18th Lyon Biennale Opens: 120 Artists, Nearly 400 Works for “Moving From One Dream to Another”

The 18th edition of the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art (Biennale de Lyon), one of Europe’s largest contemporary art events, opens to the public on Saturday, September 19, 2026, while the professional preview days are held today, September 17 and 18. The exhibition will remain open until December 13, 2026.

This year’s edition is titled “Passer d’un rêve à l’autre” (“Moving from one dream to another”) and its curator is Catherine Nichols, an internationally renowned curator also known to the Albanian public as the curator of Manifesta 14, held in Prishtina, Kosovo, in 2022.

The curatorial concept is inspired by artist-economist Robert Filliou’s “Principles of Poetic Economy” (1976) and explores how artistic practices engage with economic life through work, exchange and care — in the city of Lyon, with its long history of trade and industry.

The scale of the edition is impressive: 120 artists with nearly 400 works, spread across 11 exhibition venues throughout the city. The main venue is Les Grandes Locos, while the program also includes the macLYON Museum of Contemporary Art, the Lyon Museum of Fine Arts and the Textile Museum (Musée des Tissus).

The Lyon Biennale is considered among the most important contemporary art events in Europe, bringing artists from around the world into dialogue with the city and its industrial history at every edition.

Source: e-flux / Biennale de Lyon