Venice Biennale 2026: In Minor Keys

|Josh Stein

By Josh Stein · Founder, Art of NOMA · writing on the emerging-art market since 2023

The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia runs from 9 May to 22 November 2026, across the Giardini, the Arsenale, venues throughout the city and Forte Marghera. It is titled In Minor Keys, and it is open now.

It is also the most unusual edition in the Biennale's recent history, for a reason that has nothing to do with art-world politics. Its curator, Koyo Kouoh, died in May 2025, aged 57, after she had been appointed and after she had done most of the work — and the Biennale chose to realise her exhibition rather than replace it.

Dates, sites and what is actually on

The exhibition opened on 9 May 2026 and closes on 22 November 2026. That six-and-a-half-month run is the longest window of any event in this calendar, and it is the reason the Biennale is the one major art event you can plan around leisurely rather than sprinting to.

There are two principal sites. The Giardini, a park in the east of the city, holds the historic national pavilions — permanent buildings, some over a century old, each belonging to a country — plus the Central Pavilion. The Arsenale, the vast former shipyard of the Venetian republic, holds a long sequence of industrial halls given over to the curated exhibition and to countries without a Giardini building.

Beyond those, participating countries and collateral events take over palazzi, churches and warehouses across the city, and the Biennale extends to Forte Marghera on the mainland. Nobody sees all of it. Accepting that at the start is the difference between a good trip and a forced march.

The exhibition Koyo Kouoh did not see

Koyo Kouoh was appointed curator of this edition in late 2024. She was a Cameroonian-Swiss curator who had built RAW Material Company in Dakar and then led Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, and her appointment was widely read as a genuine shift in where curatorial authority in the art world sits.

She died in May 2025, aged 57. By that point she had developed the exhibition's concept and title and had already selected a large proportion of the artists and works, along with authors for the catalogue.

The Biennale's decision was to proceed with her exhibition rather than to start again. It is being realised by the team she chose: Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira and Rasha Salti as advisors, Siddhartha Mitter as editor-in-chief, and Rory Tsapayi as research assistant.

That is worth knowing before you walk in, and it is the fact that almost no listings page carries. You are looking at a major exhibition completed by other people from its author's plans — something that happens routinely in architecture and almost never at this scale in curating. It gives the whole edition a quality that the title, chosen long before, now reads as having anticipated.

What does In Minor Keys mean?

The title is a musical metaphor and it is doing real work. Music written in a minor key is conventionally heard as melancholy, unresolved or strange — not sad exactly, but tilted away from the confident resolution a major key provides. The curatorial team has also pointed to jazz as a reference.

Applied to an exhibition, it proposes a register rather than a theme. Not the declarative, monumental, argument-making mode that large international exhibitions default to, but something quieter and more attentive — Kouoh's own framing invited listening to what she called the persistent signals of earth and life.

Whether an exhibition of this scale can sustain a quiet register is the interesting question to carry around with you, and it is a more useful thing to test than trying to see everything. Biennales are usually loud by construction: hundreds of artists competing for attention across enormous halls. An attempt to work in a minor key against that architecture is a real curatorial gamble, and watching where it holds and where the building wins is the most rewarding way to look at this edition.

Pavilions versus the central exhibition

This is the structural fact that confuses most first-time visitors, and getting it straight in advance changes the whole experience.

The central exhibition — In Minor Keys — is curated by one person and their team. It runs through the Central Pavilion in the Giardini and through the Arsenale, and it is a single argument made with many artists.

The national pavilions are not that. Each participating country selects its own artist and commissions its own presentation independently, through its own institutions, on its own criteria. They have no obligation to relate to the central theme and frequently do not. Reading them as chapters of the main exhibition produces nothing but confusion.

Practically, treat them as two different exhibitions that happen to share a site and a season. The pavilions are also where you get the clearest read on what individual countries currently want to say about themselves — which is a different and sometimes more revealing pleasure than the curated show.

How to see it without wasting the trip

  • Give it two full days minimum. One day buys you the Giardini, badly. The Arsenale alone is a long walk through many halls.
  • Do the Arsenale first, on your freshest day. It carries the larger share of the curated exhibition and it demands more attention than the pavilions do.
  • Go in the shoulder months. The exhibition runs to 22 November. September and October are cooler, dramatically less crowded and cheaper than the summer, and nothing is missing.
  • Do not try to see every pavilion. There are too many. Choose ten deliberately and see them properly.
  • Leave time for the collateral events in the city. Some of the strongest work in any Biennale year is in a palazzo nowhere near either main site.
  • Sit down regularly. This sounds unserious and is the single most practical piece of advice on this page.

Why a biennale matters to a collector

Nothing at the Biennale is for sale. That is precisely what makes it useful.

Every fair in this calendar shows you work selected because someone believes it will sell. A biennale shows you work selected because a curator believes it means something, with the commercial question removed entirely. The two filters produce visibly different exhibitions, and seeing both is how you learn to tell the difference between work that is interesting and work that is merely saleable.

It is also a leading indicator. Artists shown at Venice tend to appear in institutional exhibitions and, later, in gallery programmes and price brackets that reflect the attention. If you are collecting emerging work, the artists in a biennale's curated section are a serious reading list — not because you can buy them there, but because you now know who to follow.

Art of NOMA is not exhibiting at the Venice Biennale. We are a Mexico City gallery representing around forty artists across painting, photography, print and sculpture, selling online and through Artsy and shipping worldwide. If a biennale leaves you wanting to buy work by artists at the start of their careers, start with the roster, or read how to discover emerging artists before everyone else.

Verified 25 August 2026 against La Biennale di Venezia's official 2026 exhibition listing, read for dates, title, curator and venues.

Art of NOMA is an official Artsy partner gallery based in Mexico City, representing around forty contemporary artists and more than 250 original works across painting, photography, print and sculpture.

Frequently asked questions

When is the Venice Biennale 2026?
The 61st International Art Exhibition runs from 9 May to 22 November 2026, across the Giardini, the Arsenale, venues throughout Venice and Forte Marghera. It is open now.
What is the theme of the 2026 Venice Biennale?
It is titled In Minor Keys. The phrase is a musical metaphor: music in a minor key is heard as melancholy or unresolved rather than declarative, and the curatorial team has also cited jazz as a reference. It proposes a quieter register than large international exhibitions usually adopt.
Who curated the 2026 Venice Biennale?
Koyo Kouoh, the Cameroonian-Swiss curator who founded RAW Material Company in Dakar and led Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town. She was appointed in late 2024 and died in May 2025, aged 57, having already developed the concept and selected many of the artists. The Biennale chose to realise her exhibition with the team she had assembled rather than appoint a replacement.
What is the difference between the national pavilions and the main exhibition?
The central exhibition is curated by one curator and their team and runs through the Central Pavilion and the Arsenale. The national pavilions are separate: each participating country selects its own artist and commissions its own presentation independently, with no obligation to address the central theme. They are best treated as two different exhibitions sharing a site.
How many days do you need at the Venice Biennale?
Two full days at minimum. One day covers the Giardini only, and not well. The Arsenale is a long sequence of large halls that deserves a fresh day of its own, and the collateral events scattered across the city need additional time.
Can you buy art at the Venice Biennale?
No. Unlike an art fair, the Biennale is not a marketplace and the work is not for sale. That is what makes it useful to a collector: the selection reflects curatorial judgement rather than what a gallery expects to sell, and the artists shown there are a reliable indicator of who will receive institutional attention next.

Sources

Collecting emerging work? Art of NOMA represents around forty artists across Mexico and internationally, shipping worldwide with rates calculated at checkout. Start with the roster.