Guide to events in Venice: cinema, fashion, Homo Faber, craftsmanship, design, glass, music, and Radar Venezia
In Venice, autumn is a season of festivals: the city enters its most intense season of the year with a calendar of major international appointments and widespread projects throughout the city.
In this guide, you will find dates, locations, and useful information to navigate the autumn 2026 events in Venice.
Floating Cinema. Unknown Waters
August 26 – September 13
Cinema, visual arts, music, and conviviality on the water in front of Sacca Fisola. A project by Edoardo Aruta and Paolo Rosso, presented by Microclima and curated with Alessandra Messali. Convivio Acquatico is the event’s kitchen, curated by TOCIA! cucina e comunità.
NSR (No Stress Radio) is a streaming radio station born in Venice that aims to create a digital and physical meeting point through music, talk, and readings. Every evening from 10:00 PM, DJ Sets and Live Sets, curated by Diego Scaggiante, connect programme contributors to represent the local scene and its artists.
Homo Faber 2026
September 1 – 30
Homo Faber 2026, an event dedicated to the art of excellence in craftsmanship, returns to the Giorgio Cini Foundation on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.
Under the artistic direction of Es Devlin, a British artist famous for her giant kinetic sculptures, fifteen luminous installations engage in dialogue with over 500 artisans from more than 70 countries, featuring live demonstrations, workshops, and gastronomic experiences in a park with monumental paths and spaces.
Discover the programme, the masters, and the experiences
Homo Faber in Città
September 1 – 30
Homo Faber in Città is the widespread programme that takes the public into the ateliers, workshops, and craftsmanship spaces of Venice, spanning Venice, Murano, and Burano, with exhibitions, visits, and itineraries to meet artisans at work, two exhibitions at Casa Sanlorenzo, and a programme of cultural initiatives.
Discover all the ateliers and events
The Venice Film Festival 2026
September 2 – 12
The 83rd Venice International Film Festival, directed by Alberto Barbera, brings films, directors, and performers from all over the world to the Lido.
From the festival, Venezia da Vivere covers the programme, the films, the red carpets, and the festival appointments.
Read the guide to the Venice Film Festival 2026
Lights! Camera! Impact!
Saturday, September 5, 5:00 PM
Cinema as a driver of social change. At the headquarters of The Human Safety Net, in the Procuratie in St. Mark’s Square, directors and producers engage in dialogue with the public on how cinema narrates the experience of parenthood, challenging stereotypes and contributing to building an inclusive society.
The Human Safety Net is a global movement of people helping people. Its home is at the Procuratie in Venice: exhibitions, a café, a children’s museum, and games, open to everyone in St. Mark’s Square.
George Clooney with Amal on the red carpet of the Film Festival at the Venice Lido. Photo by Rossana Viola
Toni Servillo joking with photographers at the Film Festival - ph. Rossana Viola
Lights! Camera! Impact! at the Procuratie in St. Mark's Square. Free admission
George Clooney, on the Red Carpet for Wolfs, entertained the audience by joking with Brad Pitt and the photographers. Photo by Pascal Le Segretain
The Venice Glass Week
September 12 – 20
The Venice Glass Week is a widespread international festival dedicated to artistic glass, traversing Venice and Murano with exhibitions, meetings, performances, visits to furnaces, studios, museums, galleries, and ateliers.
Created to support and promote the art of glassmaking, the festival portrays glass as part of the productive and cultural identity of Venice and Murano, and as a medium for contemporary research, connecting historical expertise, design, art, and new generations.
The tenth edition features over 200 events and is the most extensive programme realized to date. The international call involves artists, designers, institutions, and glass entities from Italy and abroad, fostering the exchange of ideas, experiences, and collaborations with Murano, its furnaces, and its masters.
Murano Illumina il Mondo 2026
September 13 – November 1
Grand artistic chandeliers created by Masters, designers, and the furnaces of Murano are on display until November 1st under the Procuratie of St. Mark’s Square.
Discover the names of the designers and furnaces
The Exhibition of Italian Fine Craftsmanship at the Arsenale
October 1 – 4
The Venice Arsenale hosts the Exhibition of Italian Fine Craftsmanship, featuring businesses and artisans from various Italian regions.
Weaving, mosaics, tailoring, jewellery, and ceramics are at the heart of exhibitions and meetings dedicated to materials and techniques.
