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The next Venice Biennale will feature a new pavilion: the Breton Pavilion! For the 2026 edition, the Breton Pavilion team has decided to create an event that serves as a precursor to a more substantial exhibition in 2028 (in a permanent pavilion?) by inviting artists who symbolize this connection to Brittany without reducing it to a single essence. Sailing, music, and enchantment — these are the ingredients of the 2026 Breton Pavilion.

The 2026 Breton Pavilion is a floating, sailing pavilion — a boat! Accompanied by a group of musicians who will perform twice, it will be visible throughout the professional days and the opening weekend, sailing between its home port at San Giorgio Maggiore, the Basilica di San Marco basin, and the canals.

For this first appearance of the Breton Pavilion, Morgane Tschiember will take over Joachim Monvoisin's boat-sculpture, adorning its mast with two banners: the first, a flamboyant mane of hair paying homage to the legendary blondness of Venetian women; the second, which will feature the colours of the ancient Breton banner, the Kroaz Du, with a black cross at its centre. In doing so, the artist symbolically and stylistically unites Venice and Armorica. Joachim Monvoisin's boat L'Ingénue will bear the colours of the Breton Pavilion, enhanced by Morgane Tschiember's creations as well as artifacts created by the artist-navigator — masthead spires and other decorative weather vanes; it embodies its skipper's vision, somewhere between a floating theatre and a gathering place for conversation over a spritz or a glass of cider. Finally, Erwan Keravec and the Sonneurs quartet will perform at various venues near the Giardini before coming together for a final concert.

Sailing, music, and enchantment: these three pillars of « Bretonness » will come together for an event as fleeting as it is sonorous and colourful.

Patrice Joly, director of the Zoo contemporary art centre in Nantes and editor-in-chief of the magazine 02, is the curator of this first edition.