Liverpool Biennial Sets 2027 Dates and 25 Artists Under 'The Age of Magical Thinking'
The Liverpool Biennial, a contemporary art festival in Liverpool, north-west England, will open on 5 June 2027 and run until 19 September. Its organisers have named 25 artists and collectives, groups of people who make work together, for the show. ArtNews reported the line-up on 11 November 2026.
The theme is "The Age of Magical Thinking." The exhibition is curated by Aimee Harrison and Lucía Sanromán, the two people who choose the artists and decide how the works are shown together.
Several artists will make new commissioned works, meaning pieces created specially for the festival. Francis Alÿs, Tania Candiani and Laakkuluk Williamson are among them. The full list also includes Rineke Dijkstra, Petrit Halilaj, Ruth Ewan, Zohra Opoku, Harold Offeh, Dor Guez, Amalia Pica, Iván Argote and Hiroko Kubo. Others named are Ad Minoliti, Anya Paintsil, Charmaine Poh, EBB.Global, Elias Nafaa, Immy Mali, Wen Cheng Lee, Marilyn Boror Bor, Robert Gabris, Ronak & Roza Moshtaghi, Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei, and the vacuum cleaner.
Work will be spread across the city. Venues include the Bluecoat, FACT Liverpool, the Walker Art Gallery, Open Eye Gallery, Victoria Gallery & Museum, Liverpool Cathedral, and the Exhibition Research Laboratory at Liverpool John Moores University. Visitors will move between old and new spaces to see the show.
Local young people will work with Harold Offeh on a public art project for Williamson Square, a open space in the city centre. Public art means work placed where anyone passing by can see it, without needing a ticket.
The festival describes itself as the UK's largest free festival of contemporary visual art, meaning admission costs nothing. That description comes from the Biennial's own website, which also lists earlier commissions. Antony Gormley's installation Another Place is one of them. It has 100 cast-iron figures, each made from one of 17 moulds taken from the sculptor's own body. The figures stand on Crosby Beach on the Mersey Estuary, and all of them face the open sea. Ugo Rondinone's Liverpool Mountain is another, a public work for the wider city region, commissioned by the Biennial and Tate Liverpool.
The 2027 edition will be the next chance to see how the festival's artists respond to its theme. The dates give visitors almost four months to plan a trip, and the venue list spans galleries, a cathedral and a university lab.