Venice Design Week, the city as a design laboratory
October 9 – 18
Venice Design Week is a widespread event that connects designers, companies, universities, artisans, and city locations through exhibitions, meetings, visits, and projects.
The 2026 theme of Venice Design Week is Design 100%: Venice is presented as a laboratory for imagining new design models, where design is called upon to be conscious, necessary, and measurable.
Programme, exhibitions, meetings, and designers
Biennale Musica 2026. A Child of Sound
October 10 – 24
Biennale Musica, the 70th International Festival of Contemporary Music directed by Caterina Barbieri, is one of the most interesting cultural appointments of the Venetian autumn.
The 2026 programme, A Child of Sound, takes place in various spaces across the city between Venice, Mestre, and Forte Marghera, and traverses electronics, ambient, experimentation, composition, club culture, and new international scenes, featuring artists such as Keiji Haino, Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, Sarah Davachi, Silver Lion, the pioneer of ambient music and laughter therapy, Laraaji, Kara-Lis Coverdale, KMRU, DJ Nobu, and Nídia.
Among the most important appointments, the Parco della Musica Contemporanea Ensemble performs the world premiere of Musica per una fine by Ennio Morricone, an unpublished piece built around a poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini, featuring the recorded voice of the poet.
The Origine segment explores avant-garde dance music and deep listening, from the Singeli scene of Tanzania to the sound of Lisbon, from experimental clubbing to sound performances. Additionally, 100_ve, an independent Venetian festival dedicated to electronic music, participates in Biennale Musica with the showcase life/vita.
Programme, artists, info, and tickets
BAIFF – Burano Artificial Intelligence Film Festival
October 13 – 17
Querini Stampalia Foundation
The first European festival entirely dedicated to audiovisual works created with the support of artificial intelligence.
The fourth edition presents an international selection of short films, visual experiments, and narrative projects, with screenings, talks, and meetings with filmmakers, artists, and researchers.
Cinema, creativity, and artificial intelligence
Venice Cocktail Week
October 21 – 25
Venice Cocktail Week, conceived and directed by Paola Mencarelli, showcases the culture of mixology with five days of events, masterclasses, and guest shifts across Venetian cocktail bars, hotels, and venues, featuring Italian and international bartenders.
Each venue presents a cocktail list created for the event featuring a signature drink, a low-alcohol or non-alcoholic midday aperitif, and a cocktail inspired by the great classics. Now in its fifth edition, the event involves 31 selected addresses and highlights the diverse community of Venetian bartenders.
Programme, events, venues, and bartenders
Venezia Sounds
Saturday, October 24
Venezia Sounds returns to the Tese delle Nappe at the Arsenale, the charity concert promoted by the Giancarlo Ligabue Foundation and Medicine Rocks, featuring six hours of live music with major international and national names.
The announced line-up brings together Morcheeba, Motta, The Zen Circus, and Emma Nolde, under the artistic direction of Samuel Romano from Subsonica. The proceeds support the Humanitas Foundation for Research and VIMM – Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine.
Radar Venezia 2026
October 19 – 24
Venice Fashion Week presents Radar Venezia, a widespread event dedicated to fashion and contemporary craftsmanship, connecting designers, artisans, companies, universities, institutions, and city locations through meetings, exhibitions, open ateliers, presentations, fashion shows, and projects.
Fashion is one of the guiding languages of Radar: a field where mastery, skills, materials, manufacturing, research, and new generations converge.
Created to portray Venice as a city of contemporary production and as a meeting place for those who design, those who create, and those who train, the event makes visible and promotes a creative system working in the present.
Among the appointments are twelve artist’s books by Jacopo Ascari spanning craftsmanship and fashion at the Querini Stampalia, the sartorial fashion of South African couturière Romi Loch Davis, costumes by Fashion and Design students from Designskolen Kolding with mosaics by Orsoni, a fashion show at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, breakfasts with textile art, and the Atelier Aperti itineraries.
From October 19 to 24, the public will enter Venetian ateliers, manufactures, boutiques, foundations, and cultural spaces to meet artists, artisans, and designers and learn about the processes that give shape to a garment, a work, or a project.
Radar Venezia is conceived and organized by Venezia da Vivere and is included in the official programme of Major Events of the City of Venice.
Radar Venezia
October 19–24, 2026
www.venicefashionweek.com
Article by Laura Scarpa. Photos by Rossana Viola, Settimo Cannatella, Marta Formentello.
