The Williamson Open is one of those fixtures that quietly tells you what is actually being made across the Liverpool City Region, as opposed to what a curator has decided should represent it. The 2026 edition opened on 24 July and runs at the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum in Birkenhead until Saturday 10 October.
Entries closed earlier in the year and the selection is now on the walls. Art and photography by artists from across the region sit alongside each other, which is the whole point of an open, and part of the pleasure is the unevenness. You get to see what your peers are attempting, including the things that do not entirely come off.
Entry to the exhibition is free.
The Real Change This Year Is How the Work Sells
Many of the works in the Open are for sale, which has always been true. What is different in 2026 is that you can view and buy them online as well as in the gallery, through a dedicated catalogue hosted alongside the Floral Pavilion's ticketing system.
That matters more than it might sound. An open exhibition sells to the people who walk through the door, and gallery footfall in Birkenhead over ten weeks is a finite number. Putting the catalogue online widens the pool to anyone who hears about the show, including people who will never make it to Slatey Road.
If you have exhibited in an open before and watched work come home unsold, this is a structural change worth paying attention to. It is also a reasonable argument for entering next year, quite apart from the wall space.
Own Art, and Buying Work on a Normal Income
For purchases made in the gallery, the Williamson offers the Own Art scheme. It is a national initiative supported by Arts Council England, designed to make buying contemporary art and craft manageable for people who are not collectors.
The mechanics are simple. You choose the work, apply for a loan from as little as £250, and repay it over ten months with no interest. That turns a £600 painting into £60 a month, which is the difference between an aspiration and a purchase for most people.
One caveat worth knowing before you plan around it: Own Art cannot be applied to online purchases. If you want to use the scheme, you need to buy in person. Full eligibility details are on the Own Art website.
For artists, this cuts both ways, and it is useful to understand. Own Art availability is one of the reasons regional galleries can shift original work at prices that would otherwise stall, and it is worth asking about wherever you exhibit.
What an Open Is Actually Good For
There is a habit of treating open exhibitions as the lesser cousin of curated shows, and it is worth resisting. An open is the closest thing you get to an unfiltered sample of a region's practice at a given moment.
Walk it with that in mind, and it becomes a research trip. You can see which media are crowded and which are thin, what scale people are working at, where the general standard sits, and how your own work would read hung next to it. That last question is difficult to answer honestly in a studio and easy to answer in a room like this.
It is also the most direct way to find out who else is working near you. Names on labels, repeated across a few pieces, are the beginning of knowing your local scene rather than assuming it is elsewhere.
Make a Day of It
The timing is good this year. The Open runs until 10 October, which means it overlaps with Leonard McComb: Nature & Humanity, opening on 14 August and running to 31 October, and with Beyond the Brotherhood: The Legacies of the Pre-Raphaelites, which continues until 7 November.
That gives you a regional open, a major single-artist survey and a collection show in one building, all free. There are few afternoons in Merseyside that offer better value for a practising artist, and the McComb show in particular gives you a high technical benchmark to carry back into the Open's rooms.
The gallery also runs Liverpool Life Drawing sessions on Friday evenings, so it is worth checking the calendar if you want to end the visit by working rather than looking.
Plan Your Visit
The Williamson Open 2026 runs at the Williamson Art Gallery & Museum, Slatey Road, Oxton, Birkenhead, CH43 4UE, from 24 July until 10 October 2026. Entry is free.
Opening hours are Monday to Thursday 10am to 5pm, Friday 10am to 9pm, and Saturday 10am to 5pm. The gallery is closed on Sundays, and last entry is thirty minutes before closing.
The online catalogue is linked from the Williamson's event page for the Open, and staff in the gallery can talk you through Own Art if you are buying in person. Check the gallery's website before travelling, as opening arrangements and associated events can change.