ZⓈONAMACO 2026 is art, design, and everything in between
Mexico City’s leading fair is redefining collecting through cross-disciplinary practices, showing how institutions can embrace contemporary fluidity.
When ZⓈONAMACO opens its doors from February 4 to 8, 2026, it will mark over two decades of dedication to artistic expression, contemporary design, and cultural value. Founded by Zélika Garcia in 2002, what began as a small, modest 25-gallery fair has evolved into one of Latin America’s most influential art and design platforms, attracting over 228 galleries from 26 countries.
The fair’s upcoming edition promises to keep up the momentum from 2025, when it welcomed more than 81,000 visitors and solidified Mexico City’s position as a global art capital. About the show’s efforts in enriching and celebrating local culture, the artistic director Direlia Lazo states, “as we celebrate our 22nd edition, we honor the rich artistic legacy of Latin America while fostering dialogues and exchanges that transcend borders.”
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In the past years, ZⓈONAMACO has become far more than a traditional art fair, with the event expanding into ZⓈONAMACO Art Week: a citywide celebration that activates museums, galleries, and cultural institutions throughout Mexico City. In February, the capital will be filled with openings, performances, discussions, and impromptu gatherings to blur the lines between professional artistic work and community.
Rather than focusing solely on contemporary art, the fair distinguishes itself by presenting four specialised platforms simultaneously. Arte Contemporàneo is the show’s anchor, divided into multiple curatorial sections which this year focus on intersectional perspectives, local modernist traditions, and the theme of exchange. Diseño is about design, and ranges from furniture to jewellery and textiles. This edition also features a subsection called Diseño Emergente, co-curated by Cecilia León de la Barra alongside Joel Escalona and Jorge Diego Etienne, which spotlights young and emerging Mexican designers.
Salòn del Anticuario focuses on antique collections, exploring their role in shaping a culture’s taste and collective memory, and is co-curated by Alfonso Miranda and Mario Uvence. It will be particularly interesting to see this selection of antique furniture juxtaposed with the contemporary design collection, seeing how the objects will converse with each other. Lastly, Foto centres photography, prioritising projects that work on memory, archives, and marginal narratives.
A new initiative for the fair is ZⓈONAMACO FORMA, which will bridge contemporary art and collectable design. This hybrid section reflects the current market dynamics, where traditional classifications are becoming increasingly fluid. Collectors no longer compartmentalise their acquisitions, caring less about categories and more about conceptual integrity, craftsmanship, and cultural significance; values that we can find both in art and design. This fluidity is also happening in creatives themselves, with more and more artists creating functional objects, as well as designers making artistic works with little industrial value.
As ZⓈONAMACO enters its third decade, it is showing a truly contemporary understanding of what the creative market looks like now, going beyond the typical distinctions seen in most European fairs, where you would rarely find all these different kinds of works under the same roof. Sectoralisation is no longer useful, as diverse creative disciplines begin to merge in their practices, markets and fairs must follow. In an art world generally criticised for rigidity and elitism, this openness feels like progress.
