A gallery on a high street most people outside Essex couldn't find on a map just landed one of the biggest Banksy shows in years. Twenty-eight original works. A piece nobody has ever seen. And it's opening in Colchester, not London.
A rat nobody has seen
The centerpiece is a new work called Rat with Drill. It has never been exhibited anywhere before. Banksy's rats have been chewing through walls and gallery walls for two decades, but this one is making its public debut at The Minories, a gallery at 74 High Street in Colchester.
The show is called Out of Line: Banksy and the Art of Dissent. It runs from Saturday, October 10, 2026, through Sunday, February 28, 2027. Doors open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 4pm. Adult tickets run £12.50, kids are £6, and a family ticket covering two adults and up to three children is £30.
More than a Banksy show
The 28 Banksy pieces don't stand alone. The exhibition also brings in work from more than twenty other leading figures in the global street art and urban contemporary art movement, including KAWS, Invader, and Shepard Fairey. Beyond canvas and paper, the show includes two large-scale painted walls built directly into the gallery space.
That lineup puts Colchester in the same conversation as blue-chip street art surveys usually reserved for major cities. A regional gallery pulling four of the movement's biggest names into one room is not something that happens often, and it is not happening in London, Bristol, or New York this time.
The real thing, not knockoffs
Banksy's name gets slapped on a lot of exhibitions that have nothing to do with the artist. Pop-up shows built around prints, reproductions, and licensing deals have burned collectors and casual fans for years. The Minories is drawing a hard line against that. Every piece in Out of Line is either an original artwork or an artist-certified print. Nothing here is a bootleg or a knockoff dressed up for ticket sales.
That distinction matters more than it should have to. Banksy himself has spent years fighting exhibitions and merchandise operations that trade on his name without his involvement. A show built entirely on verified originals and certified prints is the opposite of that problem.
Why Colchester
Colchester bills itself as Britain's oldest recorded town, and it usually gets attention for Roman ruins and a castle, not contemporary street art. The Minories is a small gallery by London standards, and landing a show of this size is a genuine coup for it.
The exhibition doesn't open until October, which leaves months for word to spread. A never-before-seen Banksy piece, backed by an authenticity guarantee and surrounded by KAWS, Invader, and Shepard Fairey, is the kind of draw that pulls people off the M25 and into a town they'd otherwise drive past.
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