TOP 3 Montreal Vernissages to Kick Off 2026
A New Year’s note from the Best Kept MTL team ✨
As we step into 2026, we’re raising a glass to curiosity, creative risk, and the communities that keep Montreal’s art scene alive. January is never quiet here, it’s reflective, bold, and refreshingly raw. These Montreal vernissages are the perfect way to ease back into the city’s cultural pulse and start the year with intention.
Here are our Top 3 Montreal Vernissages to mark the beginning of a brand-new artistic chapter.
January Group Exhibition — PUNCH
Usine 106U
📍 160 Roy Street, Montreal
🗓️ Thursday, January 8, 2026 | 5 PM – 11 PM
There’s no better place to kick off the year than Usine 106U, a Plateau Mont-Royal staple known for its welcoming energy and unapologetically bold artistic crowd. Every first Thursday of the month, the space launches its new group exhibition with a vernissage that feels more like a cultural gathering than a formal opening.
PUNCH sets the tone for 2026 with sharp perspectives, critical voices, and works that don’t shy away from discomfort. Expect socially engaged conversations, strong opinions, and a creative atmosphere where art becomes a catalyst for dialogue, all fueled by that unmistakable Usine 106U spirit. One of those Montreal vernissages where staying late feels inevitable.
Insaisies / Stories of Uprooted Plants — Eugénia Reznik
Maison de la culture Notre-Dame-de-Grâce
📍 6400 Monkland Blvd., Montreal
🗓️ Friday, January 9, 2026 | 5 PM – 7 PM
🎭 Performance: 6 PM – 6:30 PM
Eugénia Reznik’s multidisciplinary practice is rooted in migration, memory, and belonging. Born in Ukraine, shaped by years in France, and based in Quebec since 2005, her work reflects lived experiences of displacement through an unexpectedly poetic lens: the parallel journeys of people and plants.
Through drawings, paintings, video, sound, digital installations, embroidery, screen printing, and live performance, Reznik weaves together narratives of uprooting and re-anchoring. The vernissage includes a powerful performance from 6 to 6:30 PM, an essential moment that brings the exhibition’s themes fully to life. A deeply human and thoughtful highlight among January’s Montreal vernissages.
RSVP — Lucas Lajoie
Galerie FOIL
📍 6560 Waverly Street, Montreal
🗓️ Friday, January 9, 2026 | 6 PM – 9 PM
At the crossroads of art and endurance, Lucas Lajoie presents RSVP, a compelling research-based project born from a 50-day bicycle journey between Norway and France. Along the way, the artist collected traces, stories, and experiences that now take form in 11 studio works.
The centrepiece is a striking 200 x 200 cm archive canvas, untouched by paint, yet transformed by exposure to landscapes, weather conditions, physical strain, and chance encounters. Mounted to the bike throughout the journey, the canvas becomes a living document of movement and time. Set within Galerie FOIL’s industrial, café-bar hybrid space between Mile-End and Little Italy, this vernissage promises a vibrant and youthful energy.
Stay Connected to Montreal’s Art Scene
For more Montreal vernissages, radio features, and in-depth coverage of visual arts and related disciplines, explore Magazine Radio In Situ, one of the city’s few programs fully dedicated to visual arts since 2010.
📻 Airs Saturdays from 12 PM to 1 PM on Radio Centre-Ville 102.3 FM
🔗 magazineinsitu.art
🔗 radiocentre-ville.com
🔗 Facebook: Magazine Radio In Situ
✨ From all of us at Best Kept MTL, happy 2026.
May this new year be filled with discovery, dialogue, and unforgettable Montreal vernissages that continue to shape the city we’re proud to call home.
Step inside Montreal’s most mind-bending immersive experiences, the kind you feel long after you leave. 🎭✨
