A preview for art institution and gallery professionals
The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia runs from 9 May to 22 November 2026, under the theme In Minor Keys — a framework conceived by Koyo Kouoh, the Swiss-Cameroonian curator who died on 10 May 2025 at the age of 57, weeks before she would have presented it herself.
La Biennale di Venezia's president, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, confirmed the decision to proceed with Kouoh's vision, saying the institution is "realizing today her exhibition as she designed it, as she imagined it." The exhibition will be carried forward by the five advisors Kouoh personally selected: Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Helene Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayi.
Kouoh had served as executive director and chief curator of Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town and as founding artistic director of RAW Material Company in Dakar. Her appointment made her the first African woman to lead the Venice Art Biennale. She had been working on the theoretical framework, artist selections, spatial design, visual identity, and catalogue contributions before her death.
The curatorial position is grounded in "a deep trust in artists as the vital interpreters of the social and psychic condition and catalysts of new relations and possibilities," and explicitly resists the register of crisis commentary. Rather than offering "a litany of commentary on world events," the exhibition proposes what Kouoh described as "a radical reconnection with art's natural habitat and role in society: that is the emotional, the visual, the sensory, the affective, the subjective."
In music, minor keys carry associations of strangeness, melancholy, and sorrow. Advisor Marie Helene Pereira described them as holding "the cadencies melodies and silences of resonant walls that gather and create together a polyphonous assembly of art." The writers whose thinking underpins the exhibition's intellectual scope include James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Édouard Glissant.
Among the national pavilions confirmed so far, Lubaina Himid will represent the United Kingdom, Yto Barrada France, and Abbas Akhavan Canada. The German Pavilion, curated by Kathleen Reinhardt for ifa, will present work by Sung Tieu and the late Henrike Naumann, who died in February 2026; her contribution, developed in full before her death, will be realised as planned. Fiona Pardington will represent Aotearoa New Zealand with a new series of large-scale photographic portraits, and Dana Awartani will present for Saudi Arabia, drawing on Islamic and Arab material traditions. Syria's pavilion — presented with renewed intent following the end of the Syrian War — will feature Sara Shamma in a commission curated by Yuko Hasegawa. Ecuador participates for the first time, represented by the Tawna Collective in collaboration with artist Óscar Santillán. Australia's Khaled Sabsabi, initially dropped and subsequently reinstated by Creative Australia following significant sector response, will also be present.
Full details of the main exhibition, including the graphic identity, exhibition design, and the complete list of invited artists and participating countries, were announced on 25 February 2026. The Giardini and Arsenale venues are open Tuesday through Sunday, with extended hours from May through September.
For institutions planning visits, research partnerships, or acquisition contexts around the Biennale programme, early engagement with national pavilion commissioners is advisable, as many curatorial frameworks are now finalised and logistical arrangements well advanced.