The Venice Biennale is a slow beast, lumbering toward its next iteration in 2026 with four countries already making their selections. But in this pre-2026 moment, as art-world insiders hustle to one-up each other for relevance, the Biennale’s pre-game rituals are just as intoxicating as the event itself. Ireland, Estonia, Canada, and Luxembourg have all rolled out their first big moves—and if these early choices are any indication, the next Biennale is going to be a firecracker of ideas, risk-taking, and national soul-searching.

Dublin-based artist Isabel Nolan was announced as the nation’s representative, and the choice couldn’t feel more apt. Nolan, one of Ireland’s most compelling contemporary voices, works across media—sculpture, textiles, paintings, drawings, photography, and writing—creating metaphysical ruminations on everything from cosmology and mythology to mortality and love. In other words, she thinks big. Her work doesn’t just exist in a gallery space; it stretches out into the universe. Nolan’s intellectual depth will pair well with Georgina Jackson, director of The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, who will curate the Irish pavilion. If there’s any justice in the world, Nolan’s exploration of the unseen, the unknowable, and the deeply human will have a seismic impact. If not, Ireland will have at least staked a claim on having tried to make sense of the cosmos. Which, frankly, feels like exactly the kind of Irish bravado you want on display at the Biennale.

Meanwhile, Estonia is all about craft. On October 24, Merike Estna was named as the country’s representative. Estna, based between Tallinn and Mexico City, is an anomaly in the contemporary painting world. She blends formalist painting with craft traditions—because why not take the tools of your grandma’s embroidery and turn them into a high-wire act of visual disruption? The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art hails her work as “a regeneration of collective trust in art,” which, if you look at her boundary-pushing, performance-based practice, feels like an apt description. This is art that doesn’t just ask you to look—it asks you to trust in what you’re seeing, and then take that trust and run with it. Whether Estna can redefine how we think about craft and painting will be one of the most interesting questions to follow as we head toward 2026.

Then there’s Canada, whose representative, Abbas Akhavan, was announced on the same day. Akhavan’s work—drawings, sculptures, videos, and performances—investigates architecture, the economy, and the geopolitics of territory. He’s obsessed with the spaces between things, between hospitality and hostility, domesticity and estrangement. Akhavan’s work frequently deals with the domestic sphere, flipping it on its head, making it strange, and ultimately reflecting the tensions and contradictions that define the world today. This is art that doesn’t comfort, it disturbs, leaving you to confront the chasm between what we are told to accept as normal and what lies just beneath the surface. Akhavan’s Biennale installation promises to be a gut-punch for anyone expecting the kind of sleek, aesthetically pleasing experience the Biennale sometimes can offer. Instead, expect something gritty, vulnerable, and deeply political.

Lastly, Luxembourg. Aline Bouvy will represent the tiny nation at the Biennale, and with Stilbé Schroeder curating, we can expect a delicate balance of beauty and discomfort. Bouvy’s practice interrogates the relationship between the body and space, exploring ideas of repulsion and attraction. She does this through an eclectic mix of media: sculpture, drawing, photography, and sound. The questions she poses about the body are as timely as they are existential: what does it mean to occupy space? What does it mean when that space is contested, fragmented, or absent? There’s a certain kind of disturbing poise to Bouvy’s work, the kind that both challenges and seduces. Her Biennale presentation will likely be one of those rare, subtle experiences that, over time, gets under your skin.

The Sixtieth Venice Biennale is still happening—so there’s plenty of time for people to argue over the meaning of “post-conceptualism” or quibble about whether a particular work “works” on a conceptual level. But the countries’ early picks for 2026 are nothing short of intriguing. These artists and their chosen curators are asking huge questions, making bold moves, and taking serious risks.

As for the themes and curators for the next edition of the Biennale? We’ll have to wait. But if this is the bar being set now, the Sixty-First Venice Biennale could be a mind-blowing, politically-charged, intellectual rollercoaster. You may want to start studying the dictionary now—it could get heady.