Venice Biennale 2026: 10 National Pavilions to Experience Now

Across Venice, this year’s national pavilions reflect a profound engagement with transformation—of histories, environments, bodies, and collective futures. Artists move fluidly between sculpture, sound, installation, film, and handcrafted processes, constructing spaces that invite reflection as much as participation. Together, these presentations reveal how contemporary art continues to grapple with uncertainty, while opening new pathways for connection, resistance, and imagination.

Italian Pavilion

Chiara Camoni: “Con te con tutto”

Curated by Cecilia Canziani

At the Italian Pavilion, Chiara Camoni presents “Con te con tutto,” a project that invites reflection on how we exist in relation to others—human and nonhuman—through shared processes of making and living. Rooted in Camoni’s longstanding engagement with natural materials, the installation brings together botanical and mineral elements, textiles, and handcrafted forms that evolve through time and interaction. Drawing on themes of care, transformation, and collective knowledge, the work foregrounds dialogue between bodies, materials, and environments. Shaped by an expanded notion of community, “Con te con tutto” positions art as a space of connection and reciprocity, where gestures accumulate and meaning emerges through collaboration, continuity, and attention to the rhythms of the natural world.

What we love: The pavilion’s deeply tactile sense of intimacy, where handmade forms, organic materials, and collective gestures create an atmosphere of quiet interconnectedness that feels restorative, grounding, and profoundly human.

Chiara Camoni: “Con te con tutto”
May 9–November 22, 2026

Peru Pavilion

“Sara Flores. From Other Worlds.”

Curated by Issela Ccoyllo and Matteo Norzi

At the Peru Pavilion, Sara Flores presents “Sara Flores. From Other Worlds.,” a solo exhibition that marks the country’s first presentation by an Indigenous artist at the Venice Biennale. Working from the visual language of kené—the intricate design system of the Shipibo-Konibo people—Flores creates large-scale paintings and sculptural forms that function as portals between ancestral knowledge and contemporary experience. Accompanied by sound and moving image, the installation immerses viewers in a synesthetic environment where pattern, vibration, and storytelling converge. Rooted in both tradition and innovation, Flores’s work reconfigures kené as a living system, foregrounding interconnectedness between human and non-human worlds while reflecting broader narratives of cultural continuity, self-determination, and the transmission of knowledge across generations.

What we love: The immersive way Flores transforms ancestral design into a living, breathing environment—one where sound, rhythm, and pattern become vehicles for memory, spirituality, and cultural continuity across generations.

“Sara Flores. From Other Worlds.”
May 9–November 22, 2026

Brazilian Pavilion

Rosana Paulino and Adriana Varejão: “Comigo ninguém pode”

Curated by Diane Lima

At the Brazilian Pavilion, Rosana Paulino and Adriana Varejão present “Comigo ninguém pode,” a two-person exhibition that explores histories of colonial violence alongside processes of transformation and resilience. Taking its title from a plant associated with both protection and toxicity, the project unfolds as a dialogue between the two artists’ practices, where shared concerns around memory, identity, and the rewriting of history take form. Through works that move between material intensity and symbolic charge, the exhibition examines how colonial wounds continue to shape contemporary experience, while also opening space for poetic and political reimagination. Positioned in both harmony and tension, Paulino and Varejão’s practices reflect broader social and cultural dynamics, foregrounding collective knowledge and the potential for new narratives to emerge.

What we love: The powerful interplay between the artists’ practices, where beauty and brutality coexist in richly layered works that confront historical trauma while insisting on resilience, healing, and the possibility of rewriting inherited narratives.

