The Exhibitions

The international exhibition of the 16th Dakar Biennale (Dak’Art) has 54 entries, and every one of them answered an open call. The artistic director, Morad Montazami, did not invite a list of names: he and a committee read about 800 applications and kept the 54 proposals now on the organizer’s selection page.

Counted from that page, they are 51 individual artists, two collectives (Neve Insular from Cabo Verde and Studio Dialogues from Ghana), and one duo. A further 21 entries make up the Design section, for the 75 proposals announced in the launch communiqué of September 24, 2026. The names are on The Artists & Designers.

Where it is shown

The Ancien Palais de Justice at Cap Manuel is the main site and holds both the international exhibition and the Design section, according to the APS dispatch on the launch. The organizer’s own page for the courthouse was a placeholder on October 6, 2026. allAfrica described the fitting-out as still under way on that date. No hours and no admission price had been published. For the building, see What to See.

Who chose it, and how

The call for artists opened on April 15, 2026, the day Montazami was named, and closed on June 15, as the organizer’s call and its internal rules set out. It was open only to African and diaspora artists, with works unshown and unsold. Under article 8 of the rules the choice belongs to an international selection committee: the artistic director, members of his curatorial team and members of the Comité d’orientation (the steering committee appointed by the Minister of Culture), with the Secretary General taking part. Its members have not been named.

Marième Ba, the Secretary General, gave the figures in July: about 800 applications, 600 admissible, 117 from Senegal, with the committee meeting in late June and early July, APS reported. Other counts circulate: the APS launch dispatch says about 900 applications, Le360 gives 59 works, and a Diptyk brief 55 artists. This guide follows the organizer’s list.

Countries and generations

The organizer publishes no country count, and its labels mix nationality, heritage and residence; 16 entries carry two or three countries. With that caution: 11 entries carry Senegal (eight alone, three shared), 11 carry France (five alone, six shared), and Nigeria, Benin and Morocco appear four times each. Sud Quotidien counts 36 countries across all 75 proposals; the safer phrase is more than 30.

Several entries labelled France alone are artists whom other sources tie to Martinique, Guadeloupe, New Caledonia and French Guiana. Montazami told APS that he wanted a dialogue linking islands, archipelagos and overseas territories.

On age the record is partial: the organizer had filled in six of the 54 artist pages by October 6. Where a biography gives a birth year, the range runs from Georges Adéagbo, born in 1942, to Carla Gueye, born in 1997. At least four artists were born before 1960 and at least seven in 1990 or later. Sources are on the list page.

Six entries, a line each

No organizer page states a work title, a project or a room for any artist.

The criticism

The sharpest reading so far is Emmanuelle Outtier’s in Diptyk. She finds the list short and tight, with little room for beginners: “Moins une biennale de l’émergence, donc, qu’une biennale de l’affirmation.” (in English: less a biennale of emergence, then, than a biennale of affirmation). She notes that South Africa and Nigeria are lightly represented while Suriname, Cabo Verde, Madagascar and Mauritius appear.

The number of artists tied to France has been reported without a quoted objection. Seneweb, drawing on Le Soleil, and allAfrica both give ten; the organizer’s labels yield 11. No article was found quoting a named Senegalese artist or critic who objected to the selection, or to the appointment of a director who is not African. Montazami raised the point himself, telling Le Soleil in May that it could have been a weakness.

The loudest warning came from inside the State. On July 23 the minister-delegate for culture, Mame Coumba Diop, told a meeting reported by APS: “le temps presse. On ne sent pas la biennale au sein du ministère” (in English: time is short; the biennale is not being felt inside the ministry).

The defence

Montazami’s stated criteria, given to Le360, are a balance of gender, media and geography, a mix of emerging and established artists, and attention to island territories. At the launch he described his rule as “ne surtout pas faire comme les autres, ne surtout pas se répéter” (in English: above all not to do as others do, above all not to repeat oneself), APS reported. His example was Pape Diop, who “crée dans la rue, expose ses oeuvres sur les trottoirs de Dakar, à la Médina” (in English: creates in the street and shows his works on the pavements of Dakar, in the Médina).

The organizers point to the Senegalese share: Ba had forecast seven to nine artists against three or four in earlier editions, and the list has 11. The Minister of Culture, Alpha Thiam, reaffirmed State support at the launch, as APS reported. Two of the four exhibition curators are Senegalese and a third is based in Dakar; see People.

