An Insider guide to Venice Biennale 2025

Crossing the doors of the 2025 Venice Biennale means entering another possible world, composed of the minds of the most skilled and creative innovators in the world, it is the vanguard of new international artistic trends, understood in its broadest sense to include all creative disciplines. The Venice Biennale has distant origins, born in 1895 with the first international art exhibition that also included architectural disciplines, starting from 1980 the Venice Biennale began to alternate Architecture and Art as two distinct sectors. In 2025 the Venice Biennale celebrates its 61st edition, with the international Architecture exhibition: Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective which marks a change of approach and mentality towards the concept of living to respond to climate issues.

Since the first primitive huts built by man, architecture has been the human response to a hostile climate, today more than ever all the attention is directed towards a more sustainable model for design and therefore: eliminating waste, circulating materials by regenerating natural systems, adopting a transformative and sustainable design; with the aim of demonstrating that architecture and the environment can coexist in harmony with the planet.

“To face a world in flames, architecture must be able to exploit all the intelligence that surrounds us” commented the curator Carlo Ratti and for the Architecture Biennale 2025 architects and engineers, mathematicians and climate scientists, philosophers and artists, cooks and programmers, writers and carvers, farmers and stylists have been called to gather; a collaborative project composed of 762 participants and more than 280 projects, selected through an international open call Space for Ideas.

The dates of the Architecture Biennale are from May 10 to November 23, 2025, if you want to visit it, hurry up and organize your trip to Venice. Venice is at its best in the summer season due to the simultaneous presence of several traditional and contemporary events, so expect high attendance and high season prices from June until at least mid-September. Otherwise, if you want to experience the Biennale and Venice with greater tranquility and fewer people in the city, then the advice is to plan your visit starting from the end of September.

As per tradition, the venues of the Venice Biennale are: The Arsenale and the Giardini della Biennale, both located in the Sestiere Castello, in the eastern part of Venice. In particular, the Giardini della Biennale represent the easternmost edge of Venice and have been the venue of the Biennale since the first edition of the event. The Giardini are composed of the central pavilion, under restoration this year, and 65 national pavilions, in 2025 only 29 will be open. The Arsenale is a huge complex of shipyards where ships were once built, it has been an integral part of the Biennale since the First International Architecture Exhibition in 1980. Apart from these two traditional venues, this year the Architecture Biennale also extends to the historic center of Venice, some national pavilions are this year scattered in various areas of the city.

Get ready for a Biennale full of stimuli, with a varied density of exhibitions especially in the Arsenale area and be careful not to miss the various pavilions located in the most varied places in the city of Venice. There are two ticket offices located near the Arsenale and precisely on the ground floor of the Naval History Museum in Riva San Biasio and at the entrance to the Giardini della Biennale, but if you don't want to waste a moment and have little time available, the advice is to buy tickets online through the La Biennale di Venezia website.

The opening hours of the ticket offices and exhibition sites are from 11:00 to 19:00 for the summer hours, from May to September and from 10:00 to 18:00 for the automnal hours, from mid-September to November. The queues are only in front of the ticket offices and not in front of the entrances, so if you have not purchased online, hurry to get in line. If you only have one day to visit the Biennale, the suggestion is to start with a visit to the Arsenale, when you move from the Arsenale to the Giardini take the opportunity to visit some of the pavilions located around the city, take a short break to eat something and continue towards the Giardini della Biennale where you can walk until closing time. Everything changes if you have more days available!

Each national pavilion tries to interpret the theme of the exhibition and bring attention to a specific aspect linked to the territory of its country. Many ideas related to the relationship between man and nature, and in particular a new way of understanding the profession of the architect increasingly in relation to the environment and the community. Working together, collaborating is the mantra and the theme of the 2025 Biennale.

