Founded in 1895, the Venice Biennale is the oldest and most prestigious biennial of contemporary visual art. As its name suggests, it takes place every two years. The 2026 Venice Biennale, the event’s 61st edition, runs from May 9th to November 22nd, with preview days from May 6th to 8th.
At its core, the Biennale is structured around two principal components: a central, curated exhibition—titled for this edition “In Minor Keys”—and a series of national pavilions. The main exhibition (officially the “The 61st International Art Exhibition”) is organized by an appointed curator and unfolds across two primary venues: the Giardini and the Arsenale. It brings together artists from around the world under a unified curatorial framework.
The national pavilions operate alongside this exhibition but are independently organized by participating countries. Each nation selects its own artists and curatorial approach. There are 29 permanent national pavilions in the Giardini (more than half are from Europe), while other national pavilions are located within the vast former shipyards of the Arsenale and other venues throughout the city.
The Main Exhibition
Who is curating it?
The 2026 Venice Biennale is curated by the late Cameroonian Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh, director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, who was appointed to the role in late 2024 as the first African woman to lead the exhibition. Born in Cameroon in 1967 and raised in Zurich, Kouoh built an influential international career, from founding the Raw Material Company in Dakar to contributing to documenta 12 and 13 and shaping the programme of the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. She died unexpectedly in May 2025, but her exhibition will proceed as planned, realized by the curatorial team she brought together.
That team—Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayi—now carries forward her vision. She conceived the 2026 exhibition as one that would “carry meaning for the world we currently live in—most importantly, for the world we want to make.”
What’s the 2026 theme?
Titled “In Minor Keys,” the exhibition promises to explore art that shifts away from speed and spectacle towards a slower, more attentive mode of engagement. With a title borrowed from music, the exhibition foregrounds emotional, sensory, and subjective responses, positioning art as a space for reflection, restoration, and connection.
The show is structured around a set of loose, overlapping motifs—Shrines, Procession, Schools, Rest, and Performances. Bringing together emerging and established artists from cities including Dakar, Beirut, Paris, and Nashville, “In Minor Keys” reflects Kouoh’s long-standing interest in connections that emerge across distance and difference. Kouoh was interested in how artists working far apart might be asking similar questions or arriving at related forms, despite vastly different contexts. In this way, the Biennale extends what she described as a “relational geography”: a network of encounters built over time, where meaning develops through these connections.
Who are the artists participating?
The exhibition brings together 111 participants, spanning individual artists, duos, collectives, and artist-led organizations. This edition marks a noticeable increase in living artists compared to 2022 and 2024, with the oldest living participant, Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi (born in 1943), and the youngest, Mohammed Z. Rahman (born in 1997).
At the center of the exhibition is Shrines, dedicated to the Senegalese artist, poet, and playwright Issa Samb (1945–2017) and the American artist Beverly Buchanan (1940–2015), both key figures in Kouoh’s thinking. Within the Procession motif—shaped by Afro-Atlantic traditions of movement and gathering—artists including Alvaro Barrington, Nick Cave, Pio Abad, Ebony G. Patterson, and Big Chief Demond Melancon engage with collective histories through performance and assemblage. The Rest motif creates space for reflection and repair, with works by artists such as Helen Sebidi, Seyni Awa Camara, and Wangechi Mutu foregrounding material, spiritual, and environmental connections. As part of Kouoh’s Schools motif, artist-led organizations such as Raw Material Company in Dakar, GAS Foundation in Lagos, and the Nairobi Contemporary Art Institution are included, foregrounding spaces of collective learning and exchange.
Large-scale installations by Kader Attia, Laurie Anderson, and Khaled Sabsabi punctuate the exhibition, offering moments of contemplation while reinforcing Kouoh’s vision of art as a shared and sustaining force. Under the Performances motif, this focus on movement and collective experience extends into a program of live events, including a poetic procession in the Giardini inspired by Kouoh’s 1999 Poetry Caravan—a journey she undertook with nine African poets from Dakar to Timbuktu—restaged here as a tribute to her legacy.
Golden Lion Award: What’s Changed This Year?
The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement—one of the Venice Biennale’s highest honors, awarded for an artist’s enduring contribution to contemporary art—will not be presented in 2026, as Koyo Kouoh was unable to finalize her selections before she died. So far, the Biennale has not released information about the 2026 Golden Lions for National Participation and in the Main Exhibition.
At the 2024 edition, the Golden Lion for Best National Participation was awarded to Indigenous Australian artist Archie Moore for his Australia Pavilion exhibition “kith and kin,” marking the first time an artist from the nation received the prize. The Golden Lion for participation in the main exhibition went to New Zealand–based Māori collective Mataaho Collective.
The Pavilions
A total of 99 nations will take part in the 2026 Venice Biennale, up from 86 in 2024. Across the lineup, around 45 pavilions are from Europe, 13 from Africa, a substantial grouping across Asia and the Middle East, with smaller but growing representation from South America and Oceania—including first-time participant Nauru, a Pacific island nation northeast of Australia.
