Christie's opened the autumn auction calendar in Asia with a decisive evening sale in Hong Kong on 29 September 2026, when its 20th and 21st Century sale brought in HK$726,421,000 — approximately US$92.6 million. The house reported the total as 28 percent higher than the comparable sale a year earlier, and said that every lot consigned found a buyer, a sold-through rate of 100 percent by lot that is seldom seen at this price tier. The figures were reported by the trade press on 1 October 2026. The night's most valuable lot was Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Ancient Scientist," which sold for HK$76,975,000 — about US$9.8 million — and gave the house its headline result as the autumn season got underway. Close behind came two artists with deep followings in the region: Zao Wou-Ki's "Voie Lactée – 09.11.56" reached HK$58.9 million and Yayoi Kusama's "A-Pumpkin (YHP)" HK$58.2 million. The evening's standout surprise was a far older painting — Peter Paul Rubens's "Landscape with Willows," offered at auction for the first time in more than two hundred years, sold for HK$19.2 million, close to double its high estimate. Asia-wide auction records were reset for several collecting categories in the same session, with new continental highs recorded for Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Salvador Dalí and for Rubens himself. Combined with the year-on-year growth and the unsold-free outcome, the evening gives Christie's a strong headline to open the autumn calendar in Hong Kong, and it sets an early benchmark against which the rival sales scheduled in the city in the coming weeks will be judged.