The 2026 Venice Biennale promises a rich mix of pioneering contemporary art, historic national debuts, and landmark exhibitions across the city. From immersive works by standout artists to first-time national pavilions, the Biennale offers a rare opportunity to engage with diverse voices, ambitious installations, and deeply reflective experiences. Visitors can also explore collateral exhibitions highlighting introspective painting and groundbreaking performance, including Marina Abramović’s Transforming Energy, making this edition a must-see for contemporary art enthusiasts.

Among the must-see artists at the 2026 Venice Biennale are Cauleen Smith and Kennedy Yanko, two compelling voices whose practices expand the boundaries of contemporary art. Smith, an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker, draws on mid-twentieth-century experimental cinema, structuralism, Third World cinema, and science fiction to create immersive works spanning film, installation, performance, and sculpture; her projects weave together Afro-diasporic histories, speculative futures, and collective memory.

Equally captivating, Yanko is known for her dynamic sculptures that fuse salvaged metal with vividly pigmented “paint skins,” blurring the line between painting and sculpture to explore themes of transformation and resilience. Together, their works promise to be standout moments within the Biennale’s reflective curatorial framework, offering powerful and visually arresting encounters that should not be missed.

A particularly exciting aspect of the 2026 Venice Biennale is the debut of several first-time national pavilions, with countries including Vietnam and El Salvador making their historic inaugural appearances on one of the world’s most influential stages for contemporary art.

El Salvador will present its first-ever national pavilion with Cartographies of the Displaced, a solo exhibition by Salvadoran-American artist J. Oscar Molina. Curated by Alejandra Cabezas and commissioned by Astrid Bahamond at Palazzo Mora, the presentation centers on Molina’s sculptural series Children of the World, a tribute to displaced and diasporic communities. The pavilion invites reflection on migration, identity, and shared humanity, marking a significant milestone as El Salvador’s first official national participation in the Biennale.

Vietnam’s first-ever national pavilion marks a significant milestone for the country’s contemporary art scene. Titled Art in the Global Flow and curated by Do Tuong Linh, the exhibition will be presented at Ca' Giustinian Faccanon in the San Marco district and will explore how Vietnamese artistic practices engage with the forces of globalization and cultural exchange. As Vietnam joins nearly one hundred participating countries and territories this year, the pavilion signals an important step in bringing Vietnamese art into deeper dialogue with the international art community.

Alongside the main Biennale exhibitions, several exciting collateral shows in Venice promise standout experiences for visitors, including intimate explorations of painting and groundbreaking performance art. Highlights include Matthew Wong: Interiors at Palazzo Tiepolo Passi, presenting 35 rarely seen works that reveal the late artist’s introspective vision, and Marina Abramović’s Transforming Energy at Gallerie dell'Accademia, a landmark exhibition celebrating her 80th birthday and her dialogue with Renaissance masterpieces through immersive, interactive performances.

Organized by the Matthew Wong Foundation and curated by John Cheim, Matthew Wong’s Interiors will present 35 previously unseen or rarely shown paintings and works on paper created between 2015 and his passing in 2019. While Wong is often celebrated for his luminous imagined landscapes, this focused presentation reveals a more introspective side of his practice, exploring solitude, longing, and emotional tension, and offering a rare look at the artist’s physical and psychological interior scenes. Opening alongside the Venice Biennale, the show promises to deepen understanding of Wong’s legacy and inner world.

At the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy makes history as the first major exhibition at the institution dedicated to a living woman artist. Curated by Shai Baitel, the show places Abramović’s groundbreaking performances, including Imponderabilia, Rhythm 0, and Balkan Baroque, in dialogue with the museum’s Renaissance masterpieces, while inviting visitors to engage physically with her signature “Transitory Objects”. A powerful highlight will be the presentation of Pietà (with Ulay) (1983) alongside Titian’s final painting Pietà, creating a poignant exchange across centuries that reframes themes of grief, endurance, and spiritual transformation through the lens of the body.