
 

• Flowers Forever opens this spring. Featuring more than two hundred objects from art, design, fashion, and science, the exhibition presents the first extensive cultural-historical overview of the flower in the Netherlands.
• Around the same time, the Kunsthal presents the work of the nominees of the tenth edition of the NN Art Award, followed by a retrospective exhibition of Rotterdam-based artist Woody van Amen, who turns ninety in 2026.
• From late May onwards, a major retrospective of American photographer Helen Levitt takes centre stage. City at Play, featuring her intuitive photographs of everyday street life in New York, complemented by films and colour projections, is one of the most comprehensive presentations of her work to date.
• From September, the Kunsthal presents an exhibition by theatre maker and artist Robert Wilson, who passed away in 2025: A Chair and You, a total installation in which chairs from all over the world are presented in a theatrical way, as only the master scenographer could do.
• The autumn season is marked by an extensive overview of Paul Signac (1863–1935), the master of Neo-Impressionism. At the end of the nineteenth century, building on the work of Georges Seurat, he developed a painting technique in which dots and short brushstrokes form a rhythmic symphony of colour: Pointillism. The exhibition Signac. Symphony of Colours offers an in-depth introduction to Signac’s work, in a scale rarely seen in the Netherlands. In addition, Symphony of Colours highlights how Signac’s influence resonates in the painting of his contemporaries.

Read the Annual Report 2025 here in PDF or the previous annual reports here.