The central attraction at the Venice Biennale is its main exhibition, a curated show meant to pinpoint a dominant theme in art as it stands right now. But all around it are pavilions staged by countries, with each nation selecting one or more artists to mount their own show or installation. These national pavilions have contributed to the common conception of the Biennale as the art world’s Olympics: a place where stars are born and nations flex their might.
The national pavilions tend to remain in flux until the very end. In 2024, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza upended several nations’ plans to exhibit at the Biennale. In 2026, those conflicts may once again roil this area of the Biennale. Uncertainty within a given country can also affect their planned participation.
But to get a sense of how the national pavilions currently stand, we’ve collected a list of all the national pavilions announced for the 2026 Venice Biennale, whose main exhibition is being curated by Koyo Kouoh, the executive director and chief curator of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa. While not a requirement, a number of countries often align their picks to resonate with the theme of the main exhibition, which will likely be announced in summer 2025.
Nearly all of these shows are official national pavilions. But this list also include some presentations that are technically considered collateral events, since the Biennale only confers national pavilion status to countries that have official diplomatic ties with Italy. We’ve noted which pavilions listed below are classed as collateral events.
Below, a guide to every 2026 Venice Biennale national pavilion announced so far. This list will be regularly updated as additional countries announce their pavilions.
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Austria
Image Credit: Alessandro Levati/Getty Images Continuing an emphasis on dance seen at Anna Jermolaewa’s 2024 pavilion, Austria’s 2026 pavilion will be given over to the choreographer Florentina Holzinger. Holzinger has quickly risen as one of the most in-demand choreographers worldwide for pieces that are often sexually charged and sometimes tough to watch. Sancta, her opera featuring nuns who roller-skated in the nude and a lesbian priest, was bitterly critiqued in her home country upon its premiere in 2022, with religious figures condemning her. When it traveled in 2024 to Germany, it raised controversy anew after audience members complained of severe nausea while watching a scene involving a piercing. Her project for the Biennale, titled Seaworld Venice, has the potential to be no more pleasant.
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Canada
Image Credit: Photo Alex de Brabant In Canada, Abbas Akhavan has steadily racked up accolades, appearing in the Toronto Biennial of Art, winning the Sobey Art Award for Canadian artists, and staging shows at well-regarded institutions. He is set to receive a new level of fame in the country he now calls home with this pavilion, which will continue his fascination with how national histories become embedded in material objects. Born in Tehran and now based between Montreal and Berlin, Akhavan has gradually gained international recognition as well. In 2026, Minneapolis’s Walker Art Center will survey his work.
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Estonia
Image Credit: Marta Vaarik Within Estonia, Merike Estna is well-known for her attempts to expand painting beyond the tried and true oil-on-canvas format. While she has regularly created abstractions that hang on walls, she has applied craft techniques in certain works, extended motifs shown on her canvases by repeating throughout galleries, and added sculptural elements. How she will push at her medium’s limits next with her Estonian Pavilion has not yet been detailed.
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France
Image Credit: Tristan Fewings/Getty Images Yto Barrada, one of France’s most famous living artists, will represent her home country in 2026. Barrada, who is of Moroccan descent, makes sculptures, installations, and conceptual artworks touching on a variety of interests, from the ways that ideas traverse the world to the means by which political movements are historicized. Her art is typically spare in its aesthetic: a recent sculpture made for MoMA PS1’s open-air atrium features stacked cubes in shades of red and blue, a reference, she has said, to how Brutalism was reinterpreted in Morocco. Barrada’s work has appeared in the main exhibitions of two Venice Biennales, though this is the first time she is doing a national pavilion.
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Iceland
Image Credit: Hallvar Bugge Johnson Many artists work in multiple mediums, but even by those standards, Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir’s oeuvre is pretty diverse. In addition to writing poems and making music, she has also produced what are commonly described as experimental operas. Guiding much of her work is a fascination with words, which she often tries to communicate in ways that exceed traditional forms of writing and speaking. Her plans for her Icelandic Pavilion have not yet been announced.
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Ireland
Image Credit: Ste Murray Dublin-based artist Isabel Nolan will represent Ireland, with Georgia Jackson, director of the Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art at Trinity College, serving as curator. Nolan works in a variety of mediums, from painting and sculpture to textiles and photographs, and her practice often explores themes of cosmology, mythology, history, and mortality. She previously participated in the Glasgow International and EVA International biennials and will show at the 2025 Liverpool Biennial. “Art has a strange and special capacity to make and test powerful kinds of community with shared knowledge and beauty, however temporary. The Venice Biennale is a stage like no other,” Nolan said in a statement.
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Lithuania
Image Credit: ©Eglė Budvytytė/Courtesy the artist Commissioned by the Lithuanian National Museum of Art and curated by independent curator Louise O’Kelly, Lithuania’s pavilion will be done by Eglė Budvytytė. The artist is no stranger to Venice, having shown in the main exhibition of the 2022 Biennale, organized by Cecilia Alemani. Based in Amsterdam and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, Budvytytė is known for performances and video art. For this Biennale, she will show Warmblooded and Wingless, an ongoing work begun in 2024 that encompasses a multichannel film as well as sound and spatial components. “Having worked with Egle for several years, I am particularly attracted to her authentic approach to embodiment, social relations and our symbiotic relationship with the environment,” O’Kelly told LRT. “Having grown up in Lithuania, she opens up a unique worldview in her works, showing the importance of lost belief and other systems of knowledge and ways of coexistence.”
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Luxembourg
Image Credit: ©Aline Bouvy Born in Brussels, Aline Bouvy is now based between Luxembourg and Belgium. The multidisciplinary artist often looks at the relationship between bodies and the spaces that they inhabit. Her work has taken the form of sculptures, paintings, photography, and more. The pavilion is curated by Stilbé Schroeder, curator and head of department for exhibitions and programme at Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain, which serves as its commissioner.
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Taiwan
Image Credit: Courtesy the artist and Taipei Fine Arts Museum Officially a collateral event, Taiwan’s national presentation will be given over to Li Yi-Fan, an emerging artist who has gained acclaim in his home country over the past several years. He won the 8th Tung Chung Prize, given by the Taipei-based Hong Foundation, in 2024, which comes with 1 million NTD (around $31,000) and the opportunity to create a new work and support for a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. His 30-minute film What Is Your Favorite Primitive (2023), made for that year’s Taipei Biennial, takes the form of a parody of tech keynote speech in which the protagonist grapples with the ethical issues of the field, particularly when it comes to image-based software. Details for his pavilion have not yet been announced.