A strong cohort of women artists will represent national pavilions. In the U.K., Lubaina Himid—winner of the 2017 Turner Prize—becomes only the second Black woman to represent Great Britain at the Biennale. France will be represented by Yto Barrada, whose work has previously appeared in the Biennale’s main exhibition, marking her first national pavilion. Elsewhere, women artists lead a significant number of presentations: Austria’s Florentina Holzinger (who recently joined Thaddaeus Ropac); Estonia’s Merike Estna; Finland’s Jenna Sutela; Germany’s Henrike Naumann and Sung Tieu; Ireland’s Isabel Nolan; Iceland’s Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir; Cyprus’s Marina Xenofontos; and Denmark’s Maja Malou Lyse, the country’s youngest-ever representative.
Performance also emerges as a defining thread across this year’s pavilions. Austria will be represented by Florentina Holzinger; Belgium by Miet Warlop; Japan by Ei Arakawa-Nash; and South Korea by Goen Choi and Hyeree Ro, while the Netherlands, represented by Dries Verhoeven, will foreground performance for the first time.
Which countries are participating for the first time?
The 2026 Venice Biennale sees a notable expansion in participation from African countries, with 12 nations presenting national pavilions. Several are taking part for the first time, including Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Morocco, Sierra Leone, and Somalia, joining returning participants such as Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Senegal, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
First-time national pavilions also include El Salvador, represented by painter and sculptor J. Oscar Molina; Moldova with Pavel Brăila; and Nauru—the world’s smallest island nation—with a group exhibition curated by Khaled Ramadan. Vietnam will also participate for the first time with a group exhibition at Ca’ Faccanon in San Marco, curated by Do Tuong Linh.
A major development comes from Qatar, which has established its first permanent national pavilion in the Giardini—the first addition to the historic site in three decades, following South Korea’s pavilion in 1995. Designed by Lina Ghotmeh, the project reflects deepening cultural ties between Qatar and Italy.
Which pavilions are causing controversy?
Several national pavilions have become flashpoints ahead of the 2026 Biennale, underscoring how closely the exhibition is entangled with current political tensions.
The South African pavilion will stand empty for the first time in 15 years after culture minister Gayton McKenzie cancelled the country’s participation in January 2026. He argued that Gabrielle Goliath’s proposed work—Elegy (2019–present), a performance centred on a tribute to Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023—was “highly divisive.” Goliath’s project will proceed independently, presented at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin church in Venice.
Australia’s pavilion has drawn attention following a high-profile reversal involving Lebanese Australian artist Khaled Sabsabi and curator Michael Dagostino. Their appointment was withdrawn by Creative Australia in February 2025 amid controversy surrounding Sabsabi’s 2007 film You, which features footage of a speech by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and was criticized in the Australian Senate as endorsing extremism. The decision prompted widespread backlash from artists and cultural figures, with Sabsabi and Dagostino arguing that “art should not be censored, as artists reflect the times they live in.” Their reinstatement later that year followed sustained pressure from the arts community and a formal review by the commissioning body.
After being absent from the 2022 and 2024 editions following the invasion of Ukraine, Russia is set to return to the 2026 Biennale—a move that has drawn criticism from European lawmakers, Ukrainian officials, and the wider cultural sector. Members of the European Parliament have called for its participation to be blocked, citing continued attacks on Ukrainian cities and cultural heritage, while Ukraine’s foreign and culture ministers have warned against the Biennale becoming a platform for “whitewashing” the war. On 10 March 2026, the European Commission issued a statement warning that E.U. funding for the Biennale could be reconsidered should Russia participate, alongside calls for the resignation of Tamara Gregoretti, the Italian Ministry of Culture’s representative to the Biennale. Speaking later at the Biennale’s Central Pavilion on March 19th, Venice’s mayor Luigi Brugnaro said the Russian pavilion would be shut down if it were used for propaganda.
Nearly 200 participants in this year’s Biennale have signed an open letter calling for the exclusion of Israel, as well as the U.S. and Russia, citing ongoing violence in Gaza and the West Bank. Organized by the Art Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), the letter has been endorsed by artists including Sophia Al-Maria, Yto Barrada, Meriem Bennani, Alfredo Jaar, Tai Shani, and Cauleen Smith. The calls echo tensions from the 2024 edition, when Israel’s pavilion—represented by artist Ruth Patir—remained closed during the preview days. Israel will nonetheless participate in 2026, in an exhibition in the Arsenale (the Israeli pavilion is closed for renovations). There, Romanian-born, Haifa, Israel-based sculptor Belu-Simion Fainaru will present Rose of Nothingness (2015).
The U.S. pavilion has also separately drawn scrutiny with its selection of sculptor Alma Allen following a protracted and contested process. Known for his smooth, abstract stone and bronze sculptures, Allen has been seen by some as an unexpected choice for a context such as the Biennale, and the selection process was also unusual. Amid cuts to arts funding, the selection was overseen by the State Department rather than the National Endowment for the Arts, with revised guidelines prioritizing the promotion of “American values and policies” and replacing earlier criteria focused on equity and underserved communities. In an interview with the New York Times, Allen noted that his galleries, Mendes Wood DM and Olney Gleason, had advised him to decline the invitation and ended their relationship with him after he accepted. The appointment followed months of uncertainty, during which artist Robert Lazzarini was reportedly dropped after negotiations over funding collapsed.
from Artsy News https://ift.tt/CnKHhY2
