Around 700,000 visitors attended the Venice Biennale, which closed at the weekend, during its seven-month run.
The organisers of the world’s most prestigious exhibition say that 699,304 people—3,321 visitors daily—attended the 60th International Art Exhibition entitled Stranieri Ovunque-Foreigners Everywhere, which was curated by Adriano Pedrosa. The 2022 edition, curated by Cecilia Alemani, The Milk of Dreams, drew 800,000 visitors.
Thirty per cent of all visitors (190,000) were aged under 26, while 59% of attendees came from abroad, and 41% from Italy. Visitors from underrepresented groups, such as disabled people, increased by 67%. More than 1,800 school groups visited, while 27,966 visitors attended the press and VIP previews.
The Biennale organisers also ramped up social media activity, with posts to the @la_Biennale X page garnering around 16.6 million views and 498,000 interactions. Meanwhile content posted on the @labiennale Instagram page netted 61.5 million views compared to 38.5 million in 2022.
Pedrosa says in a statement: “It is always melancholic to see an exhibition of this magnitude come to an end, yet in some ways the journey continues, and I am now looking forward to the afterlife of Foreigners Everywhere, especially regarding the understanding, reception and visibility of artists from the Global South, as well as indigenous artists, queer artists, self taught artists and 20th-century figures from Africa, Asia and Latin America.”
The curator of the 2026 Venice Biennale is yet to be announced. Late last year Italy’s then culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, designated Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, a right-wing journalist and author whose books include a literary portrait of Silvio Berlusconi, as the next president of the Venice Biennale.
