Insight from a Milestone Zona Maco 2026

Over the past 22 years, Zona Maco founder Zélika García has grown the international showcase of art, design objects, and antiques into the art market’s most significant foothold in Latin America. This year’s edition, which ran from February 4-8, saw more than 82,000 attendees traverse Mexico City’s Centro Banamex convention center to take in works from over 200 exhibiting galleries across 27 countries and four main sections. This year saw the introduction of a fifth, Zona Maco Forma, which bridges the gap between fine art and collectible design.

The debut Forma section included an edit of just six exhibiting galleries: ADN Galería, Carpenter’s Workshop, Citco, Collectio, Dobra, and Rademakers—the latter three of which were newcomers to the fair. It was the inclusion of the London-founded Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery that most pointedly spoke to Forma’s emergent potential. An anchor of Design Miami, Design Miami.Paris, PAD, TEFAF New York, and beyond, its exhibiting artists Maarten Baas, Nacho Carbonell, Wendell Castle, Vincenzo De Cotiis, Atelier Van Lieshout, and Léa Mestres deftly navigate commercial and critical success along with conceptual rigor. While the gallery has previously exhibited at Zona Maco, its place within Forma hints at what could be García, artistic director Direlia Lazo, and design curator Cecilia León de la Barra’s vision to grow the section into Latin America’s most influential design showcase.

In contrast to the compact Forma section, Zona Maco’s Sección General demands nothing less than a sharp eye and focus to navigate thousands of works across the mediums of painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and beyond. One of the most exciting debuts this year came from Georgina Pounds Gallery. Concurrent with the opening of her eponymous gallery in a historic mansion in the city’s Roma Norte neighborhood, the dealer marked its inaugural Zona Maco by presenting a joint booth with Carl Freedman Gallery. There, the inclusion of paintings by Vanessa Raw—whose exhibition “Monsters Paradise: The Becoming of Her Divine Beast” is on view at the gallery until March 22—was the latest in a slew of career milestones for the artist, who most recently won the 2025 Arts Council Collection Frieze Acquisitions Fund and made her own Mexico City debut during this past art week.

Elsewhere, the six-year-old Llano Gallery, which has become a regular exhibitor at Art Basel Miami Beach’s Positions section and Frieze London’s Focus section for emerging galleries and artists, made its Zona Maco debut with a selection of paintings by Lorena Ancona. The booth, which was part of Starbucks’ Culto initiative to unite art and coffee culture, featured paintings and sculptures that were part of “La montaña de la serpiente,” a series of works grounded in an exploration of Veracruz’s agricultural fertility.

What is perhaps most notable about Zona Maco isn’t its sheer scale alone, despite the dizzying logistics of assembling thousands of artworks from 27 countries and three continents for just four days in Latin America. It’s also the fact that after more than two decades, García and her team are still in touch with the pulse of the city’s gallery scene spanning from the oldest (Galería de Arte Mexicano) to the emerging names both within and beyond its borders.