If Art Week is the five days the Convention Center fills up and the causeways back up, why does the City's free hotel art exhibition open today, nearly three weeks ahead of the fairs?

No Vacancy, Miami Beach, the City's juried hotel competition, puts site-specific work by 12 artists into 12 hotels from November 12 through December 19, 2026. Art Basel Miami Beach's public days are December 4 to 6. That puts the free work up for 38 days, and the fair runs three. Most of the free art in this year's calendar falls in the days before the fairs open or after they close. If you live here, those are the days to go.

The Calendar, Laid Out by Cost

The City defines Art Week Miami Beach as November 30 through December 6, and it is increasing police staffing December 2 to 6. Five fairs open their public floors in that window. Design Miami is at Convention Center Drive and 19th Street, and Untitled Art is on the sand at Ocean Drive and 12th Street. InScope, from the team behind SCOPE Art Show, is at Ocean Drive and 8th Street, with its gallery floor open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Aqua Art Miami is at the Aqua Hotel, 1530 Collins Avenue, with public hours December 3 to 6. Everything around those five days is free.

Today: The Hotels Become the Gallery

The seventh edition of No Vacancy drew 228 applications, a record, according to the City's October 19 announcement. Each selected artist receives a $10,000 honorarium, and two prizes worth $35,000 combined will be awarded: a $10,000 public prize presented by the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau and a $25,000 juried prize chosen by a panel of art world professionals. These are the pairings:

• Avalon Hotel: Morel Doucet, with South Florida's tropical flora reimagined as a nighttime meditation on resilience and environmental change
• Balfour Hotel Miami Beach: Luján Candria, with translucent photo-based textiles of native vegetation hung in the hotel windows
• The Betsy Hotel: Ricardo E. Zulueta, with video mapped onto the glowing surface of The Betsy Orb
• Casa Faena: Kevin Arrow, with an immersive installation built from decades of 35mm material collected around South Florida
• Eden Roc Miami Beach: Emmett Moore, with a knotted stainless steel exhaust pipe
• Hotel Croydon Miami Beach: Justin H. Long, with fictional undersea relics in an Art Deco display cabinet
• International Inn: Lulu Sanchez, with a luminous sculptural arboretum of hand-built palms
• Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel: Alex Nuñez, with printed palms and an iridescent portal
• Marriott Stanton South Beach: Marlon Portales, with two monumental paintings set in an imagined Cuban landscape
• The Royal Palm South Beach Miami: Diana Eusebio, with textiles, photography and natural dyes
• The Shelborne by Proper: Yanira Collado, with a layered installation of upcycled paper, wood and textiles
• Sherry Frontenac OceanFront Resort: Gonzalo Hernández, with seven jacquard-woven banners spelling A-M-E-R-I-C-A in colors drawn from South American flags

The City has published a map of participating hotels and artists. The hotels run from South Beach to Mid Beach. In mid-November, you can see all twelve over a couple of evenings with nothing else competing for the sidewalk.

The Sunday Before: Collins Park Fills Up First

Public Art Fund brings six playable sculptural ping-pong tables to Collins Park on Sunday, November 29, in association with The Bass. They arrive after a summer 2026 run at Rockaway Beach in New York City. The tables are real sculptures. Las Hermanas Iglesias built DiMeLo out of stainless steel and instruments including a handpan, glockenspiel and tom drums, so each game plays a live composition. SUPERFLEX's Fish Ping-Pong is pink cantera stone designed to work as a marine habitat if it were ever submerged. Carlos H. Matos's Tlachco combines ping-pong with Ulama, the Mesoamerican ballgame. A kiosk lends paddles and balls for free from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily through December 6, and you can play anytime with your own.

That Sunday is also the last Sunday of November, when The Bass holds its free monthly Family Day with art activities for kids and caregivers. The museum, at 2100 Collins Avenue, faces the park. On Monday, November 30, Public Art Fund hosts The Paddle in the Park Classic from 4 to 6 p.m. Art world figures compete on the sculptures for a prize, and the event includes a DJ and food vendors. Admission is free.

