Venice Biennale faces funding threat over Russia’s return

 ROME – Russia’s planned return to the Venice Biennale has drawn condemnation from 22 European countries, Ukraine and the European Commission, which has warned it may suspend a 2 million euro grant to the Biennale Foundation over the decision. 

 

 The 61st International Art Exhibition, set to run from May 9 to Nov.22 under the direction of Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, will include a Russian pavilion for the first time since 2022, when the institution barred participation by anyone linked to the Russian government following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine that year. 

Russia has not been formally invited. The country owns a pavilion at the Giardini – the historic public gardens in Venice where the Biennale’s permanent national pavilions are located – as it has since 1914, and under Biennale regulations, nations with permanent pavilions need only notify the institution of their wish to participate. Twenty-nine countries hold such pavilions, with Qatar joining their ranks this year. Russia has not participated in any edition of the Biennale since 2022. 

 

 Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha and Culture Minister Tetyana Berezhna called on organisers to change their position, urging them to “maintain the principled position demonstrated in 2022”. Kyiv noted that the war has killed 346 Ukrainian and foreign artists and 132 media professionals and destroyed or damaged thousands of cultural sites. Russia, the ministers claim, openly uses culture as a tool of political influence. President Zelensky went further, arguing that the decision strengthens Putin by legitimising Russia on the international stage. 

 

 The European Commission has echoed these concerns. Spokesperson Thomas Regnier said Brussels “condemns the decision” and that the suspension of EU funding under the Creative Europe Media programme – a three-year subsidy supporting film production, immersive technologies and training – remains under consideration. Critics have also raised fears over potential Russian instrumentalization of the event amid the ongoing war. 

 

 The controversy has exposed divisions within the Italian government. Minister for Cultural Heritage Alessandro Giuli has publicly distanced himself from the Russian pavilion, criticising art under the control of an autocratic state, while Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has backed Buttafuoco’s position, arguing that art “brings people together.” The internal split has prompted questions over the executive’s coherence on the issue. 

 

 Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro defended the Biennale’s autonomy. “We are in a democracy, not a dictatorship,” he said, adding that the city’s position was “absolutely not a partisan political choice” but a defence of democratic values. Brugnaro notes that his family had hosted Ukranian refugees and that Venice is twinned with Odessa. 

 

 The controversy over Russia’s presence has not been the only point of discussion surrounding this year’s exhibition. Among 111 participants selected by the late curator Koyo Kouoh – the Cameroonian-born curator and director of Cape Town’s Zeitz MOCAA, who died in April 2025 after being appointed to lead the show – for the central exhibition, In Minor Keys, Italian artists are few. The Republic of Guinea has partially filled the gap, entrusting the curation of its pavilion to Italian curator Carlo Stragapede, whose group exhibition features more than 60 artists, the majority of them Italian. 

 

 Russia is unlikely to be the only source of geopolitical friction at the Giardini. Israel’s participation has drawn fresh calls for a boycott from the Art No Genocide Alliance, which is threatening a full artist and audience withdrawal if its demands are not met. The Biennale has maintained, as it has over Russia, that it does not possess the authority to exclude nations recognised by Italy. With 99 countries represented, the 2026 edition looks set to test whether the Biennale can sustain its claim to be a platform above politics, or whether that position is itself a political one.