The final sales tallies from Art Basel Paris 2026 show the week's biggest cheques going to post-war masters, with contemporary names close behind. David Zwirner's booth led its own report with a Gerhard Richter painting at 8.5 million dollars, followed by five Robert Ryman paintings that together fetched more than 7.5 million dollars, a Joan Mitchell painting at 3.8 million and a Marlene Dumas painting at 3 million.

Zwirner's list continued with four Josef Albers paintings totalling more than 5.4 million dollars, a Luc Tuymans painting at 2.4 million, an On Kawara painting at 2 million and a Ruth Asawa sculpture at 1.2 million, alongside two Elizabeth Peyton paintings and a work by Yu Nishimura at 500,000 dollars. The pattern was consistent: established names with deep collecting histories did the heavy lifting.

Hauser and Wirth, which had already reported two works in the region of 10 million dollars each by Richter and Georg Baselitz during the fair's opening days, added further seven-figure results. A Mark Bradford work sold for 4 million dollars, George Condo's 2026 painting Woman with Designer Shirt for 2.95 million, a 1961 Lucio Fontana spatial concept for 1.7 million euros, and a Henry Taylor work for 1 million, with an Alexander Calder mobile just under 1 million and a Pat Steir painting at 900,000.

The gallery's remaining reported sales ran from a Cristina Iglesias work at 500,000 euros down through Jenny Holzer and William Kentridge works at 400,000 dollars each, a Lee Bul work at 290,000 and a Roni Horn work at 200,000. Taken together, the reports suggest a fair where dealers leaned on blue-chip material to reassure buyers, while still placing new work by living artists at strong prices.