Rosana Paulino and Adriana Varejão: “Comigo ninguém pode”
May 9–November 22, 2026

Bulgarian Pavilion

Veneta Androva, Gery Georgieva, Maria Nalbantova and Rayna Teneva: “The Federation of Minor Practices”

Curated by Martina Yordanova

At the Bulgarian Pavilion, “The Federation of Minor Practices” unfolds as a speculative research lab that imagines a future shaped by care, collective attention, and alternative political structures. Framed from a vantage point ahead of the present, the exhibition looks back at the early 21st century as a formative moment for new ways of living and organizing together. Centered on four newly commissioned films, the project explores themes ranging from digital mythologies and disinformation to ecological care and labor. Conceived as an interactive, game-like environment, the pavilion activates these narratives through participation, positioning play as a method of orientation. Rather than proposing a fixed vision of the future, the exhibition sustains the conditions through which shared, emergent possibilities can take shape.

What we love: The pavilion’s imaginative fusion of critical inquiry and playful participation, using speculative storytelling and interactive environments to propose radically different ways of living, collaborating, and envisioning collective futures.

“The Federation of Minor Practices”
May 9–November 22, 2026

Somalia Pavilion

Ayan Farah, Asmaa Jama, and Warsan Shire: “SADDEXLEEY”

Curated by Mohamed Mire and Fabio Scrivanti

Marking its first-ever national presentation at the Venice Biennale, the Somalia Pavilion presents “SADDEXLEEY,” a multidisciplinary exhibition rooted in Somali oral poetic tradition. Taking its title from a triadic verse composition, the project unfolds as a spatialized poem, where repetition, variation, and relation shape an immersive environment of sound, language, and material. Bringing together the practices of Ayan Farah, Asmaa Jama, and Warsan Shire, the exhibition explores themes of memory, displacement, and legacy through intertwined perspectives. Drawing on oral histories and material research, the works position poetry as both structure and method—an evolving system through which meaning is felt as much as it is understood, offering a nuanced reflection on identity, endurance, and cultural continuity.

What we love: The extraordinary emotional resonance created through poetry, sound, and material presence, where oral tradition becomes an immersive spatial experience that honors memory, displacement, and cultural endurance with remarkable tenderness and power.

Ayan Farah, Asmaa Jama, and Warsan Shire: “SADDEXLEEY”
May 9–November 22, 2026

United States Pavilion

Alma Allen: “Call Me the Breeze”

Curated by Jeffrey Uslip

At the U.S. Pavilion, Alma Allen presents “Call Me the Breeze,” an exhibition of new and recent sculptures that explore the transformation of natural materials into dynamic, biomorphic forms. Working with stone, wood, and bronze sourced from across the Americas, Allen combines hand-carving techniques with advanced technologies to create works that appear both grounded and in motion. Shaped by geological time and expansive landscapes, the sculptures evoke processes of erosion, growth, and metamorphosis, where solid matter seems to soften, shift, and evolve. Engaging themes of elevation—both physical and symbolic—the exhibition reflects on collective aspiration and interconnectedness, positioning material as a conduit for memory, history, and the possibility of transformation.

What we love: The sensual fluidity of Allen’s sculptural language, where stone and wood seem to bend, breathe, and evolve—capturing geological time and organic movement in forms that feel simultaneously ancient and futuristic.

Alma Allen: “Call Me the Breeze”
May 9–November 22, 2026

British Pavilion

Lubaina Himid: “Predicting History: Testing Translation”

Curated by Emma Dexter

At the British Pavilion, Lubaina Himid presents “Predicting History: Testing Translation,” a vivid and immersive exhibition exploring belonging, migration, and the complexities of making a home beyond one’s origins. Through a new series of large-scale, multi-paneled paintings, Himid constructs richly colored, surreal environments populated by imagined characters and unfolding narratives. Extending her practice into sound and spatial installation, the exhibition incorporates a layered soundscape developed with Magda Stawarska, amplifying the emotional and psychological textures of displacement and adaptation. Engaging the pavilion’s neoclassical architecture, Himid envisions Britain as open and full of possibility, while subtly introducing tension through image, text, and sound. Blending storytelling with historical inquiry, the work reflects on translation—cultural, linguistic, and personal—as an imperfect yet generative process shaping identity and collective memory.