If you are wondering which Pavilions you shouldn't miss, you will find some below! The Italian Pavilion is interesting, all linked to the theme of water. Qatar is present in two locations, one in the Gardens of the Biennale where there is a small gazebo where the new pavilion will be built next year, if you enter you will find an Arabic coffee and delicious dates offered to visitors, to reflect on the values of hospitality. Qatar also brought together the best examples of community architecture in an exhibition at Palazzo Franchetti. The Golden Lion for the best National Participation was awarded to the Kingdom of Bahrain, which exhibited a concrete proposal to deal with the heat conditions. The British Pavilion, on the other hand, earned a special mention from the jury for the dialogue between the United Kingdom and Kenya on the theme of repair and renewal.

There are 11 official collateral events selected by the curator Carlo Ratti for the 2025 Biennale, clearly Venice during the entire period of the Biennale is full of creativity, so apart from these 11 official events, there will be many initiatives and exhibitions staged in the city. Needless to say, if you want to visit the Biennale in its entirety and give the right breath to each of the scheduled events and also to the collateral ones, the suggestion is to stay in Venice at least a week.

At the Docks Cantieri Cucchini, the Institut Ramon Llull an Ecosocial Architecture project; at Palazzo Zorzi the UNESCO initiative that brings together the ideas of young architects to improve the use of UNESCO sites; At Palazzo delle Prigioni NON-Belief: Taiwan Intelligens of Precarity. A collateral site, unusual that you don’t always have time to visit, but unique in its kind where incredible things always happen is the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, here an exhibition by Jean Nouvel. At Palazzo Diedo the exhibition The Next Earth Computation, Crisis, Cosmology. At the Ocean Space in Campo San Lorenzo the exhibition The SKYWALK by Platform Earth. At the Giardini della Marinaressa the project unEarthed / Second Nature / PolliNATION.

Let's start by saying that in Venice there is no shortage of food and drink, bacari and cicchetti for aperitifs, street food and Venetian cuisine with its typical recipes will leave you satisfied, But how can you avoid falling into tourist traps? If you don't want to be treated like a tourist with regards to food and prices, stay away from those places with staff outside inviting you to sit down and with menus displayed in many languages.

Inside the Arsenale and the Giardini della Biennale there are bars and restaurants but the prices are high. The advice with respect to the Giardini della Biennale if you also like to take a short walk is to go towards the eastern edge of Venice, there you will find a nice little village somewhat different from the rest of Venice where there are taverns with honest prices and local cuisine. While near the Arsenale the suggestion is to go into the calli and campi, let yourself get lost in the less beaten alleys, you will certainly find some taverns that will allow you to stay calm and then re-immerse yourself in the depths of art.

To visit the Venice Biennale 2025, if you want to visit it at its best, it is always advisable to organize yourself in advance. The suggestion is to combine a visit to the Biennale with a visit to the most beautiful city in the world. If you want to visit Venice easily, it may be useful to buy a card like Venice Pass, which will give you access to the main attractions in a single app and the option to use Venice's water transport in unlimited amounts, which is generally very expensive. Advice for avoiding crowds includes visiting the Biennale either during the month of May, or towards the end of September until the closing in November, a period that is generally less crowded. Below we recap the salient information of the Venice Biennale 2025:

Architecture Biennale 2025 

10 May – 23 November

Summer opening hours (May to September): 11:00 – 19:00 

Fall opening hours (September to November): 10:00 – 18:00

Entrance tickets give access to both the Arsenale and Giardini venues, this year the Central Pavilion of the Giardini is closed for restoration.

Ticket office for the Arsenale venue: Museo Storico Navale, Riva San Biasio

Ticket office for the Giardini venue: entrance to the Giardini

There are daily Tickets, or you can buy tickets for 3 days, or passes for the entire duration of the Biennale. There is the possibility of taking advantage of guided tours in Italian and English and on request also in German, Spanish and French (subject to availability). We hope you will experience Venice and explore the Biennale and we are sure it will give you many stimuli and hints and the idea that another world is possible and you can do your part. Good luck!