Apparently, Gen Z has money. Quite a lot of it, actually. According to the latest Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting, published on 8 October, collectors in their twenties are spending more on fine art than any other generation, including Baby Boomers.
For a generation routinely described as financially doomed, unable to afford property and increasingly sceptical of traditional markers of success, this is rather surprising news, until you look at which members of Gen Z were actually surveyed.
The report, authored by art economist Dr Clare McAndrew, questioned 3,100 high-net-worth collectors across ten international markets, each with a net worth exceeding $1 million, excluding property and private business assets. In other words, we are dealing with a rather particular group of twenty-somethings.
Still, the figures are extraordinary. In 2025, Gen Z collectors, aged between 20 and 29, spent an average of $347,460 on fine art, compared with $124,265 across all respondents. In the first half of 2026, 13 per cent of Gen Z respondents had already spent over $1 million on art, compared with just 3 per cent of the overall sample.
One could reasonably ask where a 25-year-old finds a spare million dollars for a painting. The answer, at least in some cases, may be relatively straightforward: family.
Forty per cent of Gen Z respondents identified family influence as their introduction to collecting, compared with 28 per cent overall. There is, after all, a considerable difference between saving for your first artwork and growing up surrounded by paintings, knowing the dealers and understanding the rules of a market that remains remarkably inaccessible to outsiders.
As the art world prepares for the Great Wealth Transfer, the movement of trillions of dollars from older generations to their heirs, the distinction becomes particularly relevant. Are we witnessing a new generation entering the market, or simply purchasing power changing hands within families already connected to it?
Interestingly, younger collectors are also challenging assumptions about how they buy. Eighty per cent conduct substantial independent research, while 56 per cent have purchased work by previously unfamiliar artists. And despite their generation’s reputation for sharing everything online, many prefer to keep their collections private.
Other industry figures reinforce their growing presence. Christie’s reported that Millennials and younger generations accounted for 46 per cent of its new bidders and buyers in 2025. Yet participation and purchasing power remain two very different things.
A 27-year-old buying a £300 print and another purchasing a million-dollar painting may share a generational label, but they occupy entirely different positions within the art market.
The industry has spent years discussing how to make collecting more accessible to younger audiences, and now it is celebrating Gen Z’s extraordinary spending as evidence of a generational breakthrough. Perhaps the more revealing story is how differently wealth operates within the same generation.
The art market has found its next generation of big spenders. Whether it has found a genuinely broader generation of collectors is another question.
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