The title is (anti)fragilité : arts de la réparation et stratégies du contrecoup: (anti)fragility, arts of repair and strategies of the aftershock. The word comes from the essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose 2012 book Antifragile is footnoted in the concept note Montazami signed on April 15, 2026. The note defines the stance in a sentence: “Être (anti)fragile, c’est l’attitude consistant à faire de la fragilité une force (expressive et artistique) en valorisant le lien social et communautaire” (in English: to be (anti)fragile is the attitude of making fragility a strength, expressive and artistic, by valuing social and community ties).

In plain terms, the note says that artists start from error, accident or lack. They invent their own systems out of local know-how, build shelters, and borrow from therapy. Groups of artists, artisans, researchers and citizens form around them. The organizer has posted an English version.

The structure changed between spring and autumn. The April note had three chapters; the September communiqué names five lignes de fuite (lines of flight; Diptyk explains that it is Montazami’s term for a chapter of the exhibition). The organizer has published the five titles and nothing more: no description, and no list of which artist sits where. What follows gives each title, its plain meaning, and what the note and the interviews say that bears on it. The matching is this guide’s reading.

1. Reverdir l’ancien palais de justice

Regreening the old courthouse, the one line tied to a place. Diptyk gives it a subtitle: decolonial ecology, agro-resistance, knowledge of medicinal plants. Unconfirmed Montazami told APS: “On va travailler sur les notions d’écologie, dans des espaces verts de l’ancien palais de justice, où l’on va essayer de transformer cette architecture très imposante et très massive, en apportant un peu de douceur, de paix, d’atmosphère fédératrice” (in English: the team will work on ecology in the green spaces of the former courthouse, trying to transform a very imposing, very massive architecture by bringing a little gentleness, peace and a unifying atmosphere). No plan of the building and no planting scheme has been published.

2. Les arts du marronnage

The arts of marronage, the word for escape from slavery and for the free communities the escaped founded. The concept note does not use the term. Its talk of survival and shelter points the same way. The organizer has not said what the line contains.

3. Être et créer entre soin et réparation

Being and making between care and repair. The April note spoke of repairing the community or the individual body and of restoring signs and languages made invisible. The most concrete commitment came in the APS interview: “On va aussi travailler avec les hôpitaux psychiatriques de Dakar sur l’art-thérapie.” (in English: the team will also work with Dakar’s psychiatric hospitals on art therapy). He named the Hôpital Principal and the Centre national hospitalier de Fann. No dates have been announced.

4. Partager les savoirs

Sharing knowledge. The note’s groups of artists, artisans and researchers belong here, as does the choice of a teacher, Faouzi Laatiris, as Grand Témoin (see below).

5. Relier les continents

Linking the continents. The note opens by saying the edition brings together artists from the African continent and from diasporas worldwide, island and archipelago spaces included. Brazil, Suriname, the United States and Mauritius are on the labels beside the mainland.

Design has its own exhibition, curator and title: Les Unités d’habitation Pan-AF, or Pan-AF Dwelling Units. The organizer’s Design page calls it a manifesto exhibition in which each piece reflects on one way of inhabiting: sleeping, cooking, working, learning, transmitting, welcoming, producing, repairing, celebrating.

The curator is Youssouf Fofana, a Franco-Senegalese designer and entrepreneur who founded the label Maison Château Rouge in 2014, according to his organizer biography. APS reports that the section shares the courthouse with the international exhibition.

The page lists 21 entries: 17 individuals and four labelled as collectives. Three carry Senegal. Aïssa Dione founded her textile company in 1992 and works with artisan weavers, per Lionesses of Africa. Balla Niang makes furniture and objects in reclaimed wood, horn and leather, per the gallery 50 Golborne. Mauro Petroni, listed as Senegal and Italy, is the ceramicist who has lived in Dakar since 1983 and coordinated the OFF for two decades (see below).

From elsewhere, two of the better-documented names:

• Peter Mabeo (Botswana), founder of Mabeo Furniture, which pairs designers with craftspeople in Botswana, per Dezeen.
• Nifemi Marcus-Bello (Nigeria), a Lagos designer whose studio works with local materials and processes, per the Sharjah Architecture Triennial.

All 21 design pages on the organizer’s site were a title and an image on October 6, 2026, with no biography and no work named. In 2024 the section was curated by the designer Ousmane Mbaye, Canvas reported; he now sits on the Comité d’orientation.

The guest country of honour is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and it is the only one. For two months it was one of two. The organizer’s site names no guest country, so the sequence has to be read from the press.

At the launch Ba put it this way, as APS quoted her: “la RDC suffit pour être le pays invité d’honneur et c’est un honneur” (in English: the DRC is enough to be the guest country of honour, and it is an honour). No published source says why Saudi Arabia dropped out. The record supports calling it an unexplained change, not a dispute.

