Since its conception in 2000, Transport for London’s Art on the Underground programme has been at the forefront of critically engaged programming that reflects on the changing nature of public space, challenging the idea that public art is fixed.
Through commissioning artists in an open examination of community, space and place, the programme has a renowned history of commissioning site specific work that brings unexpected interactions and new perspectives to millions of people travelling through London. 2026 continues that tradition with a series of commissions that explore subterranean histories, lost voices and hidden labour.
Art on the Underground’s programme for 2026 comprises major new works by five contemporary artists which will be displayed at Tube stations across London, including:
- a new series of works by interdisciplinary artist Phoebe Boswell at Notting Hill and Bethnal Green stations launching March 2026
- a new artwork by Ellen Gallagher for the Summer 2026 Pocket Tube Map cover
- a new audio commission by artist, composer and DJ Ain Bailey for Waterloo station in June 2026
- a large-scale commission by Scottish painter Caroline Walker at Stratford station launching September 2026
- and a new artwork by Hurvin Anderson marking the 10th commission of the Brixton Mural Programme in November 2026
In its breadth and presence across London, the 2026 programme reflects historic imbalances and under-representation, reframing public space and bringing artworks to the city which are relevant to life today.
About the 2026 commissions
Phoebe Boswell, Notting Hill and Bethnal Green Underground station
25 March 2026
In March 2026, Art on the Underground will present a new multi-site commission by London-based artist Phoebe Boswell at Bethnal Green and Notting Hill Gate Underground stations. Following a public call out to Black swimming communities around Bethnal Green and Notting Hill, this new work continues Boswell’s exploration of water as a site of healing, migratory trauma and collective power.
Installed on panels running adjacent to the escalators, the artwork will comprise four multi-layered photographic assemblages of Black swimmers who have made London their home, or whose families have historically migrated here across generations. Beneath the city’s surface, the Tube shares its underground world with a labyrinth of lost rivers. This project imagines those waterways as channels for memory and resistance, evoking aquatic journeys and migratory routes to London, particularly for Black diasporic communities. Guided by the hydro-feminist notion that all bodies of water are connected; this new work is conceived as ‘a call to the surface’, an invitation to collective consciousness about the world we inhabit together.
Ellen Gallagher
Summer 2026
For the 42nd edition of the pocket Tube map, American artist Ellen Gallagher invites viewers on a journey. Gallagher describes her artistic process as driven by a ‘jitter’ which aims to shake loose aesthetic possibilities from seemingly impermeable cultural structures.
Expanding on her interest in colonial topographies and marine mythology, Gallagher’s Tube map cover will explore notions of sediment and the hidden waterways which run alongside the Underground tunnels beneath the city’s surface. Launching in June 2026, the 42nd pocket Tube map will remain in circulation for a year.
Ain Bailey, Waterloo station
29 June – 10 July 2026
Art on the Underground presents a new audio work by London-based composer, artist and DJ Ain Bailey, her first UK public artwork. It is the third site-specific commission in a series for Waterloo Underground station with the Mayor of London’s Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme. It builds upon Bailey’s artistic work exploring connections between memory and sound, and practice of hosting Sonic Stories workshops, and follows a major commission responding to urban architectural space for Bruckenmusik 27, Cologne, Germany, 2022. In 2026, Bailey will also present a solo exhibition at Camden Art Centre, completing a trilogy of works reflecting on the artist’s relationship to Jamaica, a country Bailey had not visited until 2025.
Bailey’s audio work for Waterloo undertakes an autobiographical mapping of London, inspired by the Cultural and Community Spaces at Risk programme. Featuring an original composition and recording by London-born British-Caribbean experimental vocalist and movement artist Elaine Mitchener, the commission will pay homage to a list of more than 60 London premises that Bailey has been involved in throughout her lifetime, which have now closed. Highlighting the far-reaching development of the city, which has driven closures particularly over the past 15-years, Bailey’s commission responds to ideas of cultural lifecycles. It asks how an artwork, or the activity of cultural spaces, both those lost and which remain active, produce experiences of collectivity that don’t occur spontaneously, for example when moving through public space.
Caroline Walker, Stratford station
24 September 2026
In September 2026, Art on the Underground will present a large-scale commission by Scottish painter Caroline Walker at Stratford station. Walker is renowned for her figurative paintings depicting the lived experience of women. Working across a range of scales, her larger scale works capture women in moments of action or contemplation, the visual complexity of their surroundings mirroring that of their imagined inner lives to create cinematic tableaus.
For her Art on the Underground commission, Walker will explore the often-invisible labour of women working on TfL’s networks at night. Following visits to Stratford Market Depot, where all Jubilee Line trains return each evening to be cleaned and maintained, Walker has shadowed women working night shifts as Train Operators and Cleaners. This new work for Stratford station will illuminate the Underground’s 24-hour workforce and the women whose unseen labour keeps the network running.
Hurvin Anderson, Brixton Underground station
19 November 2026
For the 10th Brixton Mural, Art on the Underground presents a new commission by internationally renowned British painter Hurvin Anderson. His site-specific work for Brixton Underground station will extend a decades-long investigation into scenes of transit and migration. It opens in the same year as his major survey exhibition at Tate Britain.
Anderson’s paintings frequently reflect on diasporic life in the UK, and the postcolonial Caribbean landscape, drawing upon his upbringing in Birmingham by Jamaican parents, and time spent in Trinidad. A monumental 16-panel painting ‘Passenger Opportunity’, inspired by Carl Abrahams’ murals for Kingston Jamaica’s Norman Manley International Airport, is notable amongst the artist’s explorations of diasporic experience, reflecting on cultural exchange and displacement.
Working across figuration and abstraction, Anderson’s painterly language is marked by contrasts. Vivid colour evoking the liveliness of place, in particular plants and botanical life, is juxtaposed by flat, colour blocked areas, and details drawing attention to the surface of the canvas. Addressing contradictions that shape place, Anderson has described how his works articulate the feeling of being in one place and thinking of another.
Anderson’s commission for Brixton draws upon a close connection to the area, in which the artist has lived for extended periods, holding a studio in Tulse Hill since 1998. It is the 10th artwork in a commission series responding to the diverse narratives of local murals painted in the 1980s, and rapid development of the area, which has been a hub for Black communities over the past 75 years.
