Venice Biennale 2026 Announces “In Minor Keys” as Koyo Kouoh’s Final Curatorial Vision
The 2026 Venice Biennale will unfold under the shadow of a loss and the clarity of a carefully articulated idea. Running from May 9 to November 22, 2026, with preview days from May 6 to 8, the 61st edition of the world’s most closely watched contemporary art biennial will present its main exhibition, officially titled “The 61st International Art Exhibition,” under the theme “In Minor Keys.”
The exhibition was conceived by Cameroonian Swiss curator Koyo Kouoh (1967–2025), who was appointed in late 2024 as the first African woman to lead the Biennale’s central show. Kouoh, the director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, died unexpectedly in May 2025, but the exhibition will proceed through the curatorial team she assembled: Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, Rasha Salti, Siddhartha Mitter, and Rory Tsapayi.
Rather than foregrounding speed or spectacle, “In Minor Keys” is built around slower forms of attention. Its title, drawn from music, signals an interest in emotional nuance, sensory experience, and art as a site of reflection and repair. The exhibition is organized around five overlapping motifs: Shrines, Procession, Schools, Rest, and Performances.
The 2026 edition will bring together 111 participants, including individual artists, duos, collectives, and artist-led organizations. The roster includes both emerging and established figures, with the oldest living participant, Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi (born 1943), and the youngest, Mohammed Z. Rahman (born 1997). Artists and organizations represented in the exhibition come from a wide geographic span, including Dakar, Beirut, Paris, Nashville, Lagos, Nairobi, and Timbuktu, reflecting Kouoh’s interest in what she called a “relational geography” — a network of artistic connections formed across distance and difference.
That approach is especially visible in Shrines, a section dedicated to Senegalese artist, poet, and playwright Issa Samb (1945–2017) and American artist Beverly Buchanan (1940–2015), both central to Kouoh’s thinking. The exhibition’s broader structure suggests a Biennale less interested in a single dominant narrative than in the accumulation of linked practices, shared questions, and forms of attention that emerge over time.
The national pavilions will again run alongside the central exhibition, independently organized by participating countries across the Giardini, the Arsenale, and other sites throughout Venice. There are 29 permanent pavilions in the Giardini, more than half of them European, while additional national presentations are spread across the city.
One notable absence will be the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, which will not be awarded in 2026 because Kouoh had not finalized her selections before her death. The Biennale has also not yet released information about the 2026 Golden Lions for National Participation or for the main exhibition. Even so, the framework already points to an edition shaped by continuity, unfinished intention, and a curatorial voice that will remain present through the work she left behind.
