Contemporary art sits within a global art market that generated an estimated $59.6 billion in sales in 2025. Activity was uneven: auction values improved in some high-price bands, dealer sales rose modestly, and collectors continued to mix established names with new and emerging artists. The figures below separate the wider art market from contemporary-specific auction and dealer measures, while keeping each measurement period and geography explicit.
Contents
- Global market context
- Auction sales and the contemporary sector
- Dealers and galleries
- Geography and market concentration
- Collector spending and media
- Discovery, representation, and buying channels
- Collector outlook
Global market context
The broadest available benchmark is the global art market, which includes more than contemporary art alone. Global sales rose 4% year on year to an estimated $59.6 billion in 2025, while transaction volume increased 2% to 41.5 million transactions. These are estimates for the 2025 market, not a standalone valuation of contemporary art.
The market remained geographically concentrated. The United States represented 44% of global art-market sales by value, the United Kingdom represented 18%, and China represented 14%. Together, those three markets accounted for 76% of global art-market sales. In dollar terms, United States sales reached $26.0 billion, up 5% year on year, while China’s sales increased just over 1% to $8.5 billion.
| Global art-market indicator | 2025 result |
|---|---|
| Estimated global sales | $59.6 billion |
| Transaction volume | 41.5 million |
| United States share by value | 44% |
| United Kingdom share by value | 18% |
| China share by value | 14% |
| Combined share of the three markets | 76% |
| Online art and antiques sales | $9.2 billion; 15% of total |
Online art and antiques sales fell to $9.2 billion in 2025, equal to 15% of total art-market sales. The online figure covers art and antiques broadly, so it should not be read as a contemporary-art-only digital sales measure. The result nevertheless indicates that digital channels represented a meaningful but smaller portion of total market value than the wider in-person and direct market.
Source: The Global Art Market — The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2026 By Arts Economics.
Auction sales and the contemporary sector
Combined public and private auction sales rose 6% to $24.8 billion in 2025. Public auction sales increased 9% to $20.7 billion, while private sales through auction houses declined 5% to just under $4.2 billion. The direction of the two channels differed even as their combined total increased.
Postwar and Contemporary art auction sales reached $4.5 billion in 2025, down 2% year on year, and represented 45% of global fine-art auction sales by value. Within that combined category, contemporary art auction sales were stable at $1.4 billion. These figures describe auction sales, not all contemporary art sales through galleries, dealers, fairs, and private transactions.
Postwar and Contemporary auction sales peaked at $8.5 billion in 2021 before four consecutive years of declining values through 2025. The 2025 result therefore sits in a longer period of contraction from that 2021 peak. The stated 2021–2025 trend does not establish a forecast beyond the measured period.
Price bands moved differently. The value of fine-art lots sold above $1 million increased 21% in 2025, while transactions in that price band rose 15%. Fine-art auction sales above $10 million grew 30% in value and 9% in lot count. By contrast, fine-art auction sales below $50,000 fell 2% in both value and volume.
This split matters for interpreting headline auction growth. Higher-value sales can expand total value faster than the number of lots, while the decline below $50,000 points to weaker performance in the lower price band. Neither measure alone describes the experience of every artist, gallery, or collector.
Source: Auctions — The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2026 By Arts Economics.
Dealers and galleries
The global dealer sector was estimated at $34.8 billion in sales in 2025, an increase of 2%. Dealer results varied by business size and by the type of program. Dealers with turnover below $500,000 recorded double-digit increases in average sales values in 2025, while dealers with turnover above $10 million grew sales 3%.
Reported sales direction was mixed across the sector:
- 42% of dealers reported increased sales in 2025.
- 33% reported declining sales.
- 25% reported stable sales.
Operating costs rose an estimated 5% on average in 2025. That cost increase provides important context for a 2% increase in global dealer-sector sales: gross sales growth and operating performance are different measures, and the supplied figures do not provide a sector-wide profit estimate.
Online sales fell to 16% of total dealer turnover in 2025, down 6% year on year. This dealer-specific measure is different from the 15% share reported for the broader online art and antiques market, because the populations and definitions differ. In addition, dealers operating exclusively in Contemporary art reported an 11% sales decline in 2024. That 2024 result comes from the prior Art Basel and UBS report and should not be treated as a directly verified 2025 result.
