Fresh off the heels of winning the bid to host the Eurovision Song Contest in 2025, after Swiss contestant and first openly nonbinary performer Nemo won the contest last year, Basel is ready for its close-up.
From exciting art exhibits to a new exclusive spa area, these are some of the exciting developments happening in Switzerland’s third-largest city.
Essential cultural happenings
Eurovision
The birthplace of Art Basel and many remarkable artists (including the Pritzker Prize–winning architects Jacques Herzog, Pierre de Meuron, and Peter Zumthor, kinetic artist Jean Tinguely, and tennis legend Roger Federer), Basel has no shortage of cultural cred. And more is coming this year. One of the biggest events will be the always dazzling and campy Eurovision Song Contest Grand Finale, which will be staged in St. Jakobshalle arena on Saturday, May 17.
New and noteworthy exhibits
Fondation Beyeler is one of Switzerland’s most important museums, and it’s hosting three noteworthy exhibitions in 2025. Exhibits here are often curated to playfully interact with the museum’s artful spaces, designed by Renzo Piano in 1997. The first show, “Northern Lights” (January 26–May 21), displays 74 landscape paintings from Scandinavia and Canada inspired by boreal forests, including masterpieces by Hilma af Klint and Edvard Munch. “The Key to Dreams” (February 16–May 4) presents 50 Surrealist masterworks by such artists as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. In the fall, the museum will host the first retrospective of Yayoi Kusama’s seven-decade career (October 12–January 25, 2026), organized in close collaboration with the artist and her studio.
Not to be overlooked is Basel’s more contemporary-orientated Kunstmuseum Basel, with its new annex designed in 2016 by local architects Christ & Gantenbein. It stages an exciting new exhibit called “Verso, Tales from the Other Side” (February 1, 2025–January 4, 2026), featuring the back sides of famous painting canvases from the 14th to 18th centuries.
The Roche Towers are the tallest buildings in Switzerland.
Photo by Julia Nimke
Modern-leaning architecture abounds in the city. Visit works like the Fondation Beyeler building designed by Swiss architect Renzo Piano; and elsewhere across Basel admire the facades of Álvaro Siza, and Tadao Ando. But works by Basel’s native sons, Herzog and de Meuron, are especially ubiquitous. Their two white trapezoidal Roche Towers are visible from every corner of the city. Building 1 was completed in 2015 and Building 2 in 2022 while Building 3 is in development. Travelers will want to check out the duo’s 2020 redux of the Stadtcasino Basel, a $47 million refurbishment of a 19th-century concert hall swathed in red silk walls and gold leaf with a floating cloud mezzanine, hidden mirrors that allow guests to peek up at decorative ceilings, and world-class parquetry.
Art Basel
Every June, Basel brings the art world together for Art Basel, the OG weeklong art fair with more than 200 galleries and 4,000 artists from five continents. In 2025, the fair will run from June 19 to 22 and will see the launch of Premiere, one of the fair’s many sectors, focusing on recent artistic productions and curated projects. Visitor-favorite sector Unlimited displays large site-specific installations by contemporary artists like Christo, Robert Frank, and Marina Abramović. The free Parcours sector, which takes over public spaces, churches, bridges, and parks across the city, has been especially popular in recent years.
Art Basel has spawned a constellation of auxiliary art fairs including Liste Art Fair Basel (June 16–22) and Volta Art Fair Basel (June 19–22), both emphasizing younger galleries and newcomers. Photo Basel (June 17–22) is dedicated entirely to photography-based art while Design Miami/ Basel (June 2025) showcases furniture, lighting, and other art objects.
The word Volkshaus translates to “people’s house” in German.
Photo by Robert Rieger
Hotels worth checking into
If it’s old-world luxury you’re seeking, Basel delivers. Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois, which once hosted Napoleon, is a Belle Époque beauty perched on the banks of the Rhine with period velvet furniture, wedding-cake plaster ceilings, and chiseled stone terraces. A renovation of its annex provides spacious new suites, the Salon du Cigar, and an exclusive spa on the top floor all designed by—you guessed it—Herzog & de Meuron.
Another project by the group is the Volkshaus hotel, a 45-room boutique property that opened in 2020 with dark-green tiles and blond wood furniture. Its location in the vibrant Kleinbasel district, a few minutes’ walk from the Rhine River, makes it an ideal base for exploring the city.
The restaurants to plan a trip around
The buzzy LA Restaurant, opened in 2024, serves a visual feast of dishes, such as a perfect egg cooked at 66 degrees with shiitake foam and glassy fried scallops with diced Granny Smith apple and cauliflower.
Newcomer Ackermannshof received a Michelin star in 2022 for chef Flavio Fermi’s modern interpretations of such Mediterranean classics as Tuscan fish soup with chopped tender giant prawns and vitello nostrano, a dish of local veal with pumpkin, dukkah, and truffle juice.
Les Trois Rois’s Cheval Blanc by Peter Knogl is one of only four restaurants in Switzerland with three Michelin stars. Bathed in lavender and gold tones, the establishment is known for its incredible attention to sauces served over dishes like red mullet fillet with crispy scales and saffron sauce.
For more casual fare, follow the city’s youth to the Bauhaus-era Basel Markthalle. The market was restored in 2014 and is home to international food ranging from tacos to Turkish to locally brewed beer. In addition, it often hosts pop-ups and seasonal markets.
