Estonia faces boycott question as Russia returns to Venice Biennale

Estonia’s participation in the 2026 Venice Art Biennale has raised questions over whether the country should have joined a boycott after Russia returned to its national pavilion for the first time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The review was published by Kunst.ee and carried by ERR.

The 61st International Venice Art Biennale runs from May 9 to November 22, 2026. Its main exhibition, titled “In Minor Keys,” brings together 111 artists, alongside 100 national pavilions, including Estonia’s, and 31 related events. The curator, Koyo Kouoh, died in 2025.

Two months before the opening, preparations appeared to be proceeding as planned. The question was whether Estonia could maintain a normal cultural life while the war in Ukraine continued into its fifth spring, or whether that would create a misleading impression.

Russia, which stayed away from the major art event in 2022 and 2024, returned to its national pavilion in the Giardini in March. It is participating in the biennale, the world’s oldest, for the first time since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“There is nothing to be done, because the biennale leadership is allowing this to happen and the Italian government is throwing up its hands,” Maria-Kristiina Soomre, an arts adviser at Estonia’s Ministry of Culture, said at a ceremonial preview in early May.

Whenever an international cultural event takes place alongside a major war, questions arise over the moral responsibility of both states and individuals. The Venice Biennale is often compared with the Olympic Games and is based on “openness, dialogue and the rejection of all exclusion and censorship in art and culture.” Critics have also described this as fictional neutrality.

That principle does not automatically make the biennale an ideology-free or depoliticised platform. It uses public money and is structured around national representations. Artists who are not invited to the main exhibition, the overwhelming majority, compete for places in national pavilions funded by participating states. Countries do not compete directly, but the diplomatic role of national representation is inseparable from the art.

Estonia has officially participated in the Venice Biennale as an independent state since 1997. Before the Second World War, it had no place there. Under the Soviet occupation, Estonians once again had no state to represent and no diplomatic voice.

Russia’s pavilion in the Giardini opened in 1914, while Finland’s opened in 1956, after narrowly avoiding what the review calls the Soviet Union’s friendly embrace. The British and German pavilions opened in 1909, the French pavilion in 1912 and the United States pavilion in 1930. There are 29 pavilions in total.

During the biennale, visitors can walk through the Giardini, the Arsenale and the centre of Venice as if viewing a miniature psychogeographical world map. As a country, one is either at the table or on the menu.

This year marks Estonia’s 15th appearance at the table. Its pavilion presents Merike Estna’s immersive giant painting project “The House of the Leaking Sky,” which is being created on site and is intended to address motherhood. The review describes the pavilion as entirely apolitical in its subject matter.

Russia is also at the table with a project titled “A Tree Rooted in the Sky,” a title that takes on an uneasy resonance. The project has 38 authors.

A total of 100 countries are participating this year, with the number increasing each time. Israel has taken part in the biennale since 1950, while Palestinians do not have a national pavilion because the biennale’s rules grant that right only to sovereign states officially recognised by Italy.

Media coverage published so far has nevertheless made one point clear: geopolitics has overshadowed art in Venice this year.