Christie’s and Sotheby’s have both reported a significant rebound in their overall global sales during the first half of 2026.
First-half (H1) revenue at Christie’s stands at $4.5bn, with public auction sales up 71% year-on-year at $3.5bn (2025: $2.1bn), and a sell-through rate of 91% per lot (2025: 87%). Private sales for Christie’s stand at just over $1bn so far this year.
Sotheby’s H1 figures are markedly similar—public auction sales amount to $3.4bn, up 59% on 2025, with a sell-through rate by lot of 90%. Total turnover, including a record $826m in private sales, stands at $4.4bn, 58% up on last year and an all-time high.
Christie’s has sold the highest value collection so far this year, that of the publisher S.I. Newhouse which totalled $630.8m in New York in May, and the top three works—Jackson Pollock’s Number 7A (1948) sold for $181.2m and Constantin Brancusi’s Danaïde sold for $107.6m (both from the Newhouse collection), and Mark Rothko’s No. 15 (Two Greens and Red Stripe), from the collection of Agnes Gund, which sold for $98.4m.
Sotheby’s, meanwhile, reports total sales of $908.6m during its May marquee week in May, led by the collection of the late dealer Robert Mnuchin which achieved $173m. In June, the Lewis collection in London totalled $406.2m, the highest value sale of Impressionist, Modern and contemporary art ever staged in Europe.
Luxury shines
While 20th- and 21st-century art still dominates auction sales—$2.3bn at Christie’s (up 79% on 2025) and $1.9bn at Sotheby’s, according to ArtTactic (Sotheby’s declines to outline sales per category)—the amorphous luxury genre sits in second at both firms. Encompassing everything from watches to jewellery to cars to handbags to memorabilia, luxury sales at Christie’s so far total $539m in 2026 (up 15%).
“Luxury has obviously been a great gateway for us for new buyers and also for younger buyers,” Bonnie Brennan, Christie’s chief executive, tells The Art Newspaper. She points to the sale of the businessman Jim Irsay’s collection of Americana, which totalled $105.2m across five auctions finishing on 6 July, the highest sale total ever for a memorabilia collection. Such a boom in memorabilia echoes the findings of ArtTactic’s report on half year earnings, released last week, and Heritage Auctions’ record $1.4bn sales so far this year.
Josh Pullan, the global head of Sotheby’s luxury division, says it has been a record first half. “What’s particularly notable is the breadth of the growth,” Pullan says. “We’re seeing exceptional performance across a remarkably diverse set of categories, from record results in watches and cars to continued strength in jewellery, wine and spirits, and books.” He points to a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spider achieving €16.7m at an RM Sotheby’s sale in Monte Carlo in April, a Cartier Tutti Frutti pendant necklace making $2.8m in Hong Kong in April, and a $35,000 record price for a bottle of tequila.
As seen in Phillips H1 results released last week, watches have seen extraordinary growth. Pullan attributes this to a more global, younger audience (Millennials and Gen Z now account for roughly one-third of watch bidders at Sotheby’s) and an increasingly affluent buyer entering with finance and tech wealth. But Pullan says buyers are less speculative than in the pre-Covid era, “reflected in the growing demand for leading independent makers such as F.P. Journe, Simon Brette, and Rexhep Rexhepi. We are still at the beginning of this ‘moment of discovery’—a long-term shift toward craftsmanship, rarity, and horological excellence that is reshaping the market.” Average watch bidder spend is up around 60% year-on-year, at $129,000.
Across the board, Brennan says, “the audience is disciplined, don’t underestimate how savvy they are about pricing.” A through-line of consciously conservative estimates (providing consignors are biddable) has been evident at Christie’s and it often pays off—Brennan points to the example of Monet’s Pommiers, Vétheuil (1878) which, when offered at $6m to $8m in New York in May, sold for $19.6m. On the flip side, she adds, “where estimates got pushed, bidding was thinner.”
