Samsung Art Store Moomins UK: Tove Janssons watercolours on The Frame TV

Samsung has put the Moomins on its Frame TV. From this week, the Samsung Art Store on The Frame is hosting a new global collaboration with Moomin Characters Oy Ltd, surfacing Tove Jansson’s original illustrations as full-screen artworks you can rotate through like any other piece in the Art Store catalogue. For UK buyers, this is a quieter Frame story than a hardware refresh, but it matters more than the price tag suggests.

The Moomins are not a passing trend in British households. The Finnish Broadcasting Company’s Moominvalley series ran on Sky One for three full seasons. Moomin merchandise is a permanent fixture at John Lewis and Waterstones. Putting Tove Jansson’s gentle watercolours behind the bezel of a lifestyle TV is a much sharper bit of marketing than another celebrity-fronted Art Store push, because it slots cleanly into a category of buyer who already pays a premium for design.

What Samsung has actually added to the Art Store

The collaboration brings a curated set of Moomin artworks to the Art Store, drawn from the original Tove Jansson archive rather than the later animated series. That is the right call. Jansson’s painted illustrations from the 1940s and 1950s have the muted palette and soft edges that make sense on a matte 4K panel; the brighter cartoon styles from the 1990s and 2010s would have looked flat and cheap on a 65-inch screen.

Samsung has not split the collection into a one-off bundle or charged separately for it. The Moomin artworks are part of the standard Art Store subscription, which sits at £3.99 a month or £39 a year in the UK. That keeps the proposition simple: own a Frame, pay the Art Store fee, and the Moomins are part of what you get, alongside the British Museum, Tate, MoMA and Magnum Photos collections that already live there.

The rollout is global, but the UK is a flagship market for it. Samsung explicitly cites the strength of the Moomin brand in British homes as a reason for the collaboration, and the artworks are being promoted across Samsung UK’s marketing channels with that audience in mind. If you have already bought a Frame for the design rather than the spec sheet, this is the kind of content drop that justifies the subscription you have probably been quietly questioning.

The Frame in 2026: why this still matters

The Frame is now in its tenth year. Samsung has refined the matte display, the bezel system and the No Gap Wall Mount to the point that on a white plaster wall it genuinely passes for a framed print at viewing distance. The 2026 lineup, launched at the Samsung UK Newsroom this week, keeps that hardware story going with new sizing options and an updated matte panel, but the differentiator has always been the Art Store rather than the panel.

Without the Art Store, The Frame is a competent but unremarkable lifestyle TV at a premium price. With a deep, well-curated catalogue, it earns its position. Samsung has been steadily adding museum partnerships and named artists rather than padding the library with stock photography, and the Moomin deal is part of that pattern. The Art Store has roughly 2,500 pieces of artwork at this point, with new collections added roughly monthly.

For UK buyers, the practical question is whether The Frame still makes sense in 2026 versus a regular OLED. The honest answer is that it depends on where the TV will live. In a living room where the screen is on six hours a day, you are better off with an LG OLED or a Samsung S95H for the SDR and HDR performance. In a kitchen, hallway or guest room where the TV is off most of the time and the wall is visible, The Frame still wins on aesthetics in a way that no other TV does.

Setting up the Moomin collection on The Frame

If you already own a Frame, the Moomin artworks should appear in the Art Store within the next few days, depending on when your TV pulls its catalogue update. You can navigate to the Art Store through the Tizen home screen, filter by collection, and add the Moomin pieces to your favourites so they rotate into your usual Art Mode playlist. There is no separate download; the artworks stream from Samsung’s servers when Art Mode is active and the TV has an internet connection.

One settings tweak worth making: drop the Art Mode brightness to its lowest comfortable level and set the motion sensor to a sensitivity that fades the artwork when nobody is in the room. This matters more than people realise. Frames sold in the UK ship with default settings that leave the panel at a brightness level designed to make the showroom unit look good. At home, in normal lighting, the artworks look more painterly and less like a TV when the brightness is dropped two or three notches.

The colour mode also matters. The Art Store recommends Movie or Filmmaker mode, but for static artwork, Standard with the colour temperature nudged slightly warmer reads more like a printed reproduction. The Moomin pieces in particular benefit from a warmer balance, because Jansson’s original watercolours used a slightly creamy paper that the digital scans preserve. Cool, blue-shifted display settings flatten the warmth out.

Where to buy The Frame in the UK

The 2026 Frame lineup is being rolled out across UK retailers now, with the 65-inch model sitting in the £1,799 to £1,999 bracket depending on retailer and promotion. Samsung’s own UK store typically has the broadest range, including the 85-inch model and the various bezel finishes. Currys usually undercuts Samsung direct by £100 to £200 once seasonal promotions kick in, and is the most reliable option for next-day delivery and installation. John Lewis includes its five-year guarantee at no extra cost, which matters because Samsung’s standard UK warranty is two years.

