Dak'Art Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art 2026

Dak’Art, the Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African Art, opens on 19 November and runs through to 19 December, turning the Senegalese capital over to a month of exhibitions, encounters and argument about the state of art on the continent. Since its beginnings in the early 1990s, Dak’Art has grown into one of Africa’s most important recurring art convenings – a biennale conceived, from the outset, to be held in Africa and centred on African and diasporic practice, rather than a satellite of the European circuit. Its official selection is only part of the story; the sprawling OFF programme spreads across galleries, studios and public spaces citywide, and much of the energy lives there. For a month Dakar becomes a destination for curators, collectors, institutions and travellers, and a working meeting for artists from across the continent and its diaspora. What Dak’Art insists on, edition after edition, is that the terms of contemporary African art can be set in Dakar – that the centre of the conversation need not sit elsewhere.