David Hockney At Auction: Results and What We've Learned From Q1 2026

Through MyArtBroker’s database – which tracks both public and private sales data across Hockney’s prints and editions – it is clear that the momentum surrounding his work is not speculative or short-term, but structural. It reflects a maturing market phase, increasingly segmented by price tier, more selective in its demand, and more responsive to quality.

2025 was the strongest year for Hockney prints at auction in the past ten-year period. Total sales reached £15.8 million across 389 lots – a 197% increase in value year-on-year, with average selling price rising 109% to £40,500. The more important signal, however, lies beneath the headline. In 2023, Hockney’s print market peaked at 469 lots. In 2025, 80 fewer lots generated nearly £6 million more in value. This was not a market rising uniformly – it was a specific tier repricing sharply, while the rest of the market continued its steady appreciation.

Early Q1 2026 sharpens the picture. £6.1 million from 60 works, at an average of £102,000 – more than three times the 2025 full-year average per lot. Demand has not broadened; it has concentrated.

Hockney’s print market now operates on two layers simultaneously, and conflating them leads to misreading both. Works priced below £50,000 have expanded from 87 lots in 2017 to 136 in 2025, with average values rising roughly 150% across the period – a record of durable, low-volatility appreciation. This is the liquidity base: wide participation, consistent transaction flow, and a genuine entry point into the market.

The premium tier is where repricing has happened. Works above £100,000 accounted for over 65% of total sales value in 2025 despite representing around 10% of lots sold. In Q1 2026, 25 of 60 lots cleared £100,000, generating £5.2 million – roughly six times the combined value of every other transaction in the quarter. The distance between the two layers has widened sharply, and the dynamics driving each are no longer the same.

At the centre of this performance is Hockney’s The Arrival Of Spring – a series of iPad drawings produced in 2011, depicting Woldgate, East Yorkshire, and issued in editions of 10 and 25. Prior to 2022, the series had a limited secondary-market presence and no established pricing framework. By the end of Q1 2026, it has become one of the most clearly benchmarked bodies of work in the blue chip print market.

The historic hierarchy between the two edition sizes has also compressed. The edition of 10 peaked at an average of £366,311 in 2022 and now sits at £290,429. The edition of 25 has moved in the opposite direction: from £41,131 in 2018 to £249,113 in 2025. The gap has narrowed from roughly 2x at its widest point to less than 1.2x – a convergence that carries direct implications for sellers holding either format.

The Sotheby’s Arrival Of Spring Private-Collection Sale & the Open-Market Confirmation

Repricing was decisively accelerated by Sotheby’s single-owner sale in October 2025, but demand had already begun to build. In June 2025, The Arrival Of Spring, 4th May 2011 (edition of 10) reached £504,000, matching the previous auction high for the collection. The Sotheby’s sale then brought 17 works to market in a concentrated moment, established multiple new records, and reset expectations across the series – with edition of 25 works meeting and, in some cases, exceeding prior benchmarks for the rarer edition of 10.

A second instalment in March 2026 brought a further 16 works from the same collection and met equally competitive bidding. Critically, the new pricing levels have held outside the single-owner context. In Q1 2026, 19th Of March achieved £302,500 at Sotheby’s Riyadh; 17th Of April reached £295,680 at Sotheby’s Hong Kong; 18th Of March cleared £271,040 and 16th Of May £209,440 in the same rooms (all with fees). More than 35 works across 2025 and early 2026 set new auction records, with resale increases ranging from 9% to over 200%. Delivered across multiple geographies and sale contexts, these results confirm that the series has established a new and elevated pricing level in the current market.

The £1 million annual sales threshold – previously reached almost exclusively by Arrival Of Spring – has now been crossed by multiple series in Hockney’s digital print market. Digital Drawings generated around £1 million in 2025, with Less Trees Near Warter clearing £249,120 (hammer) at Seoul Auction and A Bigger Green Valley reaching £308,700 – results that place the top of the series firmly within the premium segment of Hockney’s print market. Moving Focus generated approximately £1.3 million across 28 works, with the Hotel Acatlán lithographs and Caribbean Tea Time anchoring individual results above £140,000. The Yosemite Suite sits quietly at the top of the average-value table – £83,000 in 2025 – yet trades far less frequently, with three of the five key Bigger Yosemite works never having come to auction. It is a segment defined as much by absence as by transaction, and one where current attention on Hockney’s digital output meets genuinely untested supply.

For sellers of premium Arrival Of Spring works, the current environment is the strongest of the past decade. Two successive supply events have established benchmarks that serve as reliable reference points, and results have held across multiple venues and geographies outside of these events. Edition of 25 holders, in particular, sit in the most favourable pricing environment the format has produced – a window that may not persist indefinitely as future supply cycles unfold.

For buyers, the repricing has not closed the market — it has clarified it. Premium benchmarks are now defined rather than uncertain, which means buyers can act with a level of pricing confidence that did not exist eighteen months ago. The question has shifted from “what is it worth?” to “is this the ceiling of this cycle, or the new floor?” — and the consistency of Q1 2026 results across Riyadh, Hong Kong, and London points increasingly to the latter.

Mid-market titles in Moving Focus, Digital Drawings, and the Yosemite Suite are one of the most compelling growth stories in Hockney's market right now. Each has crossed the £1 million annual sales threshold previously reached almost exclusively by Arrival Of Spring, and demand is extending title by title rather than through single-event spikes — a healthier, more distributed pattern of growth. Title-specific performance rewards research at the individual artwork level, with clear entry points still sitting below the headline numbers, and the Yosemite Suite in particular offers exposure ahead of the price discovery Arrival Of Spring has already been through. And the core market remains the most reliable long-horizon layer: liquid, well-documented, and appreciating at a steady pace without the volatility of the tier above.

The full data, series-by-series analysis, and structural read on where the market moves next are set out in the Hockney Market Report 2026. For valuations, sale strategy, or to register interest in works we’re currently sourcing, speak to a specialist.

Data drawn from MyArtBroker’s proprietary database, tracking auction and private sale records across more than 400 global auction houses. Figures reflect public auction results at hammer unless stated otherwise. Q1 2026 data covers January–March 2026.