The Whitney Museum of American Art has announced the participating artists for the Whitney Biennial 2026. The biennial exhibition will open on March 8, 2026 in New York, featuring 56 artists, duos, and collectives, including Kelly Akashi and Julio Torres. This marks the 82nd edition of the biennial, the longest-running survey of American art in the United States.
The Biennial is co-organized by Whitney Museum curators Marcela Guerrero and Drew Sawyer, with additional curatorial support from Beatriz Cifuentes and Carina Martinez. Guerrero and Sawyer conducted more than 300 studio visits during the research process. Rather than curating the exhibition within a strict thematic framework, the curators decided to shape it based on their conversations with artists.
“With this Biennial, we hope to foreground a network of kinships that gesture toward forms of coexisting in this world,” said Guerrero, in a statement.
Artists are based in 25 states of the U.S., as well as elsewhere, and have connections to Afghanistan, Chile, Iraq, Japan, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Vietnam, and other regions shaped by U.S. political and cultural influence. “Together, these artists’ work makes space for forms of relation that are intimate, improvised, and contested,” Sawyer said in a statement.
Compared with recent editions, the upcoming Whitney Biennial promises to look at “relationality with a particular emphasis on infrastructures.” Sawyer said. The 2024 edition, “Even Better Than the Real Thing,” foregrounded artists working with different notions of reality and their impact on society, while 2022’s “Quiet as It’s Kept” reflected the social and political polarisation of the post-Covid moment.
The museum describes the upcoming Biennial as prioritizing atmosphere over argument, stating that “rather than offering a definitive answer to life today, this Whitney Biennial foregrounds mood and texture, inviting visitors into environments that evoke tension, tenderness, humor, and unease.”
Whitney Biennial 2026 will be the first edition to take place following the launch of the museum’s expanded free admission programs. Admission will be free for all visitors aged 25 and under.
