Girl with Balloon

From a Shoreditch wall to a sheet of paper

The image first appeared in 2002 as a stencil on a whitewashed shop wall in Shoreditch, East London, and later that year on the South Bank near Waterloo Bridge, where it was accompanied by the words 'There is always hope.' A girl in black, hair and dress blown by the wind, reaches toward a red heart-shaped balloon that has drifted just beyond her hand. Whether she is losing it or letting it go is never settled, and that ambiguity is much of the point.

None of the London street versions survives in place. They were painted over, removed or lost, as most street work is. One 2004 version on a Shoreditch shop wall sold at auction in London in February 2007 for £37,200, was removed from the wall in 2014 and sold again in September 2015 for £500,000.

In 2004 Banksy turned the image into an edition. It was printed and published by Pictures on Walls, the London print operation connected with Steve Lazarides, the Bristol photographer who had become his agent. The publisher issued 150 signed and numbered impressions, 600 unsigned impressions and 88 signed artist's proofs in alternate balloon colors. The prints were sold online and at Santa's Ghetto, an annual pop-up billed as a 'squat art concept store.' A signed impression cost £150; an unsigned one £75.

On paper the composition is pared back even further than on the wall. The 'There is always hope' line is gone. What remains is the girl, the balloon and a wide band of empty paper between them, and only the balloon is in color.

The artist with no face

Banksy has never publicly confirmed his identity. He began as a freehand graffiti writer in Bristol between about 1990 and 1994, as one of the DryBreadZ Crew, and was part of a wider Bristol scene that mixed graffiti writers and musicians. In those years he met Steve Lazarides, who began selling his work and later became his agent.

By 2000 he had switched to stencils because they took far less time to put up, a practical choice for an artist working illegally. In 2003 he staged Turf War in a London warehouse, painting directly on live animals. In August 2004, the same year Girl with Balloon was printed, he produced spoof £10 notes with Princess Diana's face in place of the Queen's and the words 'Banksy of England'; a wad of them was thrown into the crowd at the Notting Hill Carnival, and the notes doubled as invitations to Santa's Ghetto. He also released the screenprint Napalm that year.

The specialist who later sold some of the most expensive impressions put the 2004 position bluntly: Banksy had 'a very niche following' and was not yet an international star. She guessed that the edition did not sell out at the time and that the cheaper unsigned version was the one people wanted.

A slow start, then a market

The first Girl with Balloon print to reach the secondary market, in March 2005, carried an estimate of £300 to £400 and went unsold. According to the same specialist, the wider print market picked up around 2007, and in 2008 Banksy launched Pest Control to authenticate his work, partly because fakes were circulating. With a certificate available, buyers could trust what they were bidding on, and unsigned impressions moved past £1,000 around 2008.

Recorded sales of the signed edition show how gradual the climb was. A signed impression, numbered 41/150, brought £9,000 with fees in April 2010, about $13,825. Two more sold in London in January and March 2011 for £12,600 and £13,200. By June 2015 a signed impression made £52,500, and in November 2015 another sold for £56,250, more than twice its estimate.

The image kept growing outside the saleroom. Banksy painted a variation, Balloon Debate, on the West Bank barrier in August 2005. In March 2014 he reworked the girl as a Syrian refugee in a headscarf for the #WithSyria campaign, and the image was projected onto the Eiffel Tower and Nelson's Column. In June 2017 he offered free prints with a Union Jack balloon to voters in certain constituencies who could prove they had voted against the Conservatives, and withdrew the offer on June 6 after the Electoral Commission warned it could breach election bribery law. A month later a poll of 2,000 people in the United Kingdom named Girl with Balloon the nation's favorite artwork.

The shredder, the boom and the correction

On October 5, 2018, a 2006 Girl with Balloon on canvas, not a print, sold at auction in London for £1,042,000. Moments after the hammer fell, a shredder Banksy had built into the frame pulled the canvas halfway through. The buyer went ahead with the purchase, Pest Control authenticated the half-shredded work under a new title, Love Is in the Bin, and in October 2021 it sold again for £18,582,000. A print specialist said that after the stunt, clients called the next day asking whether shredding their own unsigned print would make it worth more.

Prices for the paper editions climbed through 2019, 2020 and 2021. A signed impression made £200,000 in September 2019. In September 2020 one sold for £438,500. On April 1, 2021, impression 46/150 sold online for £475,000, about $655,500, the auction high for a standard signed print; on September 17, 2021, number 21/150 sold for £474,800, which converted to a slightly higher $659,970. The colored artist's proofs went further: a dark purple proof sold for £791,250 in September 2020 and a gold proof for £1,104,000 in March 2021.

Then the market cooled. One researcher's survey of Banksy print auctions from 2018 to 2025 found the median signed Banksy print fell by about 65 percent from its 2021 peak, but singled out Girl with Balloon as the image that held its value best. Signed impressions sold for £378,000 in March 2022, £190,500 and £215,900 in 2023, £239,400 in March 2024, and £189,000 and £177,180 in 2025. In September 2026 two more sold on the same day, at £204,800 in an online sale and $332,800 at auction in the United States.

Not every impression stayed put. In September 2024 a Girl with Balloon print estimated at £270,000 was stolen from a London gallery; two men were charged and the work was recovered.

How to know a signed impression

A signed impression from the edition of 150 is signed and dated in pencil and numbered from the edition, and carries the Pictures on Walls blindstamp, an embossed publisher's mark. Catalog descriptions give the printed image as roughly 38.5 to 39.5 cm tall and 24.5 to 25.5 cm wide on a sheet of about 65.5 to 70 by 50 cm. The red balloon and the black figure are the only colors in the standard edition.

