Biennale is Italian for "every other year" and can be used to describe any event that happens every two years. It is most commonly used within the art world to describe an international manifestation of contemporary art, stemming from the use of the phrase for the Venice Biennale, which was first held in 1895 (the phrase has since been used for multiple events, as the "Biennale de Paris", or even as a portmanteau as with Berlinale for the Berlin International Film Festival).
The term is most commonly used in the context of major repeating art exhibitions such as:
- Arts in Marrakech (AiM) International Biennale (Arts in Marrakech Festival)
- Bat-Yam International Biennale of Landscape Urbanism
- Beijing Biennale
- Berlin Biennale (modern art biennale, to be distinguished from Berlinale, which is a film festival)
- Biennial of Hawaii Artists
- Biennial of Towns and Town Planners in Europe
- BIWAKO Biennnale, in Ōmihachiman, Japan
- Bucharest Biennale in Bucharest, Romania
- Bushwick Biennial, in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York
- Chengdu Biennale, in Chengdu, China
- Dublin Biennial, in Dublin, Ireland
- Estuaire (biennale), biennale in Nantes and Saint-Nazaire, France
- Florence Biennale
- Gwangju Biennale, Asia's first and most prestigious contemporary art biennale
- Havana biennial, in Havana, Cuba
- Herzliya Biennial For Contemporary Art, in Herzliya, Israel
- Incheon Women Artists' Biennale, in Incheon, South Korea
- Iowa Biennial, in Iowa, (USA)
- Istanbul Biennial, in Istanbul, Turkey
- International Roaming Biennial of Tehran, in Tehran and Istanbul
- Kobe Biennale, in Kobe, Japan
- Kochi-Muziris Biennale, For contemporary art in Kochi India
- Kortrijk Design Biennale Interieur, in Kortrijk, Belgium
- Light Art Biennale Austria, in Austria
- Liverpool Biennial
- Manifesta, European Biennale of contemporary art in different European cities
- Melbourne International Biennial 1999
- Moscow Biennale in Moscow (Russia)
- Munich Biennale, new opera and music-theatre in even-numbered years
- Biennale de Paris
- Perkins+Will Biennale
- São Paulo Art Biennial in São Paulo
- Shanghai Biennale
- Sharjah biennial
- Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi‐City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture
- Singapore Biennale, held in various locations across the city-state island of Singapore
- Stourbridge Biennale, the UK's major exhibition of contemporary glass
- Biennale of Sydney
- Venice Biennale, which includes
- Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art
- Venice Biennale of Architecture
- Venice Film Festival
- Visual Art Biennale, Reunion Island, France
- Whitney Biennial, hosted by the Whitney Museum of American Art
- Web Biennial, produced with teams from Athens, Berlin and Istanbul.
- Music Biennale Zagreb
- Vladivostok biennale of Visual Arts, in Vladivostok, Russia