As the Venice Biennale officially opens to the public today, Venice once again transforms into a city-wide stage for contemporary art, where centuries-old palazzos, industrial dockyards, national pavilions, and hidden courtyards become part of one of the world’s most influential cultural events. Since its founding in 1895, La Biennale di Venezia has expanded beyond art into architecture, cinema, dance, music, and theater, shaping the global cultural landscape across disciplines.
For the 61st edition of Venice Biennale 2026, the exhibition unfolds across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and multiple venues throughout Venice from May 9 to November 22, 2026. This year’s edition brings together 110 invited participants, more than 100 National Pavilions, and 31 Collateral Events, featuring individual artists, collectives, collaborative duos, and artist-led organizations from diverse geographies and generations.
In Minor Keys
At the heart of the Venice Biennale Arte 2026 lies In Minor Keys, the curatorial vision conceived by Koyo Kouoh before her passing in May 2025. Before her passing, Kouoh had already developed the exhibition’s concept, selected the participating artists, shaped the scenography, and defined the overall identity of the Biennale.
Borrowed from musical terminology, the title references the emotional qualities often associated with minor keys: melancholy, intimacy, reflection, and sensitivity.
Shrines, Memory, and Reclaimed Histories
Questions of cultural displacement emerge strongly through the work of Pio Abad, who reactivates looted artifacts through drawings that place colonial objects within everyday domestic settings.
Themes of migration and refuge continue in the work of Philip Aguirre Y Otegui: at the Arsenale, his monumental installation Gaalgui Shelter draws from traditional Senegalese fishing boats often used for clandestine crossings toward Europe. Painted in vivid sky-blue tones, the structure combines shelters, lookout points, and lighthouses into a meditation on movement, hope, and protection. His terracotta bas-reliefs further explore clay as a carrier of stories and memory.
Throughout the exhibition, shrines operate as spaces where histories, objects, and ancestral practices are brought back into circulation.
Processions, Gatherings, and Collective Resistance
The exhibition’s processional language appears through installations that engage with gathering, performance, activism, and movement through space. Arms Ache Avid Aeon, conceived by Jo-ey Tang alongside other members, revisits over three decades of queer artistic and political resistance. Spanning works from 1991 to 2026, the project reflects on AIDS activism, collective care, and survival amid climate collapse and rising authoritarianism.
Movement and collective energy also shape the installations of Alvaro Barrington. His large-scale environment Labor Day Parade ’91 channels memories of Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade through painted textiles, industrial materials, rope sculptures, and metal figures.
Architecture, Ecology, and Spatial Liberation
Spatial thinking becomes central in the work of Torkwase Dyson, whose installation Tougaloo combines painting, architectonic structures, and sound to explore Black ecology, fugitivity, and liberation. Drawing from the layered histories of Tougaloo College in Mississippi, Dyson constructs environments through curves, overhangs, graphite surfaces, and sonic frequencies. Her abstract “hypershapes” function as spatial forms and political propositions.
Grief, Rest, and Emotional Resonance
Themes of grief, contemplation, and healing appear throughout the Biennale, particularly in the monumental processional works of Nick Cave. Installed across the Arsenale, Two Points in Time – At Once unfolds through seven stages inspired by emotional cycles of grief and remembrance. Bronze figures, floral motifs, vintage serving trays, and needlepoint self-portraits create environments that move between silence, mourning, and joy.
Literary references, including Beloved by Toni Morrison and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, further shape the atmosphere of In Minor Keys.
National Pavilions
Beyond the central exhibition, the Venice Biennale Arte 2026 expands across the city through 100 National Participations and 31 Collateral Events, transforming Venice into a vast network of pavilions, historic palazzos, churches, warehouses, and temporary exhibition spaces. While some pavilions focus on memory, migration, and ecological futures, others explore sound, architecture, ritual, spirituality, technology, and national identity through beautiful installations and site-specific interventions.
From Palazzo Mora and Palazzo Franchetti to hidden spaces across Castello and Dorsoduro, the National Participations collectively transform Venice into a city-wide exhibition landscape.
