Louvre Abu Dhabi has opened the largest seasonal show of its 2026–27 programme, a survey of the sea routes that carried spices, textiles, ceramics and ideas across the Indian Ocean from antiquity to the seventeenth century. Titled Spices and Wonders: Sailing the Indian Ocean, the exhibition opened on 14 October 2026 and continues until 14 February 2027. It was organised in partnership with the Musée National des Arts Asiatiques – Guimet in Paris, where a second edition is scheduled for May to September 2027.

Roughly 240 artworks and objects from 24 lenders across seven countries fill the galleries, arranged in six sections that move from early navigation to the spread of religions, music and material culture. The loans are notable: a navigational manuscript by the fifteenth-century navigator Ibn Majid arrives from the National Library of France, while an Indian dagger and scabbard from around 1615 to 1620 comes from Kuwait's Al Sabah Collection. Six large ship models stand for Arabian, Southeast Asian, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish sailing traditions, and objects recovered from shipwrecks reveal cargoes whose origins stretch from China and India to Spain and Mexico.

The museum is deliberately telling the story from a Gulf perspective rather than a European one. The region's pearl industry is a key thread, and the curators — Louvre Abu Dhabi's Guilhem André and Guimet's Claire Déléry — stress that Europe was only one part of the exchange. A scent installation produced with Givaudan, featuring six raw fragrance materials and three perfume compositions, adds an olfactory dimension to the spice trade that sits at the exhibition's heart.

Spices and Wonders anchors a season that also includes Art Here 2026 and the Richard Mille Art Prize from 11 November and Living Legacies, an exhibition on heritage protection in fragile places developed with the ALIPH Foundation, from 25 November. The season programme frames the museum as a platform for stories of connection across civilisations, and the Indian Ocean show — with the largest participation of works from the museum's own collection since it opened — is its flagship statement.