As the art world moves into 2026, queer art is getting more individualized and exciting. We’re keeping an eye on Diedrick Brackens, who uses weaving to tell stories about nature and softness, with a 2026 exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in March. We’re also big fans of P. Staff and their dream-like videos.
If you love contemporary queer art, 2026 is the year to follow queer voices, perspectives, stories, lived experiences and imagined ideas and how queer artists are creating and responding to shifting worldviews and realities.
On Queer Art Hub, here are 5 most trending queer artists on our platform, and our team’s picks to watch out for in 2026:
Hortensia Mi Kafchin (Germany)
Hortensia Mi Kafchin, a Berlin-based artist who creates work about the contemporary trans experience using figurative painting. Currently represented by PPOW, she has exhibited Paintings Made for Aliens Above in 2025 and Years of Bad Hair in 2023. In 2026, Kafchin will be showing Through Different Eyes at Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York from February 20, 2026 – April 12, 2026. This exhibition will use a multidisciplinary approach with a transfixing three-channel synchronized video.
Gabriel Bennett Lovejoy (UK)
Gabriel Bennett Lovejoy is a multimedia artist based in Scotland. Lovejoy explores transgender joy within his creative practice using colors and iconography, with the aim to challenge audiences on their preconceived opinions of queerness. In 2025, he exhibited at the Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow as part of its GoMA Youth Group 2024/2025. Lovejoy also launched Man* Made//Made Man* in 2025, a quarterly digital zine by trans mascs, for trans mascs.
Venus Gonzalez (US)
Venus Gonzalez is a multidisciplinary artist and painter based in New Jersey. Her artwork aims to immortalize the women who inspire her and honor those who are forgotten. Only 23 years old, Gonzalez is a rising painter with a hauntingly beautiful imagination combined with precise brushwork and technique. Having shown at Art for Pride in Ria Gallery during Montclair Pride, her career is destined to reach new heights in 2026.
Matthew Walton (Canada)
Matthew Walton is a Toronto-based artist. His mixed-media work (acrylic, watercolour, pastel and pencil on paper) highlights the quiet charm of everyday queerness, reimagining mundane moments through a vibrant technicolour lens. Since exhibiting at the Toronto Outdoor Art Fair in 2024 and winning Best of 2D Works Award, Walton has since shown at the Artist Project 2025, in THE INVISIBLE STRING as part of a group show at Gagné Contemporary, and his own FROOT LOOPS at Sixteen Eleven Studios in Toronto, which is also published as a limited edition art book under the same name.
Kayleigh Efird (UK)
Kayleigh Efird is a multidisciplinary artist with a sensitivity towards color and performance. Her work examines the intersections between girlhood, history, and fantasy and investigates how we connect ourselves to the past, present and future through images. She is a represented illustrator with Astound Us Agency, having been chosen to illustrate 40 interior images and the cover for the A Field Guide to Fairies and Magical Beings (2025) book. Efird has exhibited previous as part of group shows, Unity at Helm Gallery in 2024 and Reflections at Royal Blue Gallery in 2023.
Interested in being featured? Sign up to www.queerarthub.com/sign-up today to be part of our growing platform dedicated to queer artists and their work.