Venice Biennale dates

The Venice Biennale now has a fixed 2026 calendar: preview days land on May 6, May 7, and May 8, and the public opening starts on Saturday, May 9, before closing on Sunday, November 22. The main exhibition will be spread across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and other sites across Venice, which means the show is less like one museum visit and more like a citywide route. (labiennale.org) This is the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, the edition that carries the title “In Minor Keys.” The exhibition is proceeding in line with the curatorial vision of Koyo Kouoh, the Cameroon-born and Switzerland-raised curator appointed by La Biennale in November 2024. (labiennale.org 1) (labiennale.org 2) Koyo Kouoh was also the executive director and chief curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, which made her one of the most closely watched curators working between Africa and Europe. La Biennale says the 2026 exhibition is being carried out with the full support of her family after her death, so the show now arrives with the weight of being both a major art event and the realization of a final curatorial project. (labiennale.org 1) (labiennale.org 2) The scale is huge even by Venice standards: organizers have announced 111 artists for the central exhibition. Artsy reports that 105 of those are individual artists and 6 are artist-led organizations, which gives a sense of how much of the show is built around distinct practices rather than giant institutional displays. (artsy.net) Around that core exhibition sits the national pavilion system, which is the part of Venice that makes the event feel like an art world Olympics. La Biennale has announced 99 national participations and 31 collateral events for 2026, with countries mounting their own exhibitions alongside the curator’s main show. (labiennale.org) Seven countries are joining the Biennale for the first time in 2026: Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Nauru, Qatar, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Vietnam. El Salvador is also participating for the first time with its own pavilion, which shows how the map of Venice keeps expanding rather than recycling the same old national roster. (labiennale.org) That first-time list also explains why people are watching Arab participation so closely this year. Qatar is one of the debut national participants, and coverage focused on the region has pointed to a broader Arab presence that includes countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Oman alongside Qatar. (labiennale.org) (msn.com) Venice works differently from an art fair, where booths can be covered in an afternoon and prices do most of the talking. The Biennale runs for more than six months, uses permanent pavilion buildings in the Giardini plus the long former shipyard spaces of the Arsenale, and turns churches, palazzos, and libraries across Venice into part of the exhibition trail. (labiennale.org) (ourculturemag.com) That long run changes who can actually see it. The May opening week is when curators, collectors, museum directors, and journalists flood the city, but the public dates stretch all the way into late November, which gives ordinary visitors a much bigger window than the opening-week frenzy suggests. (labiennale.org) (labiennale.vivaticket.it) So the date announcement is not just a diary note. It sets the timetable for one of the art world’s biggest recurring events, defines when 111 artists and 99 national participations will start competing for attention in Venice, and confirms that the 2026 edition will unfold as a citywide exhibition shaped by Koyo Kouoh’s final vision. (labiennale.org 1) (labiennale.org 2) (artsy.net)