If the old collecting hierarchy ran from painting to sculpture to—perhaps—design objects, Gen Z has turned that pyramid on its head. Data collected in the Art Basel & UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2025, released Thursday, reveals a generation for whom art, sneakers, digital assets, and design exist on one seamless continuum, a portfolio of identity as much as investment.
According to the report, Gen Z collectors allocate the highest share of their total wealth to art and collectibles: 26 percent, more than any other generation. Within that, they devote 56 percent of spending to collectibles, far exceeding the 41 percent average across all high-net-worth individuals.
Their shopping carts look less like museum catalogues than lifestyle checklists: limited-edition sneakers, luxury handbags, cars, watches, and sports assets sit alongside digital and generative artworks. The report’s authors note that, while high net-worth Baby Boomers spent the most on fine art, antiques, and watches, and Millennials dominated the jewelry, decorative art, and design sectors, Gen Z reigns over most other sectors, including luxury collectible handbags, collectible sneakers (“almost five times the level of any other generational group,” the report said), classic cars, boats, jets, and sports memorabilia.
This flattening of categories reflects what the report’s foreword calls “a widening definition of connoisseurship, where art increasingly sits alongside design, luxury goods, and lifestyle collectibles.” Instead of curating discrete genres, Gen Z collects across mediums and markets — a reflection of their catholic taste and digital fluency.
When asked what they plan to buy next, 41 percent of Gen Z collectors said antiques, 40 percent jewelry, and roughly one-third intended to buy watches, design works, and collectible wine or spirits. Even decorative art and design—categories once dismissed as peripheral—are seeing renewed interest, with purchasing intentions more than doubling among the two youngest age groups.
Digital art has moved from fringe to foundational. Among high-net-worth collectors planning to buy art in the next 12 months, paintings remain the top choice (48 percent), followed by sculpture (37 percent). Gen Z collectors show the strongest appetite for the latter—40percent plan to acquire a sculptural work, a higher share than Gen X or millennials.
While demand for paintings and sculptures held steady year over year, interest in most other categories—works on paper, prints, and photography—declined. The lone exception was digital art: 23 percent of collectors planning to buy this year hope to acquire a digital work, up from 19 percent in 2024 and climbing to 26 percent among Gen Z collectors.
In collections overall, digital works now represent an average 13 percent share, rebounding sharply from 3 percent in 2024, thanks to a renewed interest in generative and AI-based art.
Crucially, digital art ownership skews young and female—32 percent of Gen Z women own at least one digital artwork, compared with 49 percent of Gen X women who do not. That tilt signals not a speculative revival but a generational comfort with virtual ownership.
What unites these seperate categories is attitude. Gen Z’s approach to collecting is social, performative, and self-referential. For younger collectors, it seems, art is increasingly social and performative—part of how they express taste and identity, not just something to hang on a wall or keep in a freeport.
In his introduction to the report, Art Basel CEO Noah Horowitz wrote, “For many, collecting has become an expression of identity, shaped as much by personal pleasure and social connection as by financial motivation.” The report’s sales-channel data backs that up: 51 percent of collectors purchased via Instagram without seeing the work in person, and 35 percent bought directly through Instagram links.
That’s the true disruption: collecting’s ground zero is shifting from the white cube to the feed. Art fairs remain important, of course, but identity is unfolding across platforms and with ownership itself is becoming a kind of content.
The art market’s future audience doesn’t appear to see a boundary between a Takashi Murakami print and a pair of limited-edition Nike Dunks; both are cultural signifiers with value that is at once emotional, social, and economic.
As the report makes clear, Gen Z’s hybrid model—part investor, part curator, part influencer—may be the first genuine paradigm shift since globalization rewired the market two decades ago. What comes next is probably not the democratization of collecting, but its virtualization.
