Venice Architecture Biennale 2027: theme, time, location and tickets

Venice Architecture Biennale 2027, view of the central pavilion wording spelling la biennale — The newly restored Central Pavilion awaits the opening of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2027

(Image credit: Stefano Mazzola/Getty Images)

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Venice Architecture Biennale 2027 curators
The main show theme
National Participations
Places, dates and tickets

With less than a year to go, speculation on the Venice Architecture Biennale 2027 is ramping up; what will the theme be? Who will the newly appointed co-curators choose to participate in their main show? And who is poised to win the biennale's coveted awards?

To help answer all these questions and more, we launch our biennial, ultimate guide for the world's biggest festival of the built environment, designed to keep you up to date with rolling coverage, breaking news and, of course, everything you need to know about exhibits, participants and logistics.

in preparation for venice architecture biennale 2023, we explore a picture of people seen from above at a peggy guggenheim foundation party in venice during the venice architecture biennale 2008 — In preparation for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2027, we nostalgically cast our minds back to the US Pavilion's celebrations at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection museum during the 2008 festival, as reported in Wallpaper's December issue of the same year

Welcome to our Venice Architecture Biennale 2027 ultimate guide

Following architect Carlo Ratti's much-discussed Venice Architecture Biennale 2025 and its theme, 'Intelligens,' and 2024 RIBA Gold Medal winner Lesley Lokko's 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale's influential focus on Africa as 'The Laboratory of the Future', the pressure is on for the next event, which marks the seminal 20th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice. Here is what we know.

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2027 co-curators

In November 2025, the biennale announced Chinese architecture duo Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu, founders of Hangzhou-based Amateur Architecture Studio, as the joint curators of the upcoming 2027 Venice Architecture Biennale. The pair have led their studio collaboratively since 1997, and also teach, and are a respected voice within the architecture community.

They are also no strangers to the biennale, having taken part in the main show in 2006, 2010 (when they received the Special Mention for their project 'Decay of a Dome') and 2016.

portrait of architects Weng Shu and Lu Wenyu, in front of bookshelves, at the announcement of them being curators for the 2027 venice architecture biennale

The prolific architects are behind works such as the Xiangshan Campus of China Academy of Art, the Tiles Hill in Hangzhou, the renovation of Wencun Village, the Lin’An Historic Museum, and the Xi'an Opera House and Concert Hall. Wang Shu won the Pritzker Prize in 2012 and has served as a judge for the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2013.

‘'Conceptual experiments driven to extremes are often divorced from reality, and over-commercialisation tends to [make for] merely popular and short-lived [projects]. [There is a] breaking away from the connection with the real place. It will lead to the death of architecture. Architecture becomes a kind of delusional expression about the future,’ the architects said at their announcement as curators, hinting perhaps at themes they are keen to explore through their show.

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2027 theme

Much like every biennale iteration, the curated main show revolves around a key theme – from the very first Venice Architecture Biennale in 1979, centred on Paolo Portoghesi's 'The Presence of the Past', to last year's 'Intelligens' which explored the relations, common points and inspiration to be found in the natural and the artificial.

The Third Paradise Perspective, opening room at intelligens, the main show at the 19th venice architecture biennale curated by carlo ratti — View of installation in Carlo Ratti's Intelligens show - we talked to Ratti as he reflected on the show at the biennale's closing last November

The main theme tends to provide conceptual grounding and a common starting point for both the participants to build their submissions around and the national pavilions to riff off on for their own exhibits. The 2027 theme is due to be revealed soon by the biennale team.

National Participations

Between Giardini della Biennale, where many of the individual countries' national pavilions are, and various locations across Venice's canal city (for those countries not claiming a pavilion in the Giardini), the world comes to showcase its thoughts on architecture during the Venice Architecture Biennale 2027.

Many of the national participations are still to be announced – it's early days for many countries, which are still conducting their internal competitions before they announce the curatorial teams and themes of their respective pavilions. The United Kingdom was among the first to reveal its plans.

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The British Council held a competition to determine a UK-Malaysia team to curate next year's pavilion. The move signals the celebration of 70 years of diplomatic relations between the UK and Malaysia. Unveiled earlier this spring, the curatorial team will consist of Grymsdyke Farm's Dr Guan Lee and Mike Lim, director of IDK, alongside a team including Maria McLintock and Ben Swaby Selig. The participation will also include Penang-based artisans Ng Chi Wang, Lee Shao Chin and Koh Eng Keat.

Places, dates and tickets

Opening to the public on 8 May 2027, the Venice Architecture Biennale 2027 will run, as always, for a little over six months, closing on 21 November of the same year. The public opening is typically preceded by two vernissage days – this year, those are expected to be the 6 and 7 May.

Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu's main themed show will take place in two locations - Venice's famed Arsenale and Giardini, the latter occupying the newly reopened Central Pavilion, which underwent extensive restoration for the past year.

image of the restored Central Pavilion in Venice, empty from exhibitions and clean and polished — Venice's Central Pavilion, which reopened in spring 2026

Giardini is also the ground for many of the national participations, with countries from around the world presenting their shows and responses to the theme in their respective, dedicated pavilions. Tickets for the main sites are available at the entrance of both sites. Opening hours are 11 am - 7 pm (last admission 6:45 pm), with the venue closed on Mondays.

Do expect a wealth of further events to be spread across Venice. This includes both independent programmes and official programme collateral events, and national participations that may not be accommodated at the Giardini site. There is never enough space for everyone within the two official biennale sites, but what a great problem to have, navigating one's way to the next display or event in the wonderful backdrop of Venice.

The Venice Architecture Biennale 2027 will run 8 May to 21 November 2027 at Venice's Giardini and Arsenale sites.

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).