What we love: The lush theatricality of Himid’s worlds, where vibrant color, layered sound, and narrative complexity transform migration and translation into deeply human stories filled with tension, imagination, and possibility.

Lubaina Himid: “Predicting History: Testing Translation”
May 9–November 22, 2026

French Pavilion

Yto Barrada: “Comme Saturne”

Curated by Myriam Ben Salah

At the French Pavilion, Yto Barrada presents “Comme Saturne,” an immersive installation that unfolds as a poetic meditation on time, memory, and transformation. Drawing on textiles, film, and archival gestures, the exhibition uses material processes as a language through which histories and cosmologies are reimagined. Structured as a sequence of interconnected environments, the pavilion explores the symbolic and mythological associations of Saturn—melancholy, repetition, and slow change—through layered spatial narratives. Techniques such as dévoré, in which fabric is partially dissolved, become metaphors for erosion, rupture, and renewal. Moving between play and gravity, Barrada’s work invites reflection on instability as a condition of contemporary life, offering a nuanced exploration of how meaning is constructed through material, myth, and collective knowledge.

What we love: The poetic material intelligence running throughout the exhibition, where dissolving fabrics, layered imagery, and mythological references create a dreamlike meditation on fragility, transformation, and the passage of time.

Yto Barrada: “Comme Saturne”
May 9–November 22, 2026

German Pavilion

Henrike Naumann and Sung Tieu: “Ruin”

Curated by Kathleen Reinhardt

At the German Pavilion, Sung Tieu and the late Henrike Naumann present an exhibition that examines the structures shaping contemporary society—from political systems and historical memory to bureaucracy and everyday life. Working across installation, sculpture, sound, and archival materials, both artists create immersive environments where personal experience intersects with broader geopolitical conditions. Naumann’s scenographic installations draw on interior design and material culture to explore processes of radicalization and social fracture, while Tieu’s practice investigates the time after the reunification of East and West Germany. Together, their approaches reveal tensions between past and present, individual and collective agency, positioning the pavilion as a space for reflecting on how histories are constructed, negotiated, and lived.

What we love: The exhibition’s incisive examination of how ideology quietly inhabits everyday spaces, using design, sound, and archival fragments to reveal the emotional and political afterlives of history with remarkable subtlety and force.

Henrike Naumann and Sung Tieu: “Ruin”
May 9–November 22, 2026

Malta Pavilion

Adrian MM Abela, Charlie Cauchi, and Raphael Vella: “No Need to Sparkle; Experiments in Love and Revolution”

Curated by Margerita Pulè

At the Malta Pavilion, Adrian MM Abela, Charlie Cauchi, and Raphael Vella present “No Need to Sparkle; Experiments in Love and Revolution,” a multimedia group exhibition that embraces doubt as a vital force for reflection and resistance. Taking its title from Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, the exhibition unfolds through newly commissioned installations that draw on protest history, mythology, identity, and contemporary media culture. Across screen-based works, sculpture, hand-drawn imagery, live-action film, and stop-motion animation, the artists construct layered environments where truth and fiction continuously shift and dissolve. Abela’s work interrogates mythmaking and collective identity through digital and sculptural forms, Cauchi examines authenticity and cinematic illusion through references to Italian film culture, and Vella draws from archival footage of political dissent in Malta to reflect on resistance and uncertainty. Positioned as an antidote to increasingly fractured realities, the pavilion proposes doubt not as paralysis, but as a means of remaining open, critical, and empathetic in moments of instability.

What we love: The pavilion’s richly cinematic atmosphere and intellectual complexity, where layered fictions, mythologies, and archival fragments destabilize certainty—transforming doubt into a deeply poetic and politically resonant form of resistance.

“No Need to Sparkle; Experiments in Love and Revolution”
May 9–November 22, 2026