Resale royalty: What the law really requires of the gallerist in 2026

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01What French law has concretely required since 2023

The resale right has been a legislative reality in France since the law of 20 May 1920, but its scope of application was for a long time narrow: only public auction sales were concerned. Law no. 2023-171 changed the picture by expressly extending the mechanism to private sales whenever an art market professional is involved in the transaction. In other words, if your gallery negotiates or facilitates the resale of a work — even discreetly, even without being formally appointed as agent — you fall within the scope of the obligation.

The applicable rate follows a degressive scale harmonised with European Directive 2001/84/EC: 4% on the portion of the price between 1,000 and 50,000 euros, then 3% up to 200,000 euros, 1% up to 350,000 euros, 0.5% up to 500,000 euros, with an absolute ceiling of 12,500 euros per transaction. The minimum threshold of 1,000 euros excludes the most modest works, but covers a very large portion of the secondary market for contemporary galleries.

The reference body in France is ADAGP — the Société des auteurs dans les arts graphiques et plastiques — which collects and redistributes royalties on behalf of artists or their rights holders. The legal declaration deadline is three months after the sale. The obligation rests with the seller, but when a professional intervenes as agent or intermediary, responsibility transfers to them. This is where many galleries, having failed to clearly define their contractual role, find themselves exposed.

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02Why so many galleries remain in the dark

There is something paradoxical about the current situation: the resale right is an established legal obligation, codified, governed by a European directive transposed in all member states, and yet its application in private galleries remains highly imperfect. The European Commission estimated in its 2024 evaluation report that a significant proportion of eligible private resales goes undeclared — a structural phenomenon, not a circumstantial one.

The main reason is historical: for decades, the resale right was mentally associated with auction houses. Sotheby's, Christie's and Artcurial had dedicated teams for its calculation and collection. Galleries, meanwhile, worked essentially on the primary market — first buyer, new work, no royalty due. When they did intervene in the secondary market, it was often informally, without rigorous documentation. The 2023 reform abruptly widened the framework without the professional support structures having had time to fall into place.

Another factor is the very nature of the private market: confidentiality is a cardinal value for high-end collectors. Many secondary transactions are concluded without a formalised contract, sometimes on a handshake at Art Basel or Paris+. In this context, tracing resales, identifying the beneficiaries of the resale right and declaring amounts to ADAGP feels like a disproportionate bureaucratic burden to players accustomed to operating in absolute discretion.

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03The calculation every gallerist needs to know how to do

Take a concrete example to anchor the mechanics. A collector entrusts you with the resale of a work by Camille Henrot acquired at a gallery five years ago. You find a buyer at 75,000 euros. The resale right is calculated as follows: 4% on the first 50,000 euros (i.e. 2,000 euros), then 3% on the next 25,000 euros (i.e. 750 euros), for a total of 2,750 euros to be paid to ADAGP within three months. It is the gallery, as professional intermediary, that is legally liable — unless the sale mandate has expressly stipulated that this charge falls on the seller.

This contractual point is of capital importance. The law does in fact allow the gallerist to turn contractually to the seller to recover the resale right amount, provided this provision has been set out in writing. Without this clause, you absorb the royalty out of your margin. On a work at 75,000 euros on which you earn a 15% commission, this represents a 24% cut into your fees. Across a high volume of secondary transactions, the impact is far from negligible.

The obligation applies for seventy years after the artist's death — which means that works by figures such as Niki de Saint Phalle (died 2002), Jean Dubuffet (died 1985) or César (died 1998) are still subject to the resale right. This is not a Franco-French peculiarity: the European directive imposes this duration on all member states, which directly affects your transactions with galleries or collectors in Germany, Belgium, Italy or the Netherlands.

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04The tracking tools that exist — and those still missing

The real operational difficulty for a mid-sized gallery is not calculating the royalty once a sale has been identified — it is the identification itself. How do you know whether a work you sold in 2019 has just been resold by its buyer through another gallery or a private sale? In that case, you have no direct obligation — it is the intermediary of the new sale who bears responsibility. But if you are yourself called upon to facilitate that resale, you must reconstruct the complete history of the work.

