Im Rahmen ihrer Jahrespressekonferenz

At their annual press conference today, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collection, SKD) took stock of the year 2025, outlined their priority areas, and unveiled the exhibition highlights for 2026.

The museum alliance was optimistic about the future. Against the backdrop of the current budgetary situation, the SKD is sharpening its focus and purposefully developing its organisation and structure. Scholarly and scientific research and the presentation of the collections are being strategically interlinked in order to ensure relevance and sustainability for the future.

‘The Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden stand for excellence in all areas. Especially in challenging times, we set clear priorities, act with agility, and actively manage change,’ says Dr Bernd Ebert, Director-General of the SKD.

In stating this commitment, the SKD is positioning itself as a forward-looking museum alliance that will focus in future even more strongly on researching, exhibiting, interpreting and communicating its collections, and on ensuring visitor satisfaction.

Last year, the SKD recorded around 1.8 million visitors. Forty percent of guests came from abroad and 60 percent from within Germany, 24 percent of whom were from Saxony.

This year saw a spectacular start with great visitor and media interest already at the beginning of February. In cooperation with the Munch Museum in Oslo, the Albertinum is hosting a large-scale exhibition of works by Paula Modersohn-Becker and Edvard Munch entitled ‘The Big Questions of Life’ (until 31 May 2026). The exhibition marks the 150th birthday of the Dresden-born artist.

The next highlight awaits visitors in April: Now that building work on the Grand Ballroom and the Proposition Hall has been finished, the second floor, or bel étage, of the Residenzschloss (Royal Palace) is at last complete. The two newly opened halls in the north wing will house the new permanent exhibition ‘Masks and Crowns. Court Festival Culture and Representations of Power’ (from 22 April 2026). The exhibition will feature unique holdings that bear witness to the entertainments and displays of power at the Dresden court. These objects are among the most precious works of their kind from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

The exhibition ‘Japan on Paper in Dresden’ (26 June – 20 September 2026) at the Kupferstich-Kabinett (Museum of Prints, Drawings and Photographs) focuses on selected items, including some that have never been shown before, from among its holdings, which now number more than 10,000 objects. The show will feature works by the most famous woodblock artists of the 18th and 19th centuries: Kitagawa Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai, and Utagawa Hiroshige.

The events calendar also has something special in store for late summer: the exhibition ‘Correggio. Movingly Human’ (19 September 2026 – 10 January 2027) is the first major monographic exhibition of the artist’s work outside Italy. The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) will be dedicating a large-scale exhibition to this 16th-century artist who is of such importance to the gallery and to the history of Italian painting. The gallery’s own holdings will be supplemented by numerous top-calibre international loans.

The term ‘cryptocurrency’ is ubiquitous – but what does it actually mean? The special exhibition at the Münzkabinett entitled ‘Crypto, what?’ (3 October 2026 – 29 August 2027) will look at digital currency and ask: Where does it come from and how does it work?

Alongside the exhibition highlights, there are other exciting events on the programme: the Kunstgewerbemuseum will be holding a special celebration to mark its 150th anniversary (11 September 2026). This will be followed by a conference of the Research Network of Schools of Decorative Arts in the Japanisches Palais.

Further notable events are also on the horizon: in 2027, the SKD will be celebrating the 450th birthday of Peter Paul Rubens with a large-scale exhibition. The show ‘Rubens. A Global Superstar in Dresden!’ (25 June 2027 to 9 January 2028) will pay tribute to the diplomat and most famous painter of the European Baroque north of the Alps, whose paintings have been prominent in the Semper Gallery for centuries.

To the exhibitions