There are many ways to survive summer in the Gulf. You can build a meaningful relationship with your air conditioner. You can pretend that walking from the taxi to the entrance is a wellness challenge. You can start saying things like “at least it is a dry heat”, even when it is very clearly not helping.

Or you can look ahead to autumn, when the city slowly returns to life, outdoor plans stop sounding like a punishment, and cultural calendars begin to look extremely persuasive. Louvre Abu Dhabi has now announced its 2026–2027 season, and frankly, it is doing a very good job of making us wish the cooler months would hurry up and arrive with iced coffee, light jackets and emotionally stable temperatures.

The new season will bring four exhibitions to the museum, moving from the universal language of board games to the maritime routes of the Indian Ocean, contemporary art from the GCC and India, and urgent stories of cultural heritage protection. In other words, it is a season about movement, memory, exchange and survival — which, coincidentally, is also how we describe trying to cross a car park in Abu Dhabi in August.

When? July 18, 2026 – April 2027

The season opens at the Children’s Museum with A Board Game Adventure. Before you assume this is only for children, please remember that adults are also the people who turn Monopoly into a psychological battlefield and take Scrabble defeats personally for several years.

The exhibition explores the long history of board games as tools for learning, imagination and social connection. It traces the journeys of games such as chess, carrom, ludo and mancala, showing how they travelled across cultures, evolved over time and connected people long before anyone could send a “let’s play” message and then ignore it for three days.

Bringing together around thirty objects from Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collection, alongside regional and international loans, the exhibition includes early examples from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. It reminds us that play isn't just a cute little leisure activity. It is part of how humans think, compete, bond, strategise and occasionally reveal their true personality over a dice roll.

When? October 14, 2026 – February 14, 2027

This is the exhibition for anyone who likes their history with a strong sense of movement, smell, texture and drama. Presented in partnership with the National Museum of Asian Arts – Guimet in France, Spices and Wonders: Sailing the Indian Ocean explores the vast maritime routes that connected Africa, the Middle East, Europe, South Asia and Southeast Asia through the Indian Ocean, spanning from Antiquity to the seventeenth century.

The exhibition looks at trade, navigation, craftsmanship and cultural exchange through objects such as spices, textiles, ceramics and other precious cargos that crossed the ocean. In a way, it is a reminder that globalisation didn't begin with express delivery and suspiciously fast online shopping. People were already crossing waters, exchanging goods, ideas and styles, and changing one another’s lives centuries before we started tracking parcels every fifteen minutes.

There is something especially fitting about seeing this story in Abu Dhabi, a city shaped by the sea, trade, movement and many overlapping histories. It isn't just an exhibition about the Indian Ocean as a route. It is about the ocean as a cultural engine — carrying objects, tastes, knowledge and identities across borders long before borders became so fond of paperwork.

When? November 11, 2026 – February 28, 2027

Returning for its sixth edition, Art Here 2026 and the Richard Mille Art Prize invited proposals from contemporary artists from the GCC countries, both nationals and residents, and from India, for nationals only.

The theme of the edition is Confluences, which feels very much like the word you use when “everything is connected, moving, influencing and quietly complicating everything else” sounds too long for a wall text. Curated by Kamini Sawhney, founding director of the Museum of Art and Photography in Bengaluru, the exhibition reflects on intertwined histories, cultures and migrations, particularly across the Indian Ocean.

The shortlisted artists will be shown as part of the exhibition, while the winner of the Richard Mille Art Prize will be announced later. It is a chance to see contemporary voices responding to questions of identity, movement, community and cultural exchange — not as fixed ideas, but as living, shifting realities.

And, honestly, this is where Louvre Abu Dhabi often works best: when the historic and the contemporary don't sit in separate rooms politely pretending not to know each other, but speak across time. A maritime past suddenly meets today’s questions of belonging. Ancient trade routes start sounding strangely relevant. Contemporary art walks in, takes off its sunglasses, and says: yes, we are still dealing with this.

When? November 25, 2026 – April 25, 2027

Organised in partnership with ALIPH, the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage, Living Legacies. Protecting Heritage. Building Hope moves into more fragile territory. It tells the stories of people working in some of the world’s most complex environments to protect, restore and safeguard cultural heritage.

The subject is serious, and it should be. Heritage isn't just a beautiful object behind glass. It is memory, identity, knowledge, community and continuity. When it is threatened by conflict, climate change or disaster, something far larger than a building or artefact is at risk.

The exhibition will feature artefacts on loan from international cultural institutions and ALIPH’s grantee partners, guiding visitors through a multi-sensory, immersive experience with projections and testimonies. It focuses not only on what is being protected, but also on the people doing the protecting — often in difficult, dangerous or unstable circumstances.

There is a powerful idea at the centre of it: heritage preservation isn't nostalgia. It isn't just about looking lovingly at the past and whispering “they don’t make them like this anymore”. It is about building hope, protecting communities and making sure that future generations inherit more than ruins, silence and a vague note in a textbook.

Alongside the four exhibitions, Louvre Abu Dhabi will host curator-led talks, film screenings, performances, workshops and family programmes. Each exhibition will also come with guided tours, a podcast episode, a trilingual catalogue and learning materials for children and adults.

Regular initiatives such as Book and Easel, Drawing at the Museum, the Quantum Dome Project and Art in Scents will continue too, because apparently simply looking at art is no longer enough — now we must smell it, hear it, discuss it and maybe sketch it badly, all in the name of culture.

So yes, the season technically begins while it is still extremely hot outside. But emotionally, we are already in autumn: walking under the dome, pretending to understand contemporary art immediately, and rewarding ourselves with coffee afterwards.

Autumn, please hurry. Louvre Abu Dhabi has plans for us.