The Biennale Moves to 2028 and Takes Its Funding With It

Low Kee Hong will curate the 26th Biennale of Sydney in 2028, announced in late July 2026, following the 25th edition, Rememory, which ran from 14 March to 14 June 2026 with free entry. The artistic directorship is settled. The funding is not.

Create NSW's multi-year agreement provides $700,000 a year for 2026 to 2028, approved in October 2024, with an in-principle extension for four further years subject to review. That extension requires a revised strategic plan for 2029 to 2032, due in 2027. Separately, the City of Sydney's cultural grants committee recommended $650,000 across the 2028 and 2030 editions, with $150,000 added each year, on the express condition that the Biennale submit a revised budget.

An organisation whose city funding is conditional on producing a budget is not short of money by accident.

The scale of the 2026 edition

Rememory was curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, the first curator from the Arab world to hold the role and the eighth woman to do so. The first wave of 37 artists and collectives was announced in May 2025, including 15 First Nations artists commissioned with Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain and working with First Nations Curatorial Fellow Bruce Johnson McLean, a Wierdi and Birri Gubba artist.

The final exhibition presented 143 works by 83 artists and collectives from 37 countries and territories across venues including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Chau Chak Wing Museum, White Bay Power Station and the Sydney Opera House.

The Biennale has not published attendance, budget or visitor figures for the edition. It is currently running a public donation and benefactor campaign under the message "keep the Biennale free for everyone", which is the more immediate funding signal.

The politics that followed

The 2026 edition was engulfed in controversy. Artistic director Hoor Al Qasimi was accused of pro-Palestinian bias, there were calls for her to resign, and the Biennale invited a Jewish community representative to preview the exhibition before it opened. ArtReview noted that the controversy "moves the conversation away from the biennale itself."

The pattern repeated across Australian arts institutions. Creative Australia withdrew and then reinstated Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino as Australia's representatives at the 2026 Venice Biennale after political pressure, prompting multiple board and staff resignations and an external review that found the agency was not "appropriately prepared." Sabsabi now shows work in both the Australia Pavilion and the main exhibition.

There is a governance mechanism that followed from that: the Biennale Delegates Program was restricted to Western Sydney residents because the artistic team were "well-known Western Sydney creatives."

The funding arithmetic

State arts funding across 2026-27 gives a sense of scale. The contemporary music sector received $29.3 million and the Creative Communities Policy $26.8 million, with $22.5 million for a State Library rooftop and bar redevelopment, $17.0 million for planning the WIN Sports and Entertainment Precinct, $8.0 million for Multicultural NSW and $4.6 million for the Art Gallery's Naala Nura courtyard garden.

Against that, $700,000 a year for the state's flagship visual arts event is a small number, and it expires in the same year the next edition is due to open.

Biennale governance and funding sit with the Biennale of Sydney and Create NSW's multi-year funding recipients. Our Culture desk covers the arts calendar.