Source: Dealers — The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2026 By Arts Economics. The earlier comparison is from Dealers — The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2025 By Arts Economics.
Geography and market concentration
Auction activity was even more concentrated than the broad global art-market split. The United States, China, and the United Kingdom together accounted for 72% of public auction sales by value in 2025. The United States held 34%, China 24%, and the United Kingdom 14%.
United States public auction sales rose 20% to just over $7 billion in 2025. New York was especially prominent in the high-value segment: all 10 highest-priced fine-art auction lots in 2025 were sold there, and New York accounted for 39 of the 50 highest-priced fine-art auction lots.
The concentration increased at the top of the price distribution. The United States accounted for 78% of the global value of fine-art auction works sold above $10 million in 2025 and 61% of the worldwide value of fine-art auction works sold above $1 million. These percentages refer to value, not the number of works sold, and they cover fine-art auction works rather than contemporary art alone.
| Public auction measure | Share or result in 2025 |
|---|---|
| United States share by value | 34% |
| China share by value | 24% |
| United Kingdom share by value | 14% |
| Combined share of the three markets | 72% |
| United States public auction sales | Just over $7 billion; up 20% |
| United States share above $10 million | 78% of global value |
| United States share above $1 million | 61% of worldwide value |
Source: Auctions — The Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report 2026 By Arts Economics.
Collector spending and media
The collector statistics below come from surveyed high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs), so they describe a survey population rather than all art buyers. In 2024, surveyed HNWIs spent an average of $438,990 on art and antiques across an average of 14 works. Women surveyed spent 46% more on average than men on art and antiques in 2024.
Spending was highly uneven. Ten percent of surveyed HNWIs spent more than $500,000 on art and antiques in 2024, while 7% spent more than $1 million. The median expenditure was $24,000 for full-year 2024 and $22,000 for the first half of 2025. The mean and median should not be treated as interchangeable: the average is much more sensitive to very high spending.
Fine-art purchases were reported by 78% of surveyed HNWIs in 2024 and 74% in the first half of 2025. Paintings accounted for 27% of total fine-art spending by surveyed HNWIs in 2024.
Digital work also appeared meaningfully in the survey. Just over half, 51%, of surveyed HNWIs bought a digital artwork in 2024 or the first half of 2025. Digital art ranked third in surveyed HNWI spending by medium at 14%, approximately level with sculpture at 14%. The measurement combines 2024 and the first half of 2025 for the digital-purchase and medium-ranking figures.
Source: HNWI Spending on Art — The Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025 By Arts Economics.
Discovery, representation, and buying channels
Collectors were not focused only on artists they already knew. Sixty-six percent of surveyed HNWIs bought works by artists they discovered for the first time in 2024 or the first half of 2025. Surveyed HNWIs allocated 35% of art spending to new and emerging artists, 21% to mid-career artists, and 44% to established artists over that same combined period.
The survey also recorded a gender difference in buying unknown artists. In the 2025 survey, 55% of surveyed women reported frequently or often buying works by unknown artists, compared with 44% of men. Female artists accounted for 44% of works in surveyed HNWI collections in the 2025 survey. These are survey results about the measured respondents and collections, not estimates of the gender composition of the entire art market.
Buying remained connected to established art-world intermediaries and events. Eighty-three percent of surveyed HNWIs bought through a gallery, dealer, social-media, or art-fair channel in 2024 or the first half of 2025. Because the statistic combines several channels, it does not show the separate share attributable to galleries, dealers, social media, or fairs.
Source: Sales Channels — The Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025 By Arts Economics. Discovery, artist-career-stage, and collection-composition figures are from HNWI Spending on Art — The Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025 By Arts Economics.
Collector outlook
The 2025 outlook survey points to continued interest, but it is a forward-looking sentiment measure rather than a realized sales result. Forty percent of surveyed HNWIs planned to buy more art in the next 12 months in 2025. Eighty-four percent were optimistic about the art market’s performance for the rest of 2025.
Those expectations sit alongside the measured 2025 market results: global art-market sales rose 4%, global dealer-sector sales rose 2%, and contemporary art auction sales were stable at $1.4 billion. The outlook figures should therefore be read as intentions and sentiment, while the sales figures describe reported or estimated activity during the relevant period. They do not guarantee that planned purchases or optimistic views became completed transactions.
Source: Outlook & Buying Plans — The Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025 By Arts Economics.