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BMW is firing up its cultural calendar with a garage full of paint, pedigree and paddock history. After marking the BMW Art Car Collection’s 50th anniversary with a globe-spanning run in 2025, the Art Car World Tour rolls straight into 2026 with its opening stop at Rétromobile in Paris—one of the season’s must-see gatherings for classic metal and motorsport lore.
Last year’s tour proved these machines are far more than showpieces. The programme travelled across five continents with more than 45 stops in over 30 countries, drawing more than two million visitors at art fairs, museums, concours lawns and race weekends. Twenty “rolling sculptures” took centre stage, each turning bodywork into canvas—proof that a race car can carry cultural weight as well as downforce.
Paris will raise the revs further by reuniting all seven BMW Art Cars that have competed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Visitors to Paris Expo Porte de Versailles from 28 January to 1 February will see everything from Alexander Calder’s original 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL through Frank Stella’s 3.0 CSL and Roy Lichtenstein’s BMW 320i Turbo, to Andy Warhol’s vividly brushed BMW M1. The later era is equally strong: Jenny Holzer’s BMW V12 LMR, Jeff Koons’ BMW M3 GT2, and Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8 complete a line-up that reads like a pit-lane history of speed and style.
BMW is also putting one headline car on public display before the show doors even open. Calder’s first Art Car is set to sit in the courtyard of the Hôtel de la Marine in central Paris from 16 to 26 January, offering a rare chance to see the collection’s starting point in the open air, without the usual ropes and spotlights. It follows a standout moment in 2025, when Warhol’s Art Car gained recognition in the United States’ National Historic Vehicle Register, underlining how far this idea has travelled since it began as a one-off Le Mans special.
From Paris, the tour keeps moving with further appearances planned across Europe and beyond, and a larger summer gathering slated for BMW Welt in Munich. Whether you come for the artists’ signatures, the Le Mans backstories, or the sheer presence of these machines under the lights, Rétromobile looks set to deliver a proper celebration of design, endurance and heritage on four wheels.
