For nearly four decades, the International Fine Print Dealers Association’s annual print fair has been a crash course in how artists approach creating in multiples. In 2026, that picture will grow larger. The IFPDA will officially become the International Fine Prints & Drawings Association. When the next edition of the print fair opens next spring, there will be 77 exhibitors, including several who specialize in artists’ drawings.
This change has been years in the making. This past March, the fair was already showing signs of outgrowing the prints category. The 2025 edition drew more than 21,000 visitors, a record that dealers attributed to a surge of interest from younger collectors and institutions, with VIP registrations jumping 57 percent. Gen Z and millennial buyers have been driving much of this momentum, pouring into the prints market as other sectors cooled.
It is the fair’s first structural expansion since 1990, when the group voted to admit print publishers to its membership that only allowed dealers of prints until then. But that change didn’t cause the organization to update its name to reflect it. Following a membership vote earlier this year, the IFPDA will now welcome drawings dealers along with its new name; the organization has already completed the legal paperwork required to facilitate the change.
This new change is more than cosmetic, executive director Jenny Gibbs told ARTnews this week. “It is a mystery to me why there is such a bifurcation in the market between prints and drawings,” she said. Every museum has a department of prints and drawings. Yet the auction houses put drawings with paintings. That’s how collectors have been taught to understand the medium.”
The expansion will roll out in stages. For the 2026, which will run April 9–12 and is the first year under the updated guidelines, one new drawings focused member, Sigrid Freundorfer Fine Art, will join the fair, while several longstanding exhibitors plan to widen their presentations to include more drawings. Meanwhile returning exhibitors include Crown Point Press, Gemini G.E.L., Hauser & Wirth, Pace Prints, and Universal Limited Art Editions. Dealers such as David Tunick, Inc., Hill-Stone, John Szoke Gallery, and Long-Sharp Gallery will bring significant works on paper as part of the transition.
This edition will also see a first-time invitational presentation from the Drawing Center, which will anchor the fair’s expanded footprint; the Hammer Museum, the National Gallery of Australia, and Print Center New York will round out the fair’s institutional partnerships. The full impact of the change is expected in 2027, when a larger cohort of newly admitted drawings specialists will be eligible to mount dedicated booths.
The addition reflects how artists’ practices and collectors’ habits are evolving, Gibbs said, noting that many contemporary artists move fluidly between drawing, printmaking, and editioned work; the market has simply lagged behind that logic. If the expansion is philosophical, it’s also practical. Demand for space at the fair, which is staged at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, has surged. The floor plan now includes extra-extra-large booths, added at the request of returning exhibitors after the 2025 edition drew record attendance and brisk sales.
“We completely sold out of booths six months ago,” Gibbs said. “I was gobsmacked. This ran counter to what we were hearing from other colleagues in ‘Art Fair Land.‘”
The momentum tracks with larger market data. As the most recent Art Basel & UBS Art Market Report made clear, sales under $50,000 account for 85 percent of all global art transactions a sweet spot for prints, editions, and works on paper. With price points ranging from three figures to as high as seven figures, the IFPDA Print Fair has become a gateway for younger collectors as well as a venue for historically important material coming to market via specialist dealers and publishers.
For Gibbs, the addition of drawings dealers is both overdue and obvious. Historically, prints were often considered more valuable than drawings: the finished product rather than the path taken to reach it. Understanding that relationship, she believes, may help collectors see works on paper with new clarity and now it wants to name that outright. “We hope people recognize the organic relationship between these mediums,” she said. “It’s how artists think. And it’s how museums collect.”
