No genocide pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
In October 2025, after confirmation of Israel’s inclusion in the 61st International Art Exhibition, the Art Not Genocide Alliance began circulating the below letter among participants and workers of the Venice Biennale.
ANGA’s call responds to the appeal issued by Palestinian civil society to challenge the normalisation of Israeli apartheid and occupation within international cultural platforms. In this context, the Venice Biennale cannot be exempt from scrutiny.
The following letter calls on the leadership of the Venice Biennale to exclude Israel from the 2026 exhibition. It has been signed by 236 artists, curators and art workers involved in this year’s Biennale and formally delivered to the President and Board of the Venice Biennale.
To the directors of the Venice Biennale,
ANGA addressed you on 2 October, 2025, demanding the exclusion of Israel from the 2026 Biennale. As Zionist atrocities continue to mount, you have yet to respond. Now we, the undersigned, stand together as artists, curators and art workers in a collective refusal to allow you to platform the Israeli state as it commits genocide. We do this in support of our fellow artists and cultural workers in Palestine, in solidarity with Palestine, and in profound hope of an end to Zionist genocide and ongoing apartheid, and the rebirth of a free Palestine.
In 2024, the outrage against the inclusion of a genocidal state in the art Biennale was so strong that the Israel pavilion was forced to close. As we reach an appalling anniversary—two and a half years of open genocide against Palestine—and 77 years after the Nakba, the Israeli state once again seeks the legitimation of the Biennale to masquerade as a creator instead of a destroyer of life and culture.
We remind you that Israeli violence also targets the art and culture supposedly held sacrosanct by the Biennale: Zionist forces kill, jail and persecute Palestinian artists and cultural workers, raze museums, archives, cultural centres, schools, universities, libraries, galleries, historical buildings and monuments to the ground (Rana Anani, JPS, 2024), and slaughter artists, musicians, poets, journalists and writers. This is an attempted annihilation of not just the Palestinian people but Palestinian culture.
The Venice Biennale’s complicity with the attempted destruction of Palestinian life must end. No artist or cultural worker should be asked to share a platform with this genocidal state. As long as Israel exists by means of genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, it must not be represented at the Venice Biennale. Genocide cannot be tolerated by an institution that aims to investigate and celebrate the human values embodied by art. Let your actions reflect this obvious truth.
Pavilion Teams
& Collateral Events
In Minor Keys
The undersigned.
Artists, curators, and art workers from across the 2026 Biennale who have publicly endorsed the letter and stand in collective refusal to platform the Israeli state.