The Minister of Culture described the guest in terms that echo the theme. The DRC, Alpha Thiam said, is “ce pays continent, riche de sa diversité, si souvent exposée aux blessures, mais dont l’énorme capacité à transformer ses fractures en puissance, force l’admiration” (in English: a continent-sized country, rich in its diversity, so often exposed to wounds, whose enormous capacity to turn its fractures into strength commands admiration), in APS’s report.

What the invitation will produce is not yet known: the commissioner’s name, and the venue and dates of a DRC pavilion or exhibition, had not been published by October 6, 2026. Two artists on the international list carry the DRC label. They are Beau Disundi Nzazi, born in 1993 according to WIELS, and Bitibiza Muongo, listed as DRC and Belgium. Congolese artists have won the Grand Prix twice, Michèle Magema in 2004 and Moridja Kitenge Banza in 2010, by the organizer’s own history. The politics of the choice are on Host City.

Three artists are honoured outside the selection. Only one of the three presentations has a venue and a title.

The organizer’s page for the Galerie nationale and its tributes page were placeholders on October 6. Only one tribute artist has been announced.

Montazami has written on Laatiris and described him to Le360 as “hors-système mais pourtant essentiel dans l’histoire de la pédagogie artistique au Maroc” (in English: outside the system and yet essential in the history of art teaching in Morocco). The organizer has not said what form his presence, or Camara’s carte blanche, will take.

A Senegal pavilion?

Perhaps. In July Ba said a separate Senegalese pavilion would show between 20 and 40 selected artists, APS reported. Unconfirmed Nothing has appeared since: no curator, no artists, no venue. The rules list national pavilions among the components of an edition, and in 2024 the Musée des Civilisations noires held them.

The OFF is everything the Biennale does not organize: independent exhibitions and events put on by private promoters during the official dates. The organizer defines it as private initiatives alongside the official programme (the “IN”), which the Biennale lists so as to guide the public. It selects nothing and funds nothing.

How it began

Three dates are given, and they describe three stages. In 1996 an exhibition called Amour interdit, held at an artists’ residence at Almadies with makers of 14 nationalities, answered the restriction of the official selection to Africa, as the Biennale’s OFF brochure of 2022 tells it. Around 2000 the fringe took the name OFF and Mauro Petroni began making its maps, by Thomas Fillitz’s account. In 2002, for the fifth edition, the Biennale created a technical commission to manage it, and Petroni coordinated the programme from then until at least 2022. Who coordinates it in 2026 has not been published.

How registration worked in 2026

Registration ran from July 27 to September 13, 2026, by an official form sent to the OFF technical commission. The conditions mention no fee. Promoters find their own venue, pay every cost and do their own publicity. In return the Biennale gives each event an OFF pennant, a place in a printed programme and a pin on a digital map.

Two details matter to visitors. Each OFF show must open between November 19 and December 19, but its end date is the promoter’s choice, so some will run past the Biennale’s close. And the September 13 deadline was set so that a printed Guide du OFF could go to press; an OFF mobile app is announced as well.

What is expected, and what is not published

APS reports more than 400 OFF events expected across Senegal and in the diaspora; Sud Quotidien says about 450. Neither is a count of registrations. As of October 6, 2026, there was no list of registered events, no guide, no map and no app. One OFF exhibition has been named in the press: Palimpseste of African Cities, DIG Where You Stand, from November 20, with Otobong Nkanga, Sammy Baloji and Tracey Rose among the artists, according to ELLE Afrique Francophone, which gives no venue. Unconfirmed Gallery shows already dated for the period are on What to See; the longer history is on Dakar Art Scene.

Praise and criticism

Critics often prefer it to the official show. Nevdon Jamgochian wrote of the 2018 edition in ArtPulse: “The ‘Off’ sites were the meat of the Biennale.” He also found that the official map left out half the shows he saw. Petroni has been its frankest critic: in a 2014 interview with Contemporary And he said the mechanism had grown rusty and that most venues, by his own estimate, were not good places to show work. He gave the scale to DakArtNews: “We started with about thirty spaces, and it grew to 450 spaces.”

Article 18 of the 2026 rules lists five prizes and allows for more from partners:

1. Grand Prix Léopold Sédar Senghor, sponsored by the President of the Republic, for the laureate of the international exhibition.
2. Prix Révélation, offered by the Minister of Culture, for the best young talent under 35 in the international exhibition.
3. A prize for the best designer.
4. The ECOWAS prize (CEDEAO in French).
5. The UEMOA prize, from the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

The works that win the Grand Prix and the Prix Révélation become the property of the State of Senegal. A jury of five decides. It is independent of the selection committee, it excludes the artistic director and the curators, and its decisions are final. Its members have not been published, and neither have any amounts for 2026. Under article 19 the winners are announced at the official opening ceremony, so the results should be known on the first day. The organizer’s prize page carried a heading and a placeholder on October 6.

