Move Over, Mum and Dad: Gen Z Collectors Are Outspending Their Parents

During 2025 and the first half of 2026, high-net-worth Gen Z collectors spent on average more than twice as much on fine art as any older generation, according to the Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2026.

Collectors aged 20–29 reported an average spend of $347,460 in 2025, up 19 percent on 2024. During the first half of 2026, 13 percent of Gen Z collectors spent more than $1 million in total on fine art, against three percent of respondents across all age groups.

Only one percent of respondents bought a single work for more than $1 million in 2025 and the first half of 2026, though nearly half of those buyers belonged to Gen Z.

Noah Horowitz, chief executive at Art Basel, said these figures “point to a collector base that is increasingly informed, digitally engaged, and active across categories and channels”. He continued: “The boundaries of collecting are expanding, shaped by significant intergenerational shifts, as Gen Z collectors emerge as the highest-spending generation surveyed.

“They bring a new set of expectations and behaviours that will influence the way the collectors of the future engage with the art market…Engaging these audiences is central to the future direction of the market, and to how we continue strengthening our platform for collectors today and tomorrow .”

Written by cultural economist Clare McAndrew, the report surveyed 3,100 active collectors across 10 markets—including mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore—each with a net worth in 2026 of more than $1 million, excluding property and private businesses. Gen Z made up nine percent of the sample.

A small group of big spenders lifted the averages, though Gen Z’s median spending was also consistently at least 50 percent higher than that of older generations. The report cautions that comparisons across years are limited by changes in the sample.

Family connections

Family was the most common route into collecting for Gen Z, with 40 percent of respondents in this age group tracing their initial interest to a family collection or encouragement from relatives, against 28 percent overall. They were also the most private collectors, with 39 percent limiting in-person viewing of their collection to their household, close family and friends—almost twice the share of any other generation. 

As McAndrew explained: “Many purchases are driven less by the conspicuous consumption traditionally linked to the market than by a desire to build connections within close networks, where status comes less from price than from rarity, provenance, originality, and discovery. Restricting access does not remove a collection’s signaling power; exclusivity can be part of the signal.”

Online, Gen Z were the most likely to keep collection content within private circles, sharing largely through restricted or invitation-only groups. This, McAndrew said, indicates that “privacy [is] central to their personal and cultural identity”.

Gen Z respondents were more likely than others to have bought through a third-party online marketplace. As the pseudonymous Gen Z collector GMSPACE, whose collection includes works by Pak, Tyler Hobbs and Refik Anadol, told Art Basel in 2025: “For Gen Z, the screen is not a ‘window’ but a home. We grew up immersed in digital culture, creating, sharing and remixing images and ideas online.”

Before buying art, 72 percent of respondents undertook moderate or significant research of their own, up from 62 percent in last year’s survey. Among Gen Z, this figure rose to 80 percent, although auction specialists, advisers and artists remained important sources of guidance.

Embracing AI

Apps or AI tools were used for advice by 22 percent of respondents, a rise of two percent against 2025 and 18 percent against 2024, with two-thirds of those surveyed reporting feeling positively about AI’s effect on the discoverability of artists and artworks.

The report noted that trust in AI tools was around twice that recorded for social media and influencers, and also slightly above in-store advisers and press and editorial content. These findings, it said, “indicate that AI is increasingly seen as a credible source of recommendations and advice, with the potential to play a significant role in shaping how consumers, including art collectors, discover, compare, and ultimately choose what they buy”.

The share of collectors who bought work by an artist previously unknown to them fell to its lowest point in five years, from 66 percent in the 2025 survey to 45 percent this year. The report reads the shift as a preference for established reputations and a more risk-averse approach, as was also seen in Art Basel and UBS’s March market report, which attributed recent tentative growth to an uptick in sales at the top and ultra-high end of the market.

Even here, however, Gen Z collectors behaved differently to their older counterparts. More than 55 percent reported purchasing work by a newly discovered artist, compared with 36 percent among those aged between 62 and 80.