The Tezos art ecosystem concluded 2025 as a breakout year, marked by significant institutional adoption, major global art events, and strong artist growth, with more than half a million NFTs sold across the platform.
A cornerstone of this growth was the expanded partnership between the Tezos Foundation and the Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI). This collaboration transformed the museum's Herbert S. Schlosser Media Wall into a showcase for blockchain-based art. Since the first exhibition in June 2024, MoMI has introduced over 243,000 visitors to digital art, with many creating their first blockchain wallets via the museum's free minting station. The partnership's new year-long program is commissioning 12 artists to create works using Tezos FA2 smart contracts as a core part of their practice and has launched the FA2 Fellowship to educate artists and developers on these contracts. This partnership is set to extend through January 2027.
The ecosystem's global presence was demonstrated at flagship events throughout the year. At NFT Paris in February, digital art pioneer Kiki Picasso performed a live demonstration on an original 1980s Quantel Paintbox. The "Paintboxed – Tezos World Tour" then brought this historic device to New York, Miami, Paris, and Basel during Art Basel. The largest event was Art on Tezos Berlin, a three-day festival that attracted over 700 international visitors, exhibited more than 500 artists, and featured leading creators exploring art, technology, and AI. Successful activations were also held at Paris Photo, where a booth curated by Artverse featured prominent artists like Niceaunties and Grant Yun, many releasing works on Tezos for the first time.
Educational initiatives remained a core focus. Beyond the MoMI fellowship, a strategic partnership with the Processing Foundation was announced in August to produce a comprehensive tutorial series for p5.js 2.0, extending creative coding education globally. This builds on prior programs like WAC Labs and Newtro in Argentina.
The year was also highlighted by significant artistic sales and institutional acquisitions. Artist qubibi's live-coded generative work "hello world" sold for 62,000 tez following a presentation in Berlin. Earlier in the year, Mario Klingemann's early AI work "Triggernometry" sold for 43,000 tez during the Digital Art Mile. In a major institutional move, the Francisco Carolinum museum acquired TeleNFT works first presented at Art on Tezos Berlin, marking a significant addition of fully on-chain digital art to a public collection.
