The 60th edition of the Venice Biennale closed yesterday, November 24, with another strong attendance showing, organizers announced. Excluding the 27,966 visitors who attended its preview, the international art festival saw 699,304 visitors over the course of its seven-month run — the second-highest turnout in its 129-year history since 2022, when over 800,000 visitors flocked to Venice for The Milk of Dreams. The numbers signal a continuation of attendance trends that have drawn increasingly younger and foreign crowds to the “Olympics of the art world” in spite of the Italian city’s efforts to mitigate over-tourism.
International visitors comprised a majority of attendees at this year’s event, Foreigners Everywhere, accounting for 59% of all visitors. Attendance also veered younger: Organizers reported that 30% of ticket-holders were young people and students under 26 years old. In both cases, these trends were a continuation from both 2022 and the pre-pandemic edition in 2019, which also had a high number of young attendees.
The upticks in the biennale’s attendance follow an extension of the exhibition’s run time by about two weeks; iterations in 2019, 2017, and 2015 all kicked off in early May, as opposed to the third weekend of April. The festival has also recently incorporated more programming for young visitors, like its Biennale College Arte, which supports emerging international artists under the age of 30. For the program’s second year, the biennale presented the work of artists Agnes Questionmark, Joyce Joumaa, Sandra Poulson, Nazira Karimi in the Arsenale and Central Pavilion. Additionally, this was the 12th consecutive year of the Biennale Sessions project, an educational program which saw 3,000 university students from six continents participate.
The 2024 biennale also saw a 67% increase in attendance to its programming focused on accessibility for individuals with mental health disabilities, housing instability, addiction issues, and other factors.
Although organizers have not yet announced the curator for 2026, plans are already underway for the next edition, as countries including Canada, Estonia, and France have announced the artists that will represent their pavilions. In the meantime, the city is preparing for the 19th architecture exhibition, curated by Carlo Ratti and scheduled to open on May 10, by extending its pilot tourist tax through 2025. This upcoming April 18 through July 27, daytrippers visiting Venice on weekends and holidays will be expected to pay a €10 (~$10.80) fee — double the charge implemented this past spring and summer.
