Thirteen African countries have national pavilions at the 61st Venice Biennale. Four of them — Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone and Somalia — have never had one before, in the 131 years the exhibition has existed. One of the thirteen, South Africa, has a pavilion with nothing in it.
All three of those facts belong in the same article, because taken together they describe the actual condition of African participation at Venice rather more honestly than any of them does alone.
How Many African Pavilions Are at the Venice Biennale 2026?
Thirteen, out of roughly a hundred national participations in total. The Biennale as a whole has grown sharply this year — from 86 participating nations in 2024 to around 99 in 2026 — and seven countries are making an absolute debut: Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Nauru, Qatar, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Vietnam. Four of those seven are African.
Alongside the debutants sit returning participants including Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Morocco, Senegal, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The pavilions are scattered across the city rather than concentrated in the Giardini, which has consequences we will come to.
It is worth being precise about what a national pavilion actually requires, because the celebratory framing tends to skip it. A pavilion means a commissioner, a curator, a budget, a lease on Venetian property at Venetian rates for six months, freight, customs, insurance, invigilation and a catalogue. It is an administrative and financial undertaking of real weight. Four ministries doing it for the first time in the same year did not happen spontaneously; it is the visible surface of a decade of institutional groundwork, and it is the part of this story that compounds.
Somalia’s Debut Pavilion: Poetry as Structure
Of the debuts, Somalia’s did the least obvious thing: it built a pavilion around poetry. It has also been the most contested — four Somali arts organisations objected before opening that the art scene inside the country had not been meaningfully consulted, and that all three selected artists, though Somali, work abroad. We have covered the pavilion and the objection in full.
Titled SADDEXLEEY after a Somali poetic form built on threes, curated by Mohamed Mire and Fabio Scrivanti and installed across three floors of the Palazzo Caboto — conveniently sited between the Giardini and the Arsenale — the pavilion presents Ayan Farah, Asmaa Jama and Warsan Shire. The curators’ argument is that poetry is not decorative in Somali culture but structural: the mechanism by which knowledge and history have been transmitted across generations, and therefore the backbone of the social order itself. The presentation is deliberately quiet, meditative, serene — which in a Biennale titled In Minor Keys is less a risk than a homecoming.
The inclusion of Warsan Shire, whose work reached an audience of tens of millions through channels that have nothing to do with the art world, is a quietly clever piece of curating.
The DRC Pavilion: Simba Moto! Seize the Fire!
The Democratic Republic of the Congo has produced what is, by most accounts, the strongest African national presentation of the edition.
Simba Moto! Seize the Fire! is curated by the philosopher Nadia Yala Kisukidi and occupies the Antico Refettorio of the Scuola Grande di San Marco. It gathers nine artists — Sammy Baloji, Arlette Bashizi, Patrick Bongoy, Damso, Gosette Lubondo, Nelson Makengo, Aimé Mpané, Léonard Pongo and Géraldine Tobé — which is to say three of the most rigorous image-makers working anywhere on the continent, placed in a sixteenth-century refectory with the acoustics to match. Léonard Pongo, also in this pavilion, appears in the central exhibition at the Arsenale as well — a double presence that is rare and says something about where his stock currently sits.
That a philosopher rather than a career curator was handed the pavilion is itself worth noting. It shows in the coherence of the thing. We have written at length on the DRC pavilion separately.
Equatorial Guinea, Guinea and Sierra Leone: The Other Debuts
Equatorial Guinea has arrived with The Forest / The Undergrowth, installed at the Palazzo Donà dalle Rose under commissioner Paulo Speller and curator Joan Abelló, presenting Fernando Nguema Madja and Modest Gené Roig alongside a broad group of international collaborators.
A caveat that the more clear-eyed African critics have been making since opening week, and which deserves repeating: thirteen pavilions do not arrive with thirteen equal levels of curatorial rigour or institutional backing. Some are formidable. Some are first attempts, assembled at speed with thin support, and pretending otherwise does the strong ones no favours. Presence is not the same as parity. But presence is where parity begins, and every one of these ministries now has institutional muscle memory it did not have in 2024.
Uganda’s Pavilion
Uganda returns with an unusually large roster: Joseph Ntensibe, Lilian Mary Nabulime, Ronex Ahimbisibwe, Lakwena Maciver, Sheila Nakitende, Stacey Gillian Abe and Aloka Mark Trevor. Abe’s Garden of Blue Whispers has attracted particular attention.
The Empty Pavilion: South Africa in 2026
And then there is South Africa, which will show nothing.
The country’s culture ministry confirmed that its pavilion would stand empty at the 2026 Biennale, following the cancellation of the project by the artist Gabrielle Goliath. Goliath has since shown the cancelled work outside the official programme.
It is a genuinely strange thing to encounter in a year framed as the most African Biennale in history: the continent’s most institutionally developed art economy, home to Zeitz MOCAA and the Norval and a functioning gallery system, represented in Venice by an absence. Whatever the administrative account of how it happened, the optics are difficult, and the contrast with four first-time nations getting their pavilions open is not one that flatters Pretoria.
It also complicates the tidy narrative rather usefully. Institutional capacity is not a ratchet that only turns one way. It can be lost.
How to Visit the African Pavilions in Venice
A practical note worth more than most of the criticism. Of the roughly hundred national participations, only 29 are in the Giardini and 25 in the Arsenale; the remaining 46 are dispersed across the city in palazzi, scuole and refectories. A disproportionate share of the African pavilions falls into that third category — the DRC at the Scuola Grande di San Marco, Somalia at the Palazzo Caboto, Equatorial Guinea at the Palazzo Donà dalle Rose.
Which means that the visitor who does the Giardini in the morning and the Arsenale in the afternoon, and then collapses into a spritz, will have missed almost all of it. Give the city pavilions a separate day. Plan the route by sestiere rather than by country. Wear the shoes you would wear to walk.
The Biennale runs to 22 November 2026, with the awards ceremony on the closing day.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many African countries have pavilions at the Venice Biennale 2026?
Thirteen African countries are presenting national pavilions at the 61st edition.
Which African countries are debuting at Venice for the first time?
Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone and Somalia. La Biennale lists seven first-time countries overall in 2026: those four plus Nauru, Qatar and Vietnam.
Why is the South African pavilion empty in 2026?
South Africa’s culture ministry confirmed the pavilion would be empty after the cancellation of Gabrielle Goliath’s project. The artist subsequently presented the work outside the official Biennale programme.
Where is the DRC pavilion in Venice?
At the Antico Refettorio of the Scuola Grande di San Marco. The exhibition, Simba Moto! Seize the Fire!, is curated by Nadia Yala Kisukidi and includes Sammy Baloji, Gosette Lubondo and Nelson Makengo.
When does the Venice Biennale 2026 close?
Sunday 22 November 2026, which is also the date of the awards ceremony.
This is part of our coverage of the 61st Venice Biennale. See also: Godfried Donkor in the main exhibition and Koyo Kouoh, the curator behind In Minor Keys.
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