Recent winners

President Bassirou Diomaye Faye presented the 2024 Grand Prix in person. The 2022 Grand Prix, also worth 20 million CFA francs, went to Tegene Kunbi Senbeto of Ethiopia, as Contemporary And reported. The full run of Grand Prix winners since 1992 is on People.

What is known for 2026 comes from the rules. What is not known is most of what a professional needs to book a trip.

What the rules say

Article 5 lists scientific and professional meetings among the components of the edition, with educational programmes, publications, film screenings and events at a village de la biennale and in the cities. The curatorial call makes the artistic director responsible for programming conferences and round tables. Article 17 says that anyone who wishes to take part and is not an official guest should send in the accreditation form, or fill it in on arrival with a commission set up for the purpose.

What is published

No 2026 accreditation form: the organizer’s accreditation page still showed the 2024 text on October 6. No dates for professional or preview days, no programme of talks, and no press kit.

The 2024 pattern, for orientation only

In 2024 accreditation was open to the press and to visual-arts professionals through an online form on the organizer’s site. The opening ceremony fell on the first day, November 7, and the President presided. Nothing guarantees that 2026 will repeat this, and whether President Faye opens the edition on November 19 has not been announced.

For now, write to the Secretariat (info@biennaledakar.org, +221 33 823 09 18) and ask for the form. The evenings of opening week are on Nights, and press contacts on Live.

The frame is the same: three official venues, a month at the end of the year, the courthouse at the centre. Inside it, most things have moved.

New in 2026

• A director from outside the continent, chosen by open call. The Comité d’orientation picked Montazami’s project after a call that closed on March 1. The number of candidates was not published.
• A larger Senegalese share. Eleven entries, against the three or four that Ba cited for earlier editions.
• The calendar. The edition opens six days after the Youth Olympic Games close on November 13, which the organizer’s January press release presents as momentum. The Biennale’s traditional slot is May and June.

Absent, or not yet heard of

• Doxantu. The programme that set monumental works along the Corniche Ouest in 2022, as the International Biennial Association recorded, is named in no 2026 source opened for this guide.
• A second guest country. Saudi Arabia, named in July and September, is gone.
• A budget. No figure for 2026 appears in any source opened. The money is on Host City.

On attendance, the Minister said at the launch that the 2024 edition drew more than 780,000 visitors, as Sud Quotidien reported. No breakdown has been published; quote it as a minister’s figure.

Six weeks before opening, this is what the organizer had not published. Confirm anything that matters with the Secretariat before travelling.

• Opening hours for any of the three venues. Check the organizer’s visitor menu.
• Admission: prices, or confirmation of free entry. A January 2026 price grid has been reported and could not be verified.
• The opening ceremony on November 19: place, hour and who presides.
• Professional and preview days, and a 2026 form. Check the accreditation page.
• A press kit, and the programme of talks, performances and public events. Check the press page and the events page.
• Which exhibition is in which venue, beyond the tribute at the Galerie nationale (organizer) and the international exhibition and Design at the courthouse (APS). What the Musée des Civilisations noires will show is not announced.
• Work titles, projects and the five lines: which artist shows what, and under which line. Text was missing for 48 of the 54 artist pages and all 21 design pages. Check the selection page.
• The DRC programme and the Senegal pavilion: commissioner or curator, venue, dates.
• The form and place of the Grand Témoin and Carte blanche presentations. Check the tributes page.
• The OFF: the list or count of registered events, the printed guide, the map, the app, and the 2026 coordinator.
• The prize jury, the prize amounts, and the members of the selection committee.
• The 2026 budget and partners. The partners page shows logos uploaded in 2024.

The dates, the calendar and the venue addresses that are known are on The Guide. News is on Live, and the directory entry on My Biennale, with its artists and its history.

Sources. Biennale de Dakar: Sélection 2026, Section Design, launch communiqué, internal rules, concept note and OFF conditions, all read on October 6, 2026. Agence de Presse Sénégalaise, July 23, September 21, September 25 and September 30, 2026. Diptyk, October 1, 2026; Le360, October 3, 2026; Le Soleil, May 27, 2026; Sud Quotidien, September 26, 2026; allAfrica, October 6, 2026. Quotations from French sources are printed in French with an English rendering by Biennale, which is not affiliated with the Biennale de Dakar. Corrections: contact@biennale.nyc.