Such price caution, along with the near ubiquitous use of guarantees at the top level, has contributed to the high sell-through rates at both auction houses, but so too has the increasing number of bidders, something both companies have emphasised in their latest earnings statements. The “battle for eyeballs” (as one former Sotheby’s chief executive called it) has only intensified, and Christie’s and Sotheby’s both stress the number of bidders they have attracted this year—a record average of 4.9 per lot at Sotheby’s, while Christie’s says underbidding is up 69%. Youth is all important too, and Christie’s says 47% of new clients so far this year are Millennial or Gen Z.
Beyond trophy sales of major estates, both auction houses are acutely aware that increasing breadth and depth is crucial in creating a more resilient client base. For both, luxury is seen as a stepping stone, particularly for Millennial and Gen Z buyers. “Our buyers are getting younger, and that’s consistent with the fact that 85% of our bids this year came from online,” Brennan says. “Oftentimes, the online forum is a place where those new buyers get to know us before they dive into some of the bigger live auctions.”
Flexibility and financing
Increasingly both auction houses are focused on being as high-touch as possible—more reasons to be in touch with their clients, less for those clients to go elsewhere for their collecting and financing needs. With vendor premiums on high value consignments often waived as part of business getting negotiations, art financing is seen as a growth opportunity by both Christie’s and Sotheby’s.
Sotheby’s completed a new $900m securitisation issuance in January—officially dubbed Sotheby’s ArtFi Master Trust, Series 2026-1—which the auction house says was “significantly oversubscribed”. Securitisation works by bundling together a portfolio of individual art-backed loans and selling them to investors as tradable notes, allowing Sotheby’s access to capital up front. For the first time, Art-Fi 2026-1 also included loans secured against collectible cars as well as art.
Ron Elimelekh, the co-head of Sotheby’s Financial (SF), tells The Art Newspaper: “The strong investor demand reflects confidence in both the quality of the underlying loan portfolio and our underwriting expertise.” The level of interest “also signals the continued institutionalisation of art-backed lending,” Elimelekh says. “As more institutional capital enters the space, it strengthens the market’s financial infrastructure, expands financing options for collectors, and reinforces art’s role as an increasingly established asset within broader wealth management strategies.”
Christie’s launched its art financing department five years ago. “We got into it to really strengthen our core business because it expands how our clients engage with us,” Brennan says. “It’s a way for us to provide a really a full spectrum of monetisation options…it helps with client retention and it helps us deepen those relationships.” It is not just art—Christie’s clients are taking out loans against their cars, handbags, watches and, increasingly, wine.
Brennan sees particular demand for financing among some of Christie’s new clients: “The younger generation almost have more of a risk tolerance with what they’re buying and how they’re engaging with us, and that’s where art finance can help them leverage that liquidity from their luxury and art collections.”
Obviously, using a collection as collateral lends liquidity without actually having to sell, but Brennan says many of Christie’s finance clients “are in no way in need of capital, they’re just optimising the way they use it, and oftentimes they reinvest in art.” Unsurprising, then, that Christie’s sees it “as a win-win for everybody.”
The bottom line
While, as privately-owned businesses, neither auction house has to disclose profits, in Christie’s earnings report Brennan does state that its results “were achieved profitably and through disciplined stewardship of capital…further reinforcing our already exceptionally strong balance sheet.” Key to this, Brennan says, have been “managing fixed costs but also making smart investments”, such as in Christie’s art finance and Ventures arms which “use our strengths to deliver profits to the shareholder”.
As for Sotheby’s, its earnings statement points to the completion of a $825m bond issuance in April which has refinanced the company’s considerable existing debt. “The bond issuance was one of several financial transactions in recent months that has reduced financing costs, enhanced liquidity and strengthened the group’s debt profile,” a Sotheby’s spokesperson says.
So what does the rest of 2026 look like? “We had a number of discretionary sellers in 2026, those who chose to sell because of the strength that we saw in the back half of 2025, and I think that is very likely to continue,” Brennan says. “The market is good,” she adds, but “it’s much easier to predict three or four months out…nobody has a crystal ball and knows what’s going to happen in 2027.”
