Now in its third edition, MAZE Art Gstaad took place at the Festival-Zelt in the heart of the Swiss Alpine resort from 19 to 22 February 2026. The fair confirmed its position as one of the most distinctive events on the winter circuit — deliberately intimate, rigorously curated, and calibrated for a collector audience that was already on site.
The formula rested on a few clear principles: a compact format, a rigorous selection process, and cross-disciplinary dialogue between specialties. "Rather than waiting for the public to come to it, MAZE moves towards its collectors where they naturally are," as Baptiste Janin, the fair's artistic director, put it. The collectors who attended were the same as those at the major urban fairs — what differed were the conditions of the encounter.
The edition brought together around forty leading international galleries spanning modern and contemporary art, Old Masters, photography, design, sculpture, and jewelry. Returning participants included White Cube, Perrotin, Mennour, Pace, Landau Fine Art, and Société, while new voices joined the programme: Applicat-Prazan, Mendes Wood DM, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Skarstedt, among others.
The programme reflected the full breadth of the MAZE model. Perrotin staged a solo presentation by Josh Sperling, bringing together brightly coloured geometric paintings alongside sculptures and a monumental four-metre tapestry. Lisson Gallery dedicated its stand to Joanna Pousette-Dart, while Mendes Wood presented new paintings by Jakob Rowlinson, including works made specifically for Gstaad ahead of his solo show at the Berlinische Galerie. Thaddaeus Ropac brought a museum-calibre selection including works by Georg Baselitz, a rare Alberto Burri composition from 1953, Jean-Marc Bustamante, and a Robert Rauschenberg from the 1990s. Galerie Nathalie Obadia presented works by Mickalene Thomas alongside photography by Seydou Keïta and Youssef Nabil, and paintings by Laure Prouvost.
Among the works featured in the fair's programme: Jason Saager's Ethereal Drift (2025), combining monotype printmaking and oil on paper mounted over canvas; Mickalene Thomas's rhinestone-encrusted NUS Exotiques #14 (2025); Julius von Bismarck's mixed-media installation Do Androids Sacrifice Electric Sheep? (2026); Gerhard Richter's lacquer-behind-glass Aladin (913-4) (2010); Inès Longevial's oil on canvas Anthesis 2 (2025); a bronze sculpture by Enrico David, Falena (2025), in an edition of three; Laurent Grasso's Studies into the Past in oil on wood; Miriam Cahn's 13.09.05 (2011); and Jean-Marc Bustamante's Trophée Japon 2 (2008), ink on plexiglass and steel.
The fair also marked the presentation of the second MAZE / Art Award F.P. Journe. The jury included Tatyana Franck (L'Alliance New York), Stephanie Seidel (Kunstmuseum Basel), and Maja Hoffmann (founder and president of the LUMA Foundation). The winning work was acquired and donated to the Kunstmuseum Basel — establishing a direct institutional dynamic as a defining feature of the MAZE programme.
The edition coincided with Le Rosey weekend, one of the resort's flagship social events, drawing a concentrated audience of collectors from French- and German-speaking Switzerland, complemented by an international clientele from the UK, the USA, and Scandinavia. Confirmed sales were not publicly disclosed — a deliberate and characteristic feature of the MAZE model, where transactions took place quietly and the primary currency was access and relationship rather than public market signals.
What MAZE Art Gstaad represented in the broader calendar was not a sales venue in the conventional sense, but a relational infrastructure: a moment in the year when collectors who attend Basel, Frieze, and Art Paris gathered in a single Alpine location, and where the intimacy of the setting made sustained conversations — and decisions — possible in ways that the large urban fairs rarely allow.