The unsigned edition of 600 shows the same image without a signature, and it is a separate authorized edition, not a reproduction. Sources disagree on whether it was numbered: one dealer's guide says unsigned impressions are numbered in pencil, while an editorial account calls them unsigned and unnumbered; recent sale records list unsigned impressions by number out of 600.

Several variants sit outside the numbered 150. Some impressions are marked 'DN' for duplicate number. A few 'aside' impressions were signed outside the edition, some inscribed with a heart, a gift box or a peace symbol in pencil. The 88 artist's proofs swap the red balloon for other colors; sources agree on gold, pink and purple shades but disagree on the full list, with one naming blue and another listing gold, dark pink, dark purple and light pink.

Pest Control describes itself as the only body that issues certificates of authenticity for Banksy's work, and it runs a check service for works that already have one. One dealer's guide describes the certificate as half of a Banksy-designed £10 note bearing Princess Diana's face, with the other half kept by Pest Control. Paper condition matters: buyers look for trimmed margins, creases, foxing, staining and fading, and the open field of paper around the balloon shows every mark.

The numbers

Medium

Screenprint in black and red on wove paper, with the Pictures on Walls blindstamp

Dimensions

Sheet published as 70 x 50 cm (27 1/2 x 19 3/4 in); image about 39 x 25 cm

Edition

150 signed, dated and numbered in pencil; also 600 unsigned and 88 signed artist's proofs

Catalogue raisonne

None stated; impressions are identified by edition number and Pest Control certificate

Current owners

Dispersed among private collectors; no public collection holding is documented in the sources

Timeline

1. 2002

   Girl with Balloon appears as a stencil on a Shoreditch shop wall, then on the South Bank with the words 'There is always hope.'

2. 2003

   Banksy releases a Girl and Balloon edition of 25 spray-painted canvases.

3. 2004

   Pictures on Walls prints and publishes the screenprint: 150 signed at £150, 600 unsigned at £75, plus 88 signed colored proofs.

4. Mar 2005

   The first Girl with Balloon print to reach the secondary market, estimated at £300 to £400, goes unsold.

5. Feb 21, 2007

   A 2004 Girl with Balloon mural from a Shoreditch wall sells at auction in London for £37,200.

6. 2008

   Banksy launches Pest Control to authenticate his work.

7. Apr 21, 2010

   Signed impression 41/150 sells in the United Kingdom for £9,000 with fees, about $13,825.

8. Mar 13, 2014

   A refugee version of the girl is projected on the Eiffel Tower and Nelson's Column for the #WithSyria campaign.

9. Nov 24, 2015

   Signed impression 94/150 sells in London for £56,250, more than twice its estimate.

10. Jun 6, 2017

    Banksy withdraws an offer of free Union Jack balloon prints to anti-Conservative voters after an Electoral Commission warning.

11. Jul 2017

    A poll of 2,000 people in the United Kingdom names Girl with Balloon the nation's favorite artwork.

12. Oct 5, 2018

    A 2006 Girl with Balloon canvas shreds itself moments after selling for £1,042,000; it is renamed Love Is in the Bin.

13. Sep 23, 2020

    A dark purple artist's proof sells online for £791,250.

14. Mar 25, 2021

    A gold artist's proof sells in London for £1,104,000 ($1,513,885).

15. Apr 1, 2021

    Signed impression 46/150 sells online for £475,000, the auction high for a standard signed print.

16. Oct 14, 2021

    Love Is in the Bin sells again in London for £18,582,000.

17. Sep 2024

    A Girl with Balloon print is stolen from a London gallery; two men are charged and the print is recovered.

18. Sep 23, 2026

    Two signed impressions sell on the same day: 129/150 for £204,800 online and 17/150 for $332,800 in the United States.

The world in 2004

• Jan 28, 2004

  The Hutton Inquiry into the death of weapons expert David Kelly is published in London.

• Apr 28, 2004

  Norman Foster's 30 St Mary Axe, 'the Gherkin,' opens in the City of London.

• Jun 24, 2004

  England go out of Euro 2004 to host nation Portugal on penalties in Lisbon.

• Aug 2004

  Great Britain wins nine gold medals at the Athens Olympics, held August 13 to 29.

• Aug 16, 2004

  Flash floods tear through the Cornish village of Boscastle, washing cars out to sea.

• Nov 18, 2004

  Parliament passes the Hunting Act banning fox hunting in England and Wales and the Civil Partnership Act for same-sex couples.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Girl with Balloon is number 32 of 100 in the art entries of the FLOAT 100. 88 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (32 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• A signed Girl with Balloon cost £150 when it was released in 2004, and an unsigned one £75.
• The first Girl with Balloon print offered at auction, in March 2005, was estimated at £300 to £400 and failed to sell.
• After the 2018 shredding, a print specialist said clients called asking whether shredding their own print would make it worth more.
• In a 2017 poll of 2,000 people, Girl with Balloon beat works by Constable, Turner and Gainsborough to be named the United Kingdom's favorite artwork.
• The South Bank stencil originally carried the words 'There is always hope,' which never appeared on the print.
• The refugee rescue boat Banksy funded in 2020, the Louise Michel, carries the girl on its side holding a heart-shaped life ring instead of a balloon.
• Banksy had to withdraw a 2017 offer of free Union Jack balloon prints after being warned it could amount to election bribery.