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10 Must-See Off-Site Venice Biennale Exhibitions

Spanning performance, painting and immersive installation, these collateral shows spotlight artists reckoning with history, technology and myth across generations and geographies.

There's no question that the Venice Biennale remains the defining 'it' event of the global art calendar; it's a platform for visibility and career acceleration without equal. Even outside the main exhibition and national pavilions, securing a show in Venice during the Biennale season can mark a turning point for an artist.

For visitors, the collateral shows and events are among the most exciting—and exhausting—parts of the experience, turning the city into a kind of scavenger hunt that sends everyone walking miles through Venice's calli and vicoli in search of installations staged in uniquely evocative, site-specific dialogue with the city's historic spaces.

This year, the range of offerings is particularly wide, spanning blue-chip names and emerging artists across geographies and mediums. To help you navigate this cultural chaos, Observer has narrowed its selection of best-ofs to just 10 must-see shows opening during the 61st Venice Biennale.

What not to miss in Venice

Marina Abramovic's "Transforming Energy"

Natasha Tontey's "The Phantom Combatants"

Michael Armitage's "The Promise of Change"

Wallace Chan's "Vessels of Other Worlds"

Paulo Nazareth's "Algebra"

Nalini Malani's "Of Woman Born"

Fondazione In Between Art Film's "Canicula"

Erwin Wurm's "Dreamers"

Lee Ufan and Alighiero Boetti in San Marco

"Su Xiobai's Alchemical Universe"

Marina Abramovic's "Transforming Energy"

Galleria Dell'Accademia

May 16 - October 19, 2026

World-acclaimed performance art pioneer and contemporary shaman Marina Abramović transformed her artistic practice into a ritual that confronts, tests, challenges and heals the body and psyche, reestablishing connections between the individual and the collective. Her "Transforming Energy" is the first exhibition by a female artist ever staged at the Gallerie dell'Accademia. In it, she establishes a profound dialogue between her pioneering performance art and the Renaissance masterpieces that have shaped Venice's cultural identity, turning the museum into a site of meditation and reparation in an experience that lies between energetic channeling and spiritual transformation. In this "encounter between past and present, material and immaterial, body and spirit," visitors are invited to engage with a series of interactive Transitory Objects—stone beds and structures embedded with crystals—activating what Abramović calls "energy transmission." Iconic works such as Imponderabilia (1977), Rhythm 0 (1974), Light/Dark (1977), Balkan Baroque (1997) and Carrying the Skeleton (2008) appear alongside projections of early performances, while new works created for the occasion bring her decades-long exploration of endurance, vulnerability and transformation into sharp relief.

Natasha Tontey's "The Phantom Combatants"

Ateneo Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti

May 6 - November 22, 2026

There are now many organizations operating at the increasingly fertile intersection of art, technology and science, but LAS Art Foundation was among the earliest to define this space and remains one of the most impactful. Over the past few years, it has commissioned some of the most ambitious and forward-looking projects at this crossroads, collaborating with artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Laure Prouvost and Refik Anadol on works that now circulate through leading institutions. Notably, the foundation's collaboration with Huyghe, developed as part of LAS's "Sensing Quantum Programme," was awarded the S T ARTS Grand Prize for Innovation Collaboration by the European Commission and will be featured in the artist's major survey at the Fondation Beyeler. Laure Prouvost's multisensory installation "WE FELT A STAR DYING," created in collaboration with Tobias Rees and Hartmut Neven, founder of Google Quantum AI, will be presented at the Grand Palais this June, following its premiere in Berlin.)During the Biennale, the foundation is presenting a co-commission with Helsinki-based Amos Rex by Minahasan artist and researcher Natasha Tontey. "The Phantom Combatants" brings together Indigenous rituals, playful B-movie aesthetics and experimental storytelling in an expansive, multisensory installation unfolding across the façade and grand interiors of the Ateneo Veneto. Her video adopts the campy language of B-movies, blending DIY and CGI effects with advanced imaging technologies—including quantum ghost imaging, which uses photons to produce images, as well as LiDAR, photogrammetry and thermal cameras—foregrounding the ways in which territories and bodies are measured,........

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