Argos stocks the smaller sizes and is occasionally the cheapest for the 55-inch model during clearance windows, particularly on previous-generation stock that still gets Art Store updates. Richer Sounds is worth a look for the larger sizes if you value the supplied six-year warranty, and the in-store demo bays let you actually see how the matte panel behaves under real lighting before you commit. For finance, John Lewis and Currys both offer 0% APR on amounts above £500, spread over 12 to 24 months, which is the most sensible route if you are buying the 75-inch or 85-inch model.

The bezel is sold separately and costs £159 in most finishes. Skip it if you are wall-mounting in a recess or above a media unit; the standard black bezel that ships with the TV is fine. Pay for the modern teak or brown finish only if the TV will be the focal point of the room and the wall colour matters.

Is the Art Store subscription worth it?

This is the question that comes up most often from UK buyers, and the answer has shifted as the catalogue has grown. At launch in 2017, the Art Store was a thin selection of stock-feeling photography and a handful of museum partnerships. Paying a monthly subscription on top of the TV felt cheeky. In 2026, with the British Museum, Tate, V&A, MoMA, Magnum Photos, Saatchi Art and now the Moomins all in the library, the £3.99 monthly fee is comparable to a single museum admission per year and far less than streaming subscriptions you barely use.

The honest test is whether you actually leave the TV in Art Mode when you are not watching it. If you do, the subscription is worth it within three or four months. If you mostly leave the TV off when not in use, you can get away with the included rotating set of free artworks and skip the subscription entirely. The Moomin collaboration is sitting behind the paywall, but it is the kind of content that nudges fence-sitters into subscribing rather than the other way around.

One quiet point that Samsung does not make in its marketing: the Art Store also feeds Samsung’s wider Frame ecosystem, including the Music Frame, the Frame projector and the smaller portable Freestyle units. If you are already in the Frame world for more than one device, the subscription gets more efficient. A household with two Frames and a Music Frame is paying the same £3.99 a month for content across all of them.

Should you buy The Frame now or wait?

If you have been waiting for a sign, the 2026 lineup is the right moment to commit. The matte panel has been refined to the point that reflections are genuinely controlled even under bright bay-window light. The bezel system is mature. The Art Store is now deep enough to justify the subscription. And the Moomin collaboration is a sign that Samsung is still actively investing in content partnerships rather than letting the catalogue stagnate.

The case for waiting is thin. Black Friday in November will knock £100 to £200 off if you can hold for six months, but the previous-generation Frame at clearance prices is often the better deal if you can find it. The 2024 and 2025 panels still get the same Art Store updates, and the 2026 hardware refinements are incremental rather than transformative. If your room has high ambient light and you want the matte panel, buy current. If you can stretch to a slightly older model on clearance, buy that instead and put the saved money toward the Music Frame or a second Frame for another room.

For first-time Frame buyers, the Moomin collection is not a reason on its own to spend £1,800 on a TV. But it is a useful test: if the idea of rotating Tove Jansson’s watercolours on the wall when you are not watching anything appeals to you, The Frame is the right TV. If it sounds gimmicky, buy an LG OLED instead and put the saved money toward something else. Samsung knows exactly who its Frame buyer is, and the Moomins are aimed precisely at that buyer.

Other Frame artwork worth queuing alongside the Moomins

Once you have the Moomin collection added to your favourites, the next sensible step is to build a rotation that does not clash. Jansson’s palette is soft, slightly faded and warm. Pair it with similarly toned collections rather than high-contrast modern photography. The Tate’s collection of Turner watercolours sits alongside the Moomins naturally; both share that watery, atmospheric feel. The V&A’s Arts and Crafts collection is another good match, particularly the William Morris pieces that already exist in the Art Store catalogue.

What to avoid in the same rotation: the Magnum Photos collection, which is mostly stark black-and-white photojournalism, and the brighter modern abstracts in the Saatchi Art section. Both are excellent on their own but jar against the Moomin watercolours when they cycle next to each other. The Art Store does not currently let you build named playlists, but you can flag pieces as favourites and set the rotation to favourites-only, which is the closest equivalent.

For households with young children, the Moomin collection raises an interesting question: is The Frame in a child’s bedroom worth the cost? The honest answer is no, unless the child is old enough to genuinely appreciate the artwork. A regular Samsung mid-range TV with the kids’ content library and parental controls is a better fit for under-tens. The Frame is for adult rooms where the design matters and the TV-off state is part of the room’s aesthetic. The Moomin collection might tempt parents into rationalising a Frame for a nursery, but the maths does not really work.

Verdict

The Moomin collaboration is the strongest content drop on the Samsung Art Store this year and a genuinely well-judged choice for the UK market. It will not sell new Frames on its own, but it justifies the subscription for existing owners and reminds the market that Samsung is still serious about the Art Store as a long-term product rather than a launch gimmick. If you own a Frame, set up the Moomin collection this week and adjust your brightness settings to suit. If you have been thinking about The Frame, the 2026 lineup is the cleanest version of the product to date, and the content side has finally caught up with the hardware.

Source: Samsung Newsroom UK

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Further reading: UK sources we used

• Samsung The Frame UK product page
• Samsung Art Store subscription
• Moomins official
• HMRC business expenses guidance

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