Amalia Pica, who made the Fair Play table, also has a site-specific installation, Lecturas Posibles, at The Rotunda in the northeast corner of Collins Park. The Bass lists it through February 12, 2027, so it stays up long after the ping-pong tables leave.

Dec. 1 to 6: Faena Opens Free While the Fairs Charge

Faena Art's program starts December 1, the day before most fairs open to the public, and runs daily from noon to 9 p.m. through December 6. All of its installations are free. On Faena Beach, Christopher Joshua Benton's A Lore Supreme is a kinetic mirrored sphere 27 feet tall and 44 feet wide. More than 7,000 facets move with the wind, and embedded speakers play music and stories collected from Miami's creative communities. Inside The Cathedral in the Faena Miami Beach Hotel lobby, Marinella Senatore's An Expanded Baroque Crown is a walk-in illuminated structure based on Southern Italian festival lights, with poetry, music and dance programmed with O, Miami.

INK Miami Art Fair also costs nothing. It runs December 2 to 6, and tickets are free with online registration.

Getting Around During the Five Busy Days

The City says Art Week traffic is usually heaviest on weekday afternoons and builds toward the weekend. FDOT lane reductions near the Biscayne Boulevard off-ramp downtown are expected to slow westbound traffic on the MacArthur Causeway. The City's free transportation plan gives residents these options:

1. Water taxi. Free boats run every 7 to 9 minutes between Maurice Gibb Memorial Park, 1790 Purdy Avenue, and Venetian Marina & Yacht Club, 1635 North Bayshore Drive. Hours are 10 a.m. to midnight from November 30 to December 5, and 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on December 6.
2. Art shuttles. Free shuttles run every 10 to 15 minutes from the Convention Center at 18th Street. They go to Collins Avenue between 10th and 11th streets, to Mid Beach stops at Collins and 22nd, 32nd and 46th streets and on Royal Palm Avenue between 41st and 42nd, and to the Design District over the Julia Tuttle Causeway.
3. Park-and-ride garages. Shuttle stops serve the 42 Street Garage at 4049 Royal Palm Avenue, the Sunset Harbour Garage at 1900 Bay Road, and the 17 Street, Pennsylvania Avenue and City Hall garages near the Convention Center.
4. Trolley. The free Miami Beach Trolley runs more often, from 8 a.m. to midnight, December 2 to 5, then goes back to regular hours.
5. Alerts. Text MBAlert to 888777 for City traffic alerts.

Boaters should note that the East Venetian Causeway drawbridge will not open for vessels from 3 to 9 p.m., November 30 through December 6, except for emergencies. A citywide moratorium bans non-city road, sidewalk and lane closures in the right of way all week, so routine construction detours stop while the crowds are here. According to the City's Art Week public safety page, police officers are also assigned to reduce cut-through traffic in residential areas.

After Dec. 6: What's Still Up

When the fairs pack up, No Vacancy stays in all twelve hotels until December 19. The Bass is also relocating Susan Philipsz's outdoor sound work Too Much I Once Lamented to the southwest area of Collins Park in December. Inside the museum, the fall season runs well into 2027. Yuko Mohri's Unviolated Imperfection is up through May 30, 2027, Sarah Zapata's Against a State of Malevolence through February 28, 2027, and Abraham Cruzvillegas's Autocontusión through July 25, 2027. Pedro y Juana's Aquí opened October 28 and runs until May 2028.

Admission is free for Miami Beach and Surfside residents with valid ID or proof of residence. General admission is $15. If friends from out of town arrive for the holidays rather than for Art Basel, The Bass's monthly Third Thursday, free for everyone from 6 to 9 p.m., falls on December 17. That's two days before the No Vacancy installations come down.

Art Week also brings out-of-town buyers who want to know what it's like to live near Collins Park or a short walk from Faena Beach. If you're wondering what your own place is worth while that interest is in town, Julian Calderin and The Bespoke Group can give you a valuation based on current comparable sales. Get Your Home Valuation.