For the first time since 1895, the Venice Biennale opened without an opening ceremony and without a jury. Not an oversight. The jury — five people, led by Brazilian curator Solange Farkas — resigned collectively on April 30th, stating they were unwilling to award prizes to artists from countries whose leaders are under International Criminal Court arrest warrants. That means Russia, whose president has been subject to an ICC warrant since 2023. It means Israel, whose prime minister has been under warrant since 2024. The Biennale's response was to replace the jury awards with audience votes, rename them the Leoni dei Visitatori, and proceed as planned. This is what trying to stay neutral looks like in 2026.
What actually happened
Russia returned after sitting out the 2024 edition — they had lent their pavilion to Bolivia that year. Russian officials prefer not to call it a return: Russia, in their account, "never left." The pavilion opened briefly before the official start, then closed to the general public under EU sanctions, its performances replaced by recordings on outdoor screens. Pussy Riot and FEMEN staged protests outside. The EU threatened to pull €2 million in funding. The Biennale held its position.
South Africa's pavilion stands empty. The artist selected to represent the country, Gabrielle Goliath, had prepared Elegy — a video and sound installation that mourns several deaths, among them Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023. South Africa's culture minister asked Goliath to remove the reference. She refused. The pavilion was cancelled. Goliath is now showing the work independently, in a church a short walk from the Arsenale. The official pavilion remains vacant.
Australia's entry had its own detour. Artist Khaled Sabsabi was dropped in February after a 2007 video work featuring manipulated footage of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah drew accusations of antisemitism from conservative politicians. The arts community pushed back. He was reinstated. He is showing. Israel participates too — not from its usual pavilion in the Giardini, which is reportedly under renovation, but from the Arsenale. Several Israeli artists publicly questioned the decision to send a pavilion at all.
The argument worth taking seriously
There's a version of the counter-argument worth taking seriously. Art doesn't have to carry a political brief. The impulse to make something — a sculpture, a video installation, a sound piece — can come entirely from the need to make it. Not to comment on a conflict. Not to align with a faction. Just to build something that wasn't there before. That impulse is real, and it matters. An artist from Russia making work about light, memory, or loss is not automatically an ambassador for Putin. Conflating the two flattens something that deserves more care.
But the Venice Biennale is not a studio. It is a stage organised around national pavilions, representing nations. The moment that structure exists, the institution is already in the business of geopolitics — whether it says so or not.
When you accept a pavilion from a country whose president is under an ICC arrest warrant for war crimes, that acceptance is a position. When you ask an artist to remove a tribute to a civilian poet killed in a bombing before her work can be shown, that demand is a position. Neither of these is neutral. The only difference is whether the institution owns it or tries to dress it up as administrative necessity.
Public institutions — and the Venice Biennale is about as public as it gets, funded by governments, attended by heads of state, covered by every major arts outlet — cannot opt out of the political context they operate in. That is not a criticism; it is just a description of how visibility works. Silence on something is still a signal. The Biennale's attempt to navigate 2026 without taking sides has itself become the story, at the cost of the art that was actually meant to be shown.
The theme of this year's Biennale is In Minor Keys. The title was chosen by the exhibition's curator, Koyo Kouoh. It was presumably meant to suggest something about quieter registers, overlooked voices, the work that happens outside the main key. Given everything else that happened before the doors opened, it landed differently. The empty South African pavilion — a room that exists because a government blinked and an artist didn't — says more about 2026 than most things hanging on the walls around it.