The fair’s 21st edition on the Golden Horn was the largest in its history, with a second hall, 22 newcomers and a turn towards Asia. Behind it stands a husband-and-wife partnership that kept faith through two decades of crises and unprofitable years.

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ISTANBUL. Contemporary Istanbul closed its 21st edition on Sunday at Tersane Istanbul, the restored shipyard on the Golden Horn, after the biggest week in the fair’s history. This year’s roster ran to 70 galleries showing 736 artists and 1,372 works, with 22 exhibitors taking part for the first time. Last year the fair hosted 52 galleries.

The programme opened with an invitation-only “At First Sight” preview on 22 September, followed by the VIP preview the next day and four public days. Akbank, which has backed the fair as main partner since its founding, marked 21 years of the relationship at the opening reception, where the founder and chairman, Ali Güreli, spoke of the fair’s long ambition to connect artists, audiences and galleries across different worlds. He was followed by Suzan Sabancı, Akbank’s chair, and Fettah Tamince, Chairman of Tersane İstanbul.

A larger, more outward-looking fair

The most visible change was space. The fair now occupies two main halls at Tersane- Istanbul, the new Hall B distinguished by its vast waffle-concrete ceiling. The expansion made room for a new Focus Asia section and for New Grounds, a platform for nine galleries founded within the past five years, among them Method Gallery of New Delhi, Friedrichs Pontone of New York, Karpuchina Gallery of Prague and Shiva Zahed, which opened its Istanbul space this year.

Among the new international participants were Pearl Lam Projects from Hong Kong and Galerie Thomas Schulte from Berlin. Pearl Lam Projects brought the Japanese artist Chisato Matsumoto, whose large installation Sail of Light (2026) is built from thousands of hand-bound shibori forms. On a site where ships were once built and sails once sewn, the work drew some of the week’s most attentive crowds. Carlier | Gebauer, another first-time participant, showed Dor Guez and Nida Sinnokrot, whose works address displacement and memory. Istanbul’s own galleries remained the backbone of the fair: Galeri 77 alone presented 36 works by 30 artists.

Outdoors, a new Sculpture Parcour carried the fair along the waterfront. Its centrepiece was Jaume Plensa’s seven-metre Juana; nearby, the Bahraini artist Rashid Al Khalifa’s walk-through mesh structure, curated by Marc-Olivier Wahler, threw shifting patterns of light across the quay, and Bahadır Baruter’s bronze dancers added a note of levity.

Not every observer was satisfied. One regional critic, writing during the fair, welcomed the growth but argued that a fair in Istanbul, a city whose networks have long reached into the Middle East and North Africa, could still bring more galleries from that region into the conversation. It is a fair point, and one the organisers will likely hear again.

The Chairman

At the centre of Contemporary Istanbul’s story is Ali Güreli, founder and chairman of the fair and a leading figure in Türkiye’s cultural and tourism landscape.

Before Contemporary Istanbul, Güreli was the founding chairperson of the Turkish Hoteliers Association (TÜROB) from 1994 to 2001. He is also a founding figure of Art Istanbul and has served as Vice President of the Turkish Tourism Investors Association (TTYD), where he remains part of the organization’s senior leadership.

His path into the art world developed through the events and hospitality industries. After helping build Istanbul’s congress and exhibition infrastructure, Güreli launched Art Istanbul before transforming the concept into Contemporary Istanbul in 2006.

Twenty years later, the fair has become an established platform connecting Türkiye’s art scene with international galleries, artists and collectors.

The Vice-Chair

If Ali Güreli is the fair’s orator, Rabia Bakıcı Güreli is its engine. Vice-chair and partner, she came to the project with a background in organising fairs, concerts and congresses, and describes herself as the orchestrator of the enormous administrative machine that an international fair requires. Her account of the partnership is disarmingly candid.

“I like to make the leaves; Ali Güreli likes to look at the forest.”

Rabia Bakıcı Güreli, speaking in 2025

She has also been frank about the economics. For many years, she has said, the fair did not turn a profit, and she repeatedly suggested they give it up. It was her husband’s foresight and persistence, in her telling, that kept it alive. Her own emphasis has been on the team and on visibility for others: she speaks of making room for a younger generation of colleagues, of strengthening women’s voices in the art world, and of a fair whose internal culture puts women first.

Since 2019 the couple have run the Contemporary Istanbul Foundation alongside the fair, whose CIF Dialogues talks programme has become a fixture of fair week. Their daughter, Koza Güreli, has worked on the brand’s strategy and partnerships, making CI one of the art market’s more durable family enterprises.

Soft Power on the Golden Horn

The move to Tersane Istanbul has given the fair a setting equal to its ambitions: a former industrial waterfront where the city’s layered history becomes part of the viewing experience. The Gürelis have long framed CI as more than a marketplace, describing it as one of Türkiye’s most effective soft-power brands and a platform that has helped Turkish artists and galleries reach international fairs.

Rabia Bakıcı Güreli’s stated hope for the next two decades is that Istanbul becomes a city where art is not only shown but produced, debated and directed: a creative laboratory for curators, artists and thinkers. After 21 editions, a larger hall and an Asian programme, the fair has laid the groundwork. Whether it can also widen its regional reach will shape the next chapter of the story the Gürelis began in 2006.