Press release: Biennale Matter of Art announces dates and venues for 2026 edition
Biennale Matter of Art announces dates and venues for 2026. Taking place in Prague and Pardubice in the Czech Republic, the dates for the fourth edition are June 12–September 13, 2026.
The international exhibition and public program will be held in three principal locations: The Great Hall of the Trade Fair Palace in Prague, GAMPA – City Gallery Pardubice, and Tusculum Prague. The press conference, press preview, and opening ceremony will take place on June 11, and the opening weekend program will continue until Sunday, June 14, with performances, guided tours, and other events. The last day to view the complete exhibition across all three venues will be September 13, 2026. The exhibition at GAMPA Pardubice will continue until September 26. The biennale is organized by the nonprofit initiative for contemporary art tranzit.cz in cooperation with the National Gallery Prague and the City Gallery Pardubice. As previously announced, the project is cocurated by Jaroslava Tomanová, Jakub Gawkowski, and František Fekete. The exhibition will be open to the public free of charge for its entire duration, which is part of the broader efforts of the tranzit.cz initiative to mediate art to a wider audience.
Venues
After two years, the biennale is returning to the Trade Fair Palace, cementing the long-term cooperation between tranzit.cz and the National Gallery Prague. The exhibition will take place in the Great Hall, covering an area of more than 1,700 m². The cooperation with GAMPA Pardubice marks the biennale’s first expansion outside the wider metropolitan area of Prague. Pardubice is a regional hub of education, commerce, and culture, with a rich architectural heritage, and the city is currently undergoing a dynamic transformation, part of which included the reopening of GAMPA in a modernist building on the grounds of the former mill complex Automatické Mlýny in 2023. In its new space and under new artistic leadership, it has since continued with a strong progressive program of the 2010s and earlier. At GAMPA the exhibition will continue beyond the three-month period of the rest of the biennale, until September 26. Tusculum Prague is located in the Bubeneč district on the premises of the historic Chittussi Hospital, which lies on the border of a postindustrial river area with remnants of crop processing and water treatment facilities. The art center comprises artist studios and outdoor community spaces, and the collaboration shifts the attention of the biennale beyond established places of culture.
The authors of the visual identity for the upcoming edition are Martin Czeller and Andrea Vacovská. Matter of Art marks the first major collaboration between these two independent Prague-based designers. As a duo they employ wide-ranging sensibilities, having previously worked with emerging and independent artists and art spaces as well as established institutions across central Europe.
The Biennale Matter of Art was founded in 2018 by tranzit.cz, and it has since become a distinct voice in the context of central and eastern Europe. Since its foundation, Matter of Art has provided a platform that amplifies voices from below and from the margins through artistic and activist methods. Through critical and self-critical approaches, it seeks connections between local artistic and political currents and their counterparts from transnational and intercontinental contexts. The 2024 edition of the biennale attracted more than 15,000 visitors.
