In 2026 the beating heart ofEuropean contemporary art will beat in the Ruhr region of Germany. Indeed, the 16th edition of Manifesta, the nomadic biennial founded in 1996 in Rotterdam as a platform for cultural and artistic exchange across borders, will settle in this area marked by profound economic and social transformations. The cities of Essen, Bochum, Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen will become the hubs of an itinerary that will pass through disused churches, buildings symbolic of an era and now empty spaces to be rethought. The exhibition venues and curatorial team that will bring the event to life were unveiled today.
Manifesta 16 Ruhr aims to transform the venues into laboratories of art and community, addressing the crucial theme of urban regeneration: the exhibition will therefore take place at the Liebfrauenkirche in Duisburg, St. Gertrude’s Church, Kunstraum Heilig Geist (“Artistic Space of the Holy Spirit”) and St. Mark’s Church in Essen, the churches of St. Boniface, St. Thomas, St. Anne and St. Joseph in Gelsenkirchen, and the churches of Gethsemane, Christ the King, St. Ludger and St. Anne in Bochum. The project takes shape from a long phase of preliminary research, which investigated the potential of abandoned churches as new centers of sociality and creativity. At the helm is Spanish architect Josep Bohigas (b. 1967), appointed “Urban Creative Mediator,” who has developed the urban vision entitled This is not a church. Through consultations with citizens and residents, Bohigas and his team surveyed the needs of local communities, identifying the reactivation of these buildings as an opportunity to restore meaning and cohesion to neighborhoods marked by loss of identity and social fragmentation.
The surveys confirmed how, in the global context, urban renewal strategies are increasingly oriented toward proximity: shortening the distances between places of daily life and essential services, restoring centrality to shared spaces. In the Ruhr region, the situation has particular historical roots. In the twentieth century, new low-density housing areas were created to meet the needs of large mining and steel industries. This expansion led to the emergence of a polycentric metropolis composed of incomplete or isolated neighborhoods. With the decline of heavy industry and the socioeconomic transition of the 21st century, many of those communities have lost cohesion, leaving a legacy of dysfunctional spaces and urban distress.
The Biennial decided to address this challenge starting with direct citizen involvement. Surveys and public assemblies organized throughout the region have highlighted the urgency of reclaiming disused places of worship as civic and cultural centers. The coincidence with the municipal elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, held on September 14, reinforced this perception: many communities openly expressed dissatisfaction with the inefficiency of public spaces and a sense of estrangement from the urban area. Manifesta 16 Ruhr therefore proposes to use artistic practices as a tool to address environmental, social and economic issues in the region.
Manifesta’s curatorial team, the “Creative Mediators” as its members have been dubbed, reflects an intergenerational and collaborative model. In addition to Bohigas, the group includes German art historian Gürsoy Doğtaş (1972), who has been appointed Creative Mediator for public programs, and three highly experienced figures in the European curatorial scene, René Block (1942), Henry Meyric Hughes (1942) and Anda Rottenberg (1944). Each will work in tandem with a younger curator in a dialogue that crosses generations and traditions.
In Bochum, historic Polish curator Anda Rottenberg will lead the project together with Krzysztof Kosciuczuk (1983), also a Polish curator active between Warsaw and Switzerland. In Essen, veteran René Block, a leading figure on the Fluxus scene and director of numerous institutions between Germany and Scandinavia, will collaborate with Berliner Leonie Herweg (1997), a young curator committed to participatory practices and the valorization of local knowledge. In Duisburg, on the other hand, it will be Englishman Henry Meyric Hughes, former director of the Hayward Gallery and a key figure in the history of Manifesta, who will propose an exhibition that will explore the last 30 years of European history, from post-Cold War hopes to the current crisis marked by populism and conflict. Working with him will be curator and critic Michael Kurtz (1998), among the emerging voices of British criticism. In Gelsenkirchen, the Ruhr Music Theater will host additional projects related to this program, expanding the interdisciplinary dimension of the event.
The decision to interweave established figures and new generations responds to director Hedwig Fijen ’s desire to enhance the knowledge capital accumulated by the Biennale over 30 years and project it into the future. Indeed, 2026 will mark the 30th anniversary of Manifesta, which was born in Rotterdam in 1996 at a time of European optimism, when the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the prospect of greater continental integration fueled confidence in a platform for artistic exchange between East and West.
The project also takes on symbolic significance from a geopolitical perspective: the collaboration between personalities from Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom, three crucial nations in the continent’s new balances, underscores Manifesta’s commitment to keeping alive the idea of transnational cultural solidarity. The choice to operate in disused religious spaces, places of collective memory and at the same time of abandonment, thus becomes a metaphor for the attempt to mend historical and social rifts in the territory, restoring centrality to the relationship between community, art and urban space.
The route of Manifesta 16 Ruhr thus promises to be an unprecedented journey between sacred architecture and contemporary art, but above all an experiment in the symbolic and real reconstruction of a torn social fabric. At a time when Europe appears marked by divisions and uncertainties, Manifesta chooses the language of art to propose scenarios of resilience and new forms of community, transforming the absences of the past into possibilities for the future.
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| Manifesta 16 unveils venues and curatorial team: three octogenarians will be joined by three young people |
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