New Voices and First-Time Participations
This 61st International Art Exhibition also marks the first participation of seven countries: the Republic of Guinea, the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of Nauru, Qatar, the Republic of Sierra Leone, the Federal Republic of Somalia, and the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. Meanwhile, El Salvador participates for the first time with its own national pavilion.
Qatar enters the Giardini with Beyti Beytak, bringing together multiple artists. Somalia’s inaugural pavilion, Saddexleey, features works by Warsan Shire, Ayan Farah, and Asmaa Jama, while Viet Nam’s Art in the Global Flow highlights contemporary Vietnamese artistic practices through painting and multimedia works.
Nauru’s AIM Inundated: Imagining Life After Land addresses climate anxiety and rising sea levels through speculative futures, while Sierra Leone’s Mondi Presenti / Worlds of Today brings together artists across Africa and Europe in a wide-ranging exploration of contemporary identity and exchange.
Pavilions Exploring Space, Architecture, and Environment
Several national participations this year strongly align with spatial and architectural thinking. The Greek Pavilion presents ESCAPE ROOM by Andreas Angelidakis, likely extending the artist’s long-standing interest in digital ruins and fragmented environments.
The Korean Pavilion, Liberation Space: Fortress/Nest, explores ideas of protection, vulnerability, and spatial identity, while Switzerland’s The Unfinished Business of Living Together reflects on co-existence and collective inhabitation through collaborative artistic practices.
India’s pavilion, Geographies of Distance: Remembering Home, curated by Amin Jaffer, Ranjani Shettar, and Asim Waqif, whose works often engage deeply with material experimentation and ecology.
Saudi Arabia’s May your tears never dry, you who weep over stones by Dana Awartani continues the artist’s interest in architecture, heritage, destruction, and repair.
Sound, Memory, and Emotional Landscapes
Many pavilions this year move toward quieter emotional registers that echo the atmosphere of In Minor Keys. The Great Britain Pavilion features Lubaina Himid’s Predicting History: Testing Translation, while Romania’s Black Seas – Scores for the Sonic Eye explores sound and perception.
The Holy See’s pavilion, The Ear is the Eye of the Soul, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers, centers around listening and sonic experience through the work of Soundwalk Collective.
Singapore’s A Pause, Estonia’s The House of Leaking Sky, and Kazakhstan’s Qoñyr: The Archive of Silence all suggest quieter and introspective approaches.
Collateral Events
Beyond the official national pavilions and the central exhibition, the Venice Biennale Arte 2026 extends deep into the city through 31 Collateral Events. Scattered throughout Venice, these projects often become some of the Biennale’s most unexpected discoveries.
Several exhibitions confront themes of displacement, resistance, and political trauma. At Palazzo Mora, “_____________” by the Palestine Museum US responds to the ongoing crisis in Gaza through silence, while Official. Unofficial. Belarus. by the Belarus Free Theatre, and Still Joy – from Ukraine into the World, by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation—reflect on resilience and conflict. Indian artist Nalini Malani also brings her politically charged installation Of Woman Born to Venice, continuing her exploration of feminism.
Elsewhere, sound and atmosphere take center stage through projects like Aghrab Idrāk: Thresholds of Perception by VCUarts Qatar and Sownd by Welsh artists Manon Awst and Dylan Huw. Spatial and architectural interventions also shape several exhibitions, including Leandro Erlich’s immersive installation Hybrids and If All Time Is Eternally Present at Palazzo Nervi Scattolin.
Environmental themes emerge through As Above, So Below and Shifting Waters, reflecting on marine ecosystems and climate futures. Scattered across Venice’s historic fabric, these collateral events encourage visitors to move beyond the Giardini and Arsenale and experience the Biennale through the city itself. Performance also plays an important role throughout the Biennale. One of the most significant moments in the program is a procession of poets through the Giardini, inspired by Koyo Kouoh’s Poetry Caravan from 1999, where nine African poets traveled together from Dakar to Timbuktu.
Credit © La Biennale di Venezia