After a turbulent start marked by gallery closures and market contraction, 2025 ultimately emerged as a year of resets rather than collapse. Courtesy of Art Basel

After a slow start to the year, with several high-profile closures among both mid-tier and established galleries, 2025 ended on a quieter yet telling note. The narrative gradually shifted from crisis to calibration and then more recently toward renewed momentum, tracing a curve that closely mirrored other global markets and the art market’s own familiar cycles, marked by periods of exuberance and inevitable correction and reassessment. The art world is set to close out the year in a mood of cautious steadiness, and as attention turns toward 2026, that sense of stabilization is accompanied by measured optimism and a growing set of questions about what the next chapter will bring.

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A secondary-market rebound driven by quality and collectibles

After a difficult 2024—when the auction market contracted by 25 percent—Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips closed out 2025 with a decisive rebound, as confirmed by strong year-end results released this past week. Sotheby’s projects $7 billion in consolidated sales, up 17 percent from last year, while Christie’s expects to finish at $6.2 billion, a nearly 7 percent increase. Phillips reported $927 million in global sales, representing 10 percent year-over-year growth.

The year began quietly, as the May auctions largely mirrored 2024’s subdued tone, with thin bidding and only a handful of moments of heightened competition sparked by major consignments, including the $272 million Leonard & Louise Riggio collection at Christie’s and the Barbara Gladstone and Daniella Luxemburg collections at Sotheby’s. Still, the season was ultimately overshadowed by the dramatic failure of the $70 million Giacometti at Sotheby’s evening sale—a moment that underscored just how essential precise pricing and strategic orchestration have become, particularly around guarantees and irrevocable bids.

Momentum returned after the summer. Deep, competitive bidding in the $136 million Karpidas sales across its October auctions in London signaled renewed confidence, setting the stage for the multibillion-dollar fall season in London and New York. Sotheby’s capped its year with a $2.3 billion November week and strong December Luxury and Design sales, finishing 2025 with $5.7 billion in auction revenue—a 26 percent increase—driven by high-caliber fall consignments such as the $527.5 million Lauder collection, led by the $236.4 million Gustav Klimt, and by the continued expansion of its luxury division, which reached a record $2.7 billion.

Christie’s reported an 88 percent sell-through rate and a hammer-to-low-estimate index of 113 percent, reflecting how strategic pricing aligned with sustained bidding, with performances similarly anchored by major single-owner collections in the Americas and MEA regions. Phillips positioned itself as the most digitally fluent and cross-category-oriented of the three, achieving an 88 percent global sell-through rate, a 122 percent hammer-to-low-estimate index, seven white-glove auctions and more than 110 world records. Its new Priority Bidding system—offering reduced buyer’s premiums for early bids—nearly quadrupled advance bidding, rising 275 percent.

Yet fine art remains the core business. Across all three houses, sales of Old Masters, Impressionist, Modern, Post-War and Contemporary art totaled $4.56 billion in 2025, representing an 11 percent increase over 2024, though still 42 percent below the 2022 peak. Performance, however, was sharply polarized. Strength concentrated at the top end, where Modern and blue-chip works outperformed as higher-quality trophy consignments finally came to market this fall. By contrast, the ultracontemporary and emerging Contemporary segments contracted unless already supported by institutional recognition, signaling a market moving beyond the speculative highs of the recent boom. That shift also resulted in far fewer “fresh paint” works appearing in marquee evening sales. As the value of evening-sale guarantees in the Young Contemporary segment continued to decline, reaching its lowest level since 2015, the average holding period for these works increased to 3.5 years, up from 3.2 years in the previous year.

ArtTactic’s Art Market 2025: A Year in Review report confirms this shift. The Young Contemporary sector extended its correction, falling 39.1 percent year over year and deepening a multiyear decline. Overall, Contemporary sales dropped 14.4 percent, from $1.31 billion in 2024 to $1.12 billion in 2025. ArtTactic’s top ultracontemporary performers—Matthew Wong, Noah Davis, Michael Armitage, Nicolas Party, Yu Nishimura, Lucy Bull, Firelei Báez, Lucas Arruda, Flora Yukhnovich and Refik Anadol—are all artists with ongoing institutional support. The sole outlier was the 2025 market phenomenon Yu Nishimura, whose ascent nonetheless reflects a more sustainable, gallery-driven market carefully built through an international network rather than speculative hype.

By contrast, the Old Masters, Impressionist and Modern categories experienced record demand, growing 42.3 percent in 2025. Sotheby’s achieved its highest Modern-art total in a single week, generating $843 million during its November sales, while Christie’s reported growth of 15 percent and 24 percent in its Classics and Old Masters categories, producing $285 million and $182 million respectively. Those results were driven in part by an extraordinary July auction week in London, marked by an exceptional concentration of high-quality consignments and strong presale commitments covering 80 percent of the total hammer price—the highest percentage ever recorded for a July London Old Masters Evening Sale at Christie’s, according to Pi-EX analysis. ArtTactic further notes that in 2025 the Old Masters category delivered one of its strongest auction performances in recent years, with sales rising 68.7 percent to $282.5 million. The top three selling works of the year were a $39.0 million Canaletto at Christie’s, followed by a $16.5 million Rembrandt and a $12.8 million Pieter Brueghel II.

Overall, if the primary drag on the global art market since 2022 has been the steep decline in $10 million-plus works coming to auction, that segment finally began to recover in 2025, rising 19.4 percent to $1.48 billion and playing a central role in the year’s rebound. Major single-owner collections proved decisive. The Lauder, Pritzker and Karpidas collections together generated $884.9 million, accounting for 32.9 percent of all auction sales in the second half of the year, according to ArtTactic.

Surrealism continued its momentum in 2025, particularly for women artists. Following Surrealist highlights in the Karpidas sales, Sotheby’s achieved the highest total for Surrealist art ever sold in a single night. Exquisite Corpus alone brought in $103 million, led by the $54.7 million Frida Kahlo. Looking ahead to 2026, one of the strongest long-term investment trends may well be women Surrealists and Latin American artists, exemplified by the extraordinary rise of Olga de Amaral, whose prices climbed from four-figure sales in Colombian galleries just a few years ago to a record $3.12 million for Pueblo H (2011) at Christie’s in November.

Across all houses, luxury and design have emerged as essential growth engines, attracting new, younger and increasingly global buyers. Phillips’ watches division achieved more than $290 million, its highest total ever, while its Design department set new records for Judy Kensley McKie, Guy de Rougemont and others. Christie’s Luxury sales in 2025 reached $795 million, up 17 percent, with its automotive division through Gooding & Company totaling $234 million—an increase of 14 percent and the highest in the company’s history. Luxury became Christie’s most effective on-ramp for new clients, accounting for 38 percent of........

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