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Now in its fourth decade, the Discerning Eye is one of the UK's most celebrated and distinctive open exhibitions, bringing together small-scale works by artists from across the country for an annual show at the Mall Galleries in the heart of London.
What sets the Discerning Eye apart is its unique curatorial model. Rather than a single committee deciding what gets shown, six prominent figures from across the art world — artists, critics and collectors — each curate their own section of the exhibition entirely independently. The result is not one show but six smaller exhibitions within the whole, each reflecting the individual taste, instinct and perspective of its selector. It is a format that makes for genuinely surprising viewing, and one that gives artists a real opportunity: you only need to catch the eye of one.
The 2026 selectors are Hugh Bonneville, one of Britain's most beloved actors and a longstanding champion of the arts; Jasmine Pradissitto, artist and physicist working at the intersection of science and creativity; Jon Sharples, IP and art lawyer and avid collector; Kelvin Okafor, one of the UK's most acclaimed portrait artists, celebrated for his extraordinary hyperrealist pencil drawings; Martin Robinson, journalist, author and culture writer; and Mel Gerlis, art market columnist at the Financial Times and art market editor-at-large at The Art Newspaper.
Last year's edition was the largest in the exhibition's history, featuring more than 730 artworks by 529 artists, selected from an outstanding 6,500 entries.
Prize winners are announced at a prize-giving at the start of the exhibition, with awards totalling over £9,100 spanning a wide range of categories including sculpture, portrait, landscape, print, drawing and photography, as well as purchase prizes that place work directly into collections.
The 2026 exhibition runs at the Mall Galleries, London from 14 to 21 November, with a virtual exhibition running until 1 January 2027. The deadline for online submissions is 27 August 2026.
