No Vacancy Miami Beach Guide

Last reviewed: November 2, 2026. Sources for this page are listed in its fact sheet.

Short answer first. No Vacancy, Miami Beach is the City of Miami Beach's juried art competition, and its seventh edition puts 12 local artists into 12 Miami Beach hotels from Thursday, November 12 through Saturday, December 19, 2026. The works sit in the hotels' public spaces, the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau lists the exhibition as free, and the season spans Miami Art Week, so the crawl below works twice: once in the quieter weeks after it opens on November 12, and again as the free layer of Art Week itself. The move is simple: walk the hotels in the order set out below, and follow the program page for the public prize vote.

Ocean Drive at night, the southern end of the No Vacancy crawl. This is an area photo, not a specific installation. Photo: Luis Erives, Pexels.

What is No Vacancy, exactly?

The City of Miami Beach runs the program with the Miami Beach Visitor and Convention Authority and the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, explicitly to encourage the public to experience Miami Beach's hotels as art destinations. For 2026 the call to artists drew 228 applications, a record, per the City. A committee drawn from the City's Art in Public Places Committee, its Cultural Arts Council, and the Visitor and Convention Authority picked 12 artists, and each selected artist receives a $10,000 honorarium to create a site specific work at an assigned hotel. Two prizes close the season, totaling $35,000: a $25,000 juried prize selected by a panel of art world professionals, and a $10,000 public prize presented by the Visitors Bureau. Follow the City's program page at miamibeachfl.gov for the public prize details as the season runs.

The 12 hotels and artists, in the City's list

Every pairing below is from the City of Miami Beach's own 2026 announcement, with the City's one line description of each work compressed, not embellished.

Avalon Hotel, Morel Doucet. South Florida's tropical flora reimagined as a nocturnal meditation on resilience, cultural memory, diasporic experience, and environmental change. The Avalon sits at 700 Ocean Drive, at the crawl's southern end.

Balfour Hotel Miami Beach, Lujan Candria. Hotel windows transformed with translucent photo based textiles depicting native South Florida vegetation, putting memory, nature, and urban transformation in dialogue.

The Betsy Hotel, Ricardo E. Zulueta. A video installation mapped onto the glowing surface of the Betsy Orb, the hotel's egg shaped bridge on 14th Place, combining experimental animation, glitching, and ambient sound. The Betsy, at 1440 Ocean Drive, is the one hotel on this list with its own year round gallery program; our Betsy guide covers the building behind the installation.

Casa Faena, Kevin Arrow. An immersive installation built from decades of eclectic 35mm material collected throughout South Florida, exploring tangible media, place, time, and memory. Casa Faena is at 3500 Collins Avenue, in Mid Beach.

Eden Roc Miami Beach, Emmett Moore. A knotted stainless steel exhaust pipe sculpture reflecting on gas powered machines, obsolescence, and the relationship between technology and the environment. Our Eden Roc guide covers the Morris Lapidus building the work sits in.

Hotel Croydon Miami Beach, Justin H. Long. A fictional collection of undersea relics in an Art Deco display cabinet, blending maritime history, myth, and imagined archaeology.

International Inn, Lulu Sanchez. A luminous sculptural arboretum of hand built palms honoring Miami's subtropical ecology and the city's legacy of public art.

Kimpton Surfcomber Hotel, Alex Nunez. South Florida's landscape transformed into a sculptural environment of printed palms and an iridescent portal evoking memory, change, and renewal.

Marriott Stanton South Beach, Marlon Portales. Two monumental paintings examining identity, displacement, memory, and the relationship between the body and an imagined Cuban landscape.

The Royal Palm South Beach Miami, Diana Eusebio. Textiles, photography, and natural dyes considering displacement, rootedness, and the search for safety through the landscape of Miami. The Royal Palm is at 1545 Collins Avenue.

The Shelborne by Proper, Yanira Collado. A layered installation of upcycled paper, wood, and textiles tracing geography, material culture, and regional histories, unearthing erased narratives of labor, diaspora, spirituality, and ingenuity.

Sherry Frontenac OceanFront Resort, Gonzalo Hernandez. Seven jacquard woven banners spelling A-M-E-R-I-C-A in colors drawn from South American flags, reflecting on language, national identity, movement across borders, and place. This is the crawl's northern anchor.

The crawl: how to actually do it

All 12 hotels stand on or just off the Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue corridor, so the crawl is one line, not a scavenger hunt. Split it the way the island splits.

The southern walk, about an hour. Start at the Avalon on Ocean Drive, take the Betsy's Orb a few blocks north, then work the Collins Avenue group: the Balfour, the Royal Palm, the Stanton, the Surfcomber, and the Shelborne. Seven installations, one walk, and Ocean Drive dinner at the end of it.

The northern ride, about an hour. The Croydon, Casa Faena, and Eden Roc in Mid Beach, then the International Inn and the Sherry Frontenac to the north. This half is spread wider; the free Miami Beach trolley or a bike share does the work between stops.

When to go. Opening week, from November 12, is the locals' window: the works are fresh and the hotels are calm. Art Week, November 30 to December 6, stacks the crawl on top of the fairs, which is exactly what our Art Week fair planner builds it in as: the free hour between fair days. The season closes December 19, after the fair crowds have gone home. Viewing is in each hotel's public spaces; hours and exact placement vary by hotel, so check the program page before a special trip.

Check Miami Beach hotel prices for No Vacancy season on Expedia

Staying inside the crawl is the luxury version of this season: a Collins Avenue or Ocean Drive room turns the northern ride into a walk home. The hotels hub compares the corridor, and the Art Basel hub covers the fair weeks the crawl overlaps.

Beachfront towers on Miami shoreline.

Frequently asked questions

When is No Vacancy Miami Beach 2026?
From Thursday, November 12 through Saturday, December 19, 2026, at 12 hotels across Miami Beach. It opens three weeks before Art Basel's public days and runs through Art Week.

Is No Vacancy free?
The Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau lists the exhibition as free, and the works sit in the hotels' public spaces. You do not need to be a hotel guest; check the City's program page for each hotel's viewing details before you go.

How many hotels can you see in one outing?
The southern group of seven (Avalon, Betsy, Balfour, Royal Palm, Stanton, Surfcomber, Shelborne) fits one walk of about an hour. The five northern and Mid Beach stops fit a second outing by trolley or bike.

What is the public prize?
Alongside the $25,000 juried prize, the season awards a $10,000 public prize presented by the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau. Follow the City's program page at miamibeachfl.gov for how the public side runs this year.

Keep planning

The crawl is one layer of the season: the full fair comparison is the Miami Art Week fair planner, the anchor fair is in the Art Basel guide, January's free festival is the Art Deco Weekend guide, and the hotels themselves are compared on the hotels hub.