After several years in the shadow of the NFT boom and bust, digital art is showing signs of renewed momentum. This shift was evident at Art Basel earlier this month, where the Swiss edition of the fair staged its largest edition of Zero 10, the platform for art of the digital era, with participating galleries reporting robust sales to both established collectors and institutions.

The renewed confidence is borne out by the latest Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report and Survey of Global Collecting, which show digital works ranking as the third most acquired medium among high-net-worth collectors, behind only painting and sculpture. There are shifts in spending, too: sales of digital, film, and video art rose from 1% to 3% of transactions by volume, while their share of total sales value increased from 7% to 10%. Of the 3,100 high-net-worth individuals interviewed for the Survey of Global Collecting, just over half (51%) said they bought a digital artwork in 2025.

Following previous iterations in Miami Beach and Hong Kong, the Basel edition of Zero 10 brought together 20 exhibitors under the curatorial theme, ‘The Condition’, exploring how artists are responding to artificial intelligence, algorithmic systems, and the pervasive influence of digital imagery. Co-curated by the digital art strategist Eli Scheinman and the artist Trevor Paglen, the initiative was conceived as an exhibition as much as a commercial platform – a reflection of how the conversation around digital art has shifted since the speculative frenzy of the NFT market.

For Paglen, the challenge was to ‘make the digital feel native to that context rather than like a novelty annex,’ noting that Art Basel has built its reputation on ‘big names in traditional media.’ He adds: ‘My approach was to treat information as a medium with its own long history, and to build a presentation that a Basel audience would recognize as serious art, just made of different stuff.’

That approach was reinforced by the inclusion of non-commercial presentations from Basel’s HEK (Haus der Elektronischen Künste) and the curatorial platform ArtMeta. Rather than focusing exclusively on sales, the initiative sought to place digital practice within a broader art historical and institutional context. ‘You need a few works in the room whose only job is to make the case,’ Paglen says. ‘To give people something to think about rather than something to buy.’

This strategy appeared to pay off. Queues formed outside the exhibition hall on the opening day, attracting visitors well beyond the crypto community that fuelled the last digital art boom. More striking, Paglen says, was the response from museum professionals and established collectors. ‘People kept saying the work was more rigorous and more varied than they expected,’ he says. ‘That was exactly what we were hoping for.’

Commercially, exhibitors reported healthy business across a broad range of price points, with interest coming from both seasoned contemporary collectors and institutions – as well as buyers already active in digital art.

The initiative’s highest reported sale came from Fellowship, which placed an edition of John Gerrard’s STANDARD (2022) with a major US private collection for USD 500,000. Installed at the entrance to Zero 10, the work formed part of a triptych of real-time digital simulations depicting plumes of steam, smoke, and burning gas that resemble billowing flags, exploring fossil fuel extraction, environmental degradation, and systems of power.

Institutional demand was a recurring theme. Bitforms and Max Estrella sold Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Agglomerate (2024) to a private foundation in Ukraine for USD 180,000. The work, which synchronizes illuminated lightbulbs with recorded human heartbeats, originated as a memorial performance during the 2024 Venice Biennale; it uses recordings from the artist’s installation at the IZOLYATSIA Foundation in Donetsk, Ukraine, staged shortly before Russia’s occupation.

Asprey Studio reported sales of USD 164,000 for works by the Canadian artist 0xDEAFBEEF from its presentation ‘Matter and Signal’, including Glitchbox, a forged-iron sculpture combining music, generative software, and visitor interaction. According to the gallery’s chief creative officer, Alastair Walker, buyers included established contemporary collectors alongside members of the digital art community, while discussions with museum representatives also proved encouraging.

Several galleries noted strong institutional interest beyond sales completed on the fair floor. Marian Goodman Gallery said it remained in discussion with museums, while Almine Rech said its presentation of works by the Japanese composer and visual artist Ryoji Ikeda attracted ‘significant attention’ from both private individuals and institutions. Gazelli Art House placed works from its presentation of Harold Cohen’s work with private collectors in Europe and the US.

Elsewhere, Art Blocks sold out its presentation of works by William Mapan to private European collections. Office Impart and Upstream Gallery placed 14 works from Jan Robert Leegte’s Orbits series (2026), priced between USD 2,500 and USD 6,000, as well as Sighting No. 1 and Sighting No. 9 (both 2026) at EUR 4,800 each. Nguyen Wahed sold Leander Herzog’s real-time generative work Infinite (Botanical) Garden (2026) for USD 9,000 alongside 15 custom generative algorithm works by Andreas Gysin at USD 4,500 each, while eastcontemporary placed Aziza Kadyri’s A Borrowed Hand Steadied the Ground (2026) for USD 23,000.

The combination of healthy sales, institutional engagement, and new collecting data suggests digital art is entering a more sustainable phase from the one that defined the NFT boom. Collectors appear increasingly interested in artists using digital technologies as a medium, rather than technology as an end in itself. As Paglen puts it: ‘What struck me was how many traditional curators, museum directors, and collectors came through and engaged seriously, people who might have rolled their eyes at “digital art” a few years ago.’

If the last cycle was driven by speculation, this one looks more closely aligned with the broader contemporary art market – a shift that may prove more durable in the longer term.