The biennale further unfolds through a program comprising more than fifty events, including performances, guided tours, workshops, collective readings, music events, film screenings, and debates. The biennale seeks to develop a new approach to transcending these established formats. It engages independent initiatives rooted in the local cultural scene with the aim of developing more decentralized approaches in institutionalized art events based on trust and collaboration. The biennale also includes a space available free of charge for organized community gatherings, and a special issue of an independent magazine is being published instead of the established format of an exhibition catalogue. Additional events will take place at partner art and community venues in Prague (Shella Radio, SVĚTOVA 1, Center for Contemporary Arts Prague, and Goethe-Institut). Admission to all events and the exhibition is free of charge, so audiences can visit the biennale as often as they’d like.

The curatorial approach draws on the notion of necessity as the vital force and political guiding principle behind one’s decisions. Art as a necessity appears as neither an aesthetic choice, a commodity, nor a professionalised activity but rather as an instinctive, embodied response to lived conditions—something unavoidable and embedded in the very structure of daily life and its politics. “Necessity may take the form of protest—as a means of survival and a manifestation of life—but it may also appear as an intimate gesture, an escape from visibility, or a turning inward toward the self. This year’s biennale proposes artistic form as a vehicle for solidarity and compassion, functioning as a carrier, proxy, and instrument for strengthening insurgent communities as much as addressing personal urgency. These practices sustain relationships from within, amplify silenced voices, and nourish hope by calling allies to action in response to oppression. Necessity is about learning to live with contradictions, embracing an irresistible rhythm, and navigating the choreographies of limitations. Art born of necessity is thus also an art of the poetics of reduction, involving not-doing as well as practices of restraint, refusal, boycott, and withdrawal,” the curators say in a joint statement. 

The exhibition and program of live events showcase a diverse range of art collectives, community groups, and grassroots initiatives, whose varied activities are presented in a variety of formats, from installations and live events to long-term interventions. kroužek intersekce is a collective providing space for mutual learning and radical imagination. Their project The Tent takes center stage at the National Gallery, offering regular collective readings of feminist literature as well as providing space for community organizers who can book the space for free and use its equipment for workshops or group meetings, pushing the boundaries of what an art biennale can be. The word “shella” comes from Egyptian Arabic slang and means “a group of friends who do things together.” Shella Radio is a Prague-based community radio rooted in the fertile club scene but expanding into public discourse through political talk shows, panel discussions, and more. The audience is invited to join one of the live events with DJ sets or relax in Shella’s listening station at the National Gallery. Fůd is a platform for socially engaged illustration and comics. Their activities include publishing an eponymous zine, and they were commissioned to dedicate its recent issue to the 2026 Biennale Matter of Art. The zine contains visual works as well as texts by the biennale artists and curators, connected by the theme of “daily bread”—the conditions under which artists in various regions live and create and the everyday obstacles they must overcome along the way. The limited-edition magazine is available in the Trade Fair Palace bookshop. The Indonesian art-activist collective Taring Padi has facilitated the creation of protest puppets for the biennale, which were made by local participants in a workshop led by Taring Padi in Prague in May 2026. For the duration of the biennial exhibition, these puppets will be part of an installation at the Trade Fair Palace, and after the exhibition ends, they will be returned to their creators.