Platforms such as Artory have for several years offered a blockchain-based registration system for works and their successive transactions, with automatic resale right calculation functions. The annual cost for an active gallery runs to several hundred to a few thousand euros depending on volume. The market data platforms Price Database remains the reference for verifying published market prices and cross-referencing resale data. The Artrendex tool, developed to analyse auction results, can flag potentially undeclared transactions by scanning public databases.

These solutions exist, but their uptake remains low among structures with fewer than five staff members, which represent the majority of French galleries. For these players, the practical response often comes down to a systematic clause in all consignment contracts, and a direct relationship with ADAGP, which offers educational resources and can support the process of coming into compliance. What galleries can no longer afford, in 2026, is ignorance as a line of defence.

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05The singular situation of the United Kingdom and the American variable

Since Brexit, the United Kingdom has retained its own resale right regime, inherited from the transposition of the European directive carried out before 2020 through The Artist's Resale Right Regulations of 2006. The collecting body is DACS — the Design and Artists Copyright Society — which operates on a model similar to ADAGP. The rate and scale are practically identical to those in force in the European Union, with a declaration deadline reduced to twenty-eight days after the sale, more demanding than the French deadline.

What Brexit changes is reciprocity: a non-British artist whose work is resold in London is only eligible for the British resale right if their country of origin grants the same protection to British artists. The list of eligible countries is regularly updated by DACS. For a French, American or German artist, the protection generally applies — but for artists originating from certain countries outside the EU, the question warrants verification before each transaction.

In the United States, the situation remains fundamentally different: there is no federal resale right. The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990 protects moral rights but makes no provision for any resale royalty. Several legislative attempts, including a proposal known as the American Resale Royalty Act, have emerged without ever clearing the stages of Congress. In 2026, the American exemption remains intact — which partly explains why some international dealers deliberately structure their secondary transactions through New York. For European galleries that sell to American collectors or work with partner galleries across the Atlantic, this legal asymmetry is a negotiating parameter to be explicitly factored into mandates.

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06What the major galleries do that others overlook

The true indicator of a gallery's maturity on the question of the resale right is not simply its legal compliance — it is its proactive stance towards its artists. Hauser & Wirth formalised several years ago a transparency policy on secondary resales, informing represented artists when their works circulate on the market. This is not a legal obligation — it is a practice of loyalty-building and trust that sets leading galleries apart.

David Zwirner pushed the logic further in 2025 with what he presented as a form of ethical commitment: voluntarily paying a percentage on certain secondary resales even in jurisdictions that do not require it, particularly for American markets where the law is silent. This gesture carries as much symbolic as practical value — it sends a signal to artists about the conception the gallery holds of its relationship with them over time.

For mid-sized galleries, the stakes are different but equally real. Integrating the resale right into the internal culture of the gallery — training the team, updating contracts, documenting transactions — is a professionalisation process that goes beyond mere compliance. In a context where artists are increasingly informed of their rights, where organisations like ADAGP are multiplying their awareness campaigns, and where audits by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles can come accompanied by accounting checks, the argument of "we didn't know" rapidly loses its credibility.

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07The grey areas the law has not yet resolved

The digitalisation of the art market creates situations that the legislative framework struggles to keep pace with. When a physical work is sold alongside an NFT certificate, and that certificate is subsequently resold separately without transfer of the physical support, does the resale right apply? The work that triggers the royalty must be an original or a limited edition of no more than thirty copies — but the definition of the original in the hybrid physical-digital environment remains vague in current legislation.

The question of artificial intelligence adds a further layer of complexity. If the work sold and resold was created by an artist using generative tools — as part of Refik Anadol's output may be — and that artist is clearly identifiable and living, the resale right applies without ambiguity in terms of the beneficiary. But when authorship is contested or the artist is not clearly defined, the collection mechanism becomes inoperable. A case brought before the Court of Justice of the European Union in 2026 on precisely this question could produce determining case law in the coming months.

What is certain is that the regulatory tendency in Europe is moving towards reinforcement: a probable lowering of the trigger threshold to 500 euros in the ongoing revision of the directive, extension of scope to digital platforms, and tougher penalties for non-declaration. Galleries that wait for the constraint before adapting will always be one step behind. Those that treat the resale right as a normal component of their activity — in the same way as VAT on margin or the tax regime for artists — are in reality building a professional infrastructure that protects their artists and themselves in equal measure.