Class of 2026: RA Schools

Hi all, happy Sunday,

We hope you’re well and managing to stay cool in this glorious but slightly ridiculous weather.

A couple of weeks ago, we visited the Royal Academy for the RA Schools Show, which has since closed. One of the UK’s most prestigious postgraduate art programmes, the RA Schools has an alumni list that speaks for itself.

Here are our top picks from its latest cohort of graduating artists:

1. Mohammed Adel

@mohammedadel.art

First up, we stumbled into a gallery space full of Adel’s beautiful monochrome paintings. His delicate framings of interior and architectural scenes use light in a way that makes the subjects feel both nostalgic and haunting.

2. Djofray Makumbu

@djofraymakumbu

Next was one of the most immersive presentations in the show. Makumbu layered sound, painting, wallpaper and vitrines containing miniature domestic dioramas, each one a tiny world in itself. Drawing on his Congolese heritage and East London upbringing, these carefully constructed interiors invite you to peer into, and become part of, the lives unfolding within them.

3. Robert O’Leary

@rob__oleary

For those unfamiliar with the RA Schools show, each student presents work in their own gallery space, alongside a smaller one-room group exhibition. It was here that we first encountered O’Leary’s work. His painting Combing the Hair (‘La Coiffure’), after Edgar Degas (2025), is an almost exact copy of the original in the National Gallery’s collection and immediately demonstrated his technical skill as a painter. This stood in sharp contrast to the work shown in his solo space, where he presented a series of sculptural works made from hand-cast glass, bronze, nickel and other materials.

4. Lolly Adams

@lollyadams

Finally, we stepped into the gloriously strange universe of Lolly Adams. It was impossible to ignore the striking presence of Miss HerNia, Adams’s subterranean sewer-princess alter ego, a carnivalesque figure who revels in disgust and pleasure. Alongside her, surreal ceramic sculptures sat on bedside tables, while a sensor-triggered machine repeatedly slapped a likeness of Adams’s face cast in lard.