The art world will descend on the sleepy Swiss town of Basel tomorrow. Power-players, including the owner of Christie's, François Pinault, Daniel Birnbaum, director of the 2009 Venice Biennale, and Vicente Todoli, the director of Tate Modern, will flock to Art Basel, the mothership of art fairs, the Cannes of the art world, to network furiously over countless glasses of free champagne. If you think the fair is just millionaires (and billionaires) schmoozing and spending, well, you'd be right in a way, but Art Basel is special among the 200- odd fairs that now pepper the art calendar: it sets the agenda for the global art scene.

You can guarantee that artists sought after at Art Basel will end up global stars. Artists who have shown works in the fair's Art Unlimited space - a hangar-like hall next to the main arena where palpitation- inducing outsize works are displayed - include, in 2006, Carsten Höller, the Belgian who went on to transform Tate Modern's Turbine Hall with a set of slides. Another Turbine Hall artist, Olafur Eliasson, is featured this year. The German artist Gregor Schneider and Christoph Büchel, of Switzerland, were both hits there last year, boosting their profiles. They have since gone on to cement their reputations with exhibitions worldwide.

Expect the same fate for the hot Indian artist Subodh Gupta, whose monumental Gandhi's Three Monkeys sculptural group (2008, Nature Morte Gallery) is on show in the public square outside the main fair. Contemporary Indian art is tipped to be the next major art world trend, with Gupta fast becoming an art-market darling. His trademark gargantuan sculptures will go on show next year in Charles Saatchi's new gallery in Chelsea, West London. And Basel, as usual, is at the forefront.

But Art Basel is not just about hunting down the best work by living artists. The fair rules the art ecosystem because major private collectors and museum bigwigs know that they can track down to-die-for modern pieces. Picassos and Warhols, not available on the market for years, have seen the light at Art Basel. In 2006 the sale of Picasso's Dora Maar au chat for $95.2 million (£48 million) in New York drew out top works by the artist at Basel, many of them seen for the first time. One of the most momentous purchases happened in 2006, when a US collector bought Takashi Murakami's huge, garish acrylic on canvas, 727-727, for $1.5 million in the first hour.

If something is making waves in the art world, you can guarantee that it will wash up on the shores of Art Basel. Expect to see a few Rauschenbergs on the stands this week, for instance, after the recent death of the US pop artist. It all feels different from the overheated, overblown art market dramas apparently played out in the auction houses of New York and London. Art Basel is for serious collectors (rather than trophy ones), both seasoned and new to the scene.

So I'll be part of the throng heading for Switzerland. Frieze may have more of a buzz, Art Basel Miami Beach (the US sister fair) may be brasher and have better weather but, without a doubt, Art Basel still packs the biggest punch.

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