Global art sales rose 4% to $59.6 billion in 2025, continuing a recovery. The headline is less interesting than where inside that figure the activity sits — and for anyone selling or buying photographic prints, the composition is unusually favourable.
The generational split
The data shows a clear division by age cohort. Millennials led in prints and photography. Gen Z collectors are buying prints, photography and works on paper from emerging artists, while showing their highest activity in digital art, film and video.
The reason is straightforwardly economic: originals from established names are out of reach, and prints offer a more accessible entry point for collectors priced out of the market for unique works.
That framing is sometimes presented dismissively — as though print buying were a consolation prize. The market data suggests otherwise. Major auction houses and online platforms are expected to keep expanding their print departments, making these works a central part of 2026 sales strategy.
When auction houses build departments around a category, they are not accommodating a lesser market.
The online correction
One number complicates the picture: online sales tapered to 15% of total market value, reflecting a rebalancing between digital and in-person channels.
This is worth reading carefully. It does not mean online selling stopped working. It means the pandemic-era share was an anomaly, and buyers have returned to viewing work physically for higher-value purchases while continuing to buy accessible work online.
For print sellers this is close to ideal. Prints sit in the price band where online purchase remains normal — the segment that did not migrate back.
What this means practically
For sellers: the buyers entering the market now are younger, buying prints, and doing it online. Edition size, transparent pricing and clear provenance matter more to this cohort than gallery representation.
For buyers: emerging-artist photography is where Gen Z activity concentrates, which means competition for the best emerging work is rising. Buying early in an artist’s edition history has become the accessible strategy it always claimed to be.
For both: 43% of dealers expect sales to improve heading into 2026, with 38% anticipating stable performance. That is a market with modest confidence — not exuberance, and not contraction.
The honest caveat
Growing volume in an accessible category is not the same as price appreciation. Prints are entering more homes because they are affordable; affordability and investment return pull in opposite directions.
Buying photographic prints because you want to live with the work is well supported by this data. Buying them expecting resale gains is a different proposition, and the same numbers do not support it nearly as well.
