From 28 October 2026, culture officials from more than forty-five cities gather in Tokyo for three days of the World Cities Culture Summit. From 4 November, Art Week Tokyo returns for its fifth edition with a record fifty-five venues.
In September of the same year, Robert Huggins, an economic geographer at Cardiff University, published the World Art Cities Index 2026 — fifty cities ranked on their capacity to make, sell and show art. Tokyo came 15th of fifty.
Tokyo on the index
Out of fifty cities:
Overall 15th (New York 1st, London 2nd)
Market 7th / Production 16th / Consumption 28th
Per capita, 48th
The author’s note: Tokyo’s population is huge, so dividing by it pushes the city down
What the index counts is the number of galleries, museums and art schools; the number of art fairs and biennials (the big international exhibitions held every two years); and the number of “recognised” artists — recognised meaning they appear in the British magazine ArtReview’s annual Power 100 ranking of influence, or have shown at biennials.
So the index doesn’t measure how good the art is. It measures how visible a city is to the art world’s institutions. The author says so himself: the rankings are “indicative, not definitive.”
Tokyo belongs to neither story
The index sorts the fifty cities into three groups: long-established centres (Core), regional hubs, and the periphery. Tokyo is Core, alongside New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, Düsseldorf and Milan.
So when the English-language art world talks about “the rise of Asian art cities,” Tokyo isn’t in the story.
Artists from emerging Asian cities in the Power 100: one in 2005 → twenty-four in 2025 (Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, Mumbai, Delhi)
Tokyo artists in the Power 100 over the same twenty years: seven entries in total (1.4 percent)
The report’s verdict: “essentially flat throughout”
Tokyo isn’t counted among the rising, and it doesn’t stand out among the reigning. On this index, it falls between two stories.
The reason is in Japan’s own numbers
Since fiscal 2022, Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs has surveyed the domestic art market every year. The stated reason: the Japanese art market “is not fairly evaluated at home or abroad.” The economist doing the counting is Clare McAndrew — the same person behind the Art Basel & UBS global report. From the 2025 edition:
Japan’s share of the global market: 1 percent
Roughly unchanged for five years
Dealers and galleries: over 2,080
59 percent in Tokyo. Five percent with an overseas base
Art-fair sales as a share of gallery revenue: 19 percent, below the global figure
The reason given: neither Art Basel nor Frieze holds a fair in Japan
93 percent of transactions under $50,000
One conclusion follows.
Made in Tokyo, sold in Tokyo — but the price is settled in New York and London
Example: Yayoi Kusama ranked 6th worldwide by auction sales in 2024
Sixteen percent of that was transacted in Japan
Her top hammer price in Japan: ¥241.5 million
At Christie’s New York: $5.6 million (about ¥834 million)
Example: Hokusai — 4 percent transacted in Japan
The WACI report itself says production disperses across the world while monetisation concentrates in a few cities. Tokyo is the textbook case
But the index files Tokyo as Core, so it isn’t treated as one of the cities that make the work and watch the price get set elsewhere
The form Tokyo chose
Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum, calls Art Week Tokyo “post-art fair.” There is no fair. Free buses link museums and galleries, and the whole city is the venue. On the index’s “number of art fairs” line, Tokyo’s flagship event never registers.
The state doubled its bet on culture. It points the other way
The same summer, the Agency for Cultural Affairs filed its budget request for the coming year:
Agency budget: ¥107.3 billion → requested ¥233.5 billion (2.2 times)
The single biggest new line: “creator development support,” ¥64.9 billion
For manga, anime, games, live action and music
Tied to a government target of ¥20 trillion in overseas content sales by 2033
Heritage preservation: ¥93.6 billion
The line closest to contemporary art, “global development of Japanese art and culture”: ¥1.1 billion, up from ¥0.9 billion
The new money went to manga and anime (which the index doesn’t count) and to heritage (which is neither making, selling nor showing). Contemporary art got almost none of it.
What 15th means
In a piece called The Sign Flip: Money, Art, and Japan’s Two Verdicts, I wrote about a line in Japan: people who make pop culture get celebrated; people who make contemporary art, far less so. This index and this budget are that line turned into numbers.
A Tokyo artist’s work gets its price in New York. The state’s money goes to manga and anime. So “15th” doesn’t mean Tokyo’s art is the fifteenth best. It means the price isn’t set here, and the state is counting something else. Those two things, together.