Art Basel Doubles Down on Digital Art with Zero 10 Expansion

Art Basel in Basel 2026 18–21 June 2026

Art Basel has announced plans to double down on digital art by bringing an expanded version of Zero 10 to its flagship Switzerland fair this June.

The move is a vote of confidence in both the event’s dedicated digital art section and in the appetite for digital works more broadly, even among Art Basel’s more serious European collectors. The expansion comes after a successful debut for Zero 10 at Art Basel Miami last December—where Beeple’s robot dogs were a major talking point—and a solid appearance at Art Basel Hong Kong this spring. 

Organisers have also upped the curatorial talent for the most prestigious of the Art Basel fairs, recruiting artist Trevor Paglen to co-curate the section. He will be joined by Eli Scheinman, digital art strategist and former director of art at Yuga Labs—the Web3 and blockchain technology company responsible for bringing us the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

Paglen, a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship (“genius grant”) recipient who recently received the 2026 LG Guggenheim award, is an apt choice, having successfully bridged both the classical art world—he is represented by mega-gallery Pace—and the digital art community, where he has a cult following. 

He told Ocula: “My goal with the curation was to make a selection that combined canonical artists from the past with major living artists with strong institutional reputations, and merge that with younger artists who are sometimes underserved by the contexts that they’re in. I wanted to make the claim that ‘digital art’ has been the dominant medium artists have been working in for a very long time and that it’s about time we recognised that.”

The Basel iteration of Zero 10 will be the biggest to date, with 20 exhibitors taking part across 16 single and four shared-booth presentations, covering both historical and contemporary positions. The works will be anchored around the theme The Condition—examining the human condition in an increasingly digital world. 

“The showcase becomes an intergenerational conversation about what it means to be alive in the digital era, led by artists who were thinking seriously about these questions long before the rest of the world caught up,” Paglen said in a statement.

The fair has secured buy-in from blue chip galleries including Hauser & Wirth, which will bring a painting by Avery Singer reflecting on the speculative culture surrounding cryptocurrency trading. Marian Goodman will also be present, offering work by Agnieszka Kurant, as will Almine Rech, alongside galleries better known for their digital programming such as New York‘s bitforms and London’s Gazelli Art House. 

Zero 10 is not officially a section of the Basel fair, but a “global initiative dedicated to art of the digital era”. It will take place outside of the main fair in the Event Hall on the Messeplatz, where the conversations programme is also held, and will be accessible to the public for free from 17 to 21 June.

The event will take place as a recovering art market continues to court younger participants and new wealth, and follows the fair’s previous, successful conversation-grabbing efforts, including the offering of a limited-edition Labubu in the Art Basel Shop last June. 

Art Basel’s chief executive, Noah Horowitz, contextualised the manoeuvres in a statement: “The art market is expanding, and the audiences driving that expansion are digitally native, globally connected, and looking for platforms that speak their language.”