Lagos Biennial 2026 to unravel at Eko Atlantic City

The 5th edition of the renowned international contemporary art exhibition, The Lagos Biennial, is set to take place at Eko Atlantic City, Victoria Island, Lagos State, Nigeria.

This year's exhibition, themed "the Museum of Things Unseen" is scheduled to run on selected dates from November 14 to December 6, 2026, featuring over 70 contemporary artists from Nigeria and across the globe. The event is to be unveiled with a special preview or pre-opening on November 13, before it's official public opening on November 14.

Lagos Biennial was founded in 2017 by Nigerian curator and artist, Folakunle Oshun, with a vision of diverse contemporary artistic expression and cultural fluidity and representation.
The venues for each edition of the Lagos Biennial are often carefully chosen, in a bid to transform historically relevant locations into open spaces for contemporary art. The Nigerian Railway Corporation compound in Yaba (2017), Independence House (2019), Tafawa Balewa Square (2024), are all locations previously utilised as canvases for the bold artistic exhibition.

For this year, Eko Atlantic City is the lucky winner. With the core point of the exhibition's theme being to challenge conventional ideas of what a museum should be and whose histories it represents, Eko Atlantic city being one of Africa's most ambitious urban developments just seems like the perfect pick.

Speaking ahead of the opening, Oshun stated that "The Museum of Things Unseen" was curated as an invite for all "to reconsider what museums preserve, what they leave out, and how we might imagine new institutions that respond to our own histories."

"Bringing this exhibition to Eko Atlantic City also allows us to reflect on the relationship between Lagos’s rapidly changing urban landscape and its cultural memory," he added.

Oshun has appointed Chinyere Obieze, Furen Dai, and Sam Hopkins as co-curators for this year's edition of the Lagos Biennial.

For Lagos art lovers, this event presents a chance to witness a conceptual museum which brings together a collection of works to address the contextual, philosophical, and political forces that shape practices of cultural circulations and museology.

The event aims to exhibit "rarely or never-before-seen artworks," examining the factors that contribute to their “unseenness.”

Art lovers get to delve into new perspectives that shine light onto the hidden dimensions of the brilliant pieces. What excites a true art lover more than a chance to unravel the gift of depth that creative expression lives to offer?

This year's edition of the Lagos Biennial is also particularly special as it marks the inauguration of the Àkéte Collection.

The collection contains a diverse arrangement of art objects from all around the world and a public international art collection in Africa. The Àkéte Collection will collect works through donations and loans from museums, foundations and private collections globally, in order to ensure unprecedented physical access to these pieces.

So, for Lagos art lovers and even individuals less inclined to artistic discovery, The Museum of Things Unseen is an open paradox, bringing artworks to Lagos and reimagining them in the context of the affective infrastructural dimensions of Lagos, and adding a new layer of history.