From the gavel to the click: auctions

For centuries, the scene remained unchanged: A quiet room, an auctioneer calling the shots and hands raised in silence. Auctions were a kind of ritual: you had to be in the right city at the right time to stand a chance of winning the sought-after item. Sotheby’s, founded in London in 1744, and Christie’s, established in 1766, operated this exclusive model for a long time. But everything has changed in just a few years.

The auction market is currently undergoing a profound transformation, with accelerated digitalisation, democratised access, and technological innovations reshaping a world that was once reserved for a select few.

Live streaming enters the auction room

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The turning point came in 2020. Forced by the pandemic, the major auction houses improvised and did far more than simply adapt. Sotheby’s introduced multi-camera live auctions, broadcast in high definition across three continents with virtually zero latency. Since then, over thirty million people have watched these sessions from their living rooms. The auction room has become a television studio and every sale a global spectacle.

Today, bidders can participate in a variety of ways that would have been unthinkable fifteen years ago. They can raise their paddle in person, bid by telephone with an auction house representative, place proxy bids or log on to follow the sale online in real time and outbid others with a single click. At Sotheby’s, the system automatically extends the closing time of a lot by two minutes if a bid is placed in the final minute, a mechanism that maintains suspense and ensures fairness.

In France, aggregator platforms have accelerated this expansion. Interenchères, Drouot Digital and Agorastore enable people in Strasbourg or Biarritz to participate in sales held in Paris, Bordeaux or Lyon. This trend is confirmed by the global market, with around seventy-five per cent of bids now being placed via a smartphone or tablet. Auctions have moved beyond the gilded salons and into the pockets of millions of buyers.

Records continue to increase

Gustav Klimt Bildnis der Elisabeth Lederer; Wikimedia

Far from lowering the standard of the high-end market, this expansion has actually raised it. The November 2025 season in New York totalled $2.2 billion, with the kind of brilliance that only auctions can produce.

The most spectacular of these was Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer, from the Leonard A. Lauder collection, which sold at Sotheby’s for $236.6 million after twenty minutes of intense bidding. This price makes it the second most expensive lot ever sold at auction. In the same week, Van Gogh’s Piles of Parisian Novels found a buyer for $62.7 million and Frida Kahlo’s El Sueño (La Cama) soared to $54.7 million. This propelled the Mexican artist to become the highest-valued woman in the history of public auctions. At Christie’s, the Fabergé Winter Egg fetched £22.9 million — a record price for the silversmith.

The same was true in Paris, where auctions were in full swing. In April 2026, Monet’s Vétheuil, Morning View sparked ten minutes of fierce bidding at Sotheby’s before selling for €10.2 million — a record for the artist in France.

During the same week, Christie’s and Sotheby’s combined to raise €182 million, 30 per cent more than in the same period in 2024.

Private sales are gaining momentum. At Christie’s, for example, this segment grew from 800 million dollars in 2019 to 1.5 billion in 2025.

The market is also thriving behind the scenes.

Blockchain, NFTs and artificial intelligence are the new cards on the table

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Beyond the digital realm, auctions are venturing into uncharted technological territory. A defining moment came in March 2021 when Christie’s sold Beeple’s ‘The First 5000 Days’ for almost seventy million dollars — the first NFT to be sold by a major auction house. The buyer, Vignesh Sundaresan, paid in cryptocurrency, and the transfer of ownership was recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.

Since then, Sotheby’s has auctioned tokenised Warhols, while Phillips has offered the first multi-generational NFT capable of automatically creating new works. Although the hype surrounding NFTs has died down somewhat, blockchain technology remains very much present in terms of traceability, provenance, and transaction transparency.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is making progress in a more low-key but equally decisive arena. Auction houses are using it to refine estimates, personalise recommendations sent to collectors, and detect forgeries. Some platforms use augmented reality to allow potential buyers to visualise a sculpture or painting in their home before placing a bid.

The luxury sector is reaping the full benefits of this trend. Sales of handbags, watches and jewellery have surged by twenty-two per cent at Sotheby’s and seventeen per cent at Christie’s since 2025. The auction market extends far beyond painting to encompass everything that attracts collectors.

A ritual that evolves without losing its magic

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Auctions still have the power to create suspense, emotion and surprise. The thrill of the hammer falling and an object changing hands remains the same as it was two centuries ago. The scale has changed, however: the circle of connoisseurs has expanded to a global community, and digital tools have erased geographical boundaries without eliminating the human dimension of face-to-face interaction.

In a world focused on sustainability, auctions also offer hope for the future by giving exceptional objects a second life, passing them from collection to collection and perpetuating an appreciation of beauty across generations. The hammer may have changed shape, but it continues to fall.