La Tua Perla per Venezia 2026

This year each beadmaker could enter exactly one bead, no sets, and the rules define it plainly: a small, wearable piece of glass with a hole for threading. Twenty of those beads got past the jury's first round, out of 41 entries from 16 countries, and they sit in Sala Cinque, the museum's room of Venetian beads.

It's the fifth Your Bead for Venice, run by the city's bead-safeguarding committee with the International Society of Glass Beadmakers and the Perliers d'Art de France. Every entry had to use or borrow Venetian technique: lampwork, hollow cane, blown beads, murrine, aventurine, chevrons. Murano has spent centuries selling its glass to the world, and this is the room where the world sends some back.

You get one room, twenty beads, and a vote of your own: the public prize is voted online at yourbeadforvenice.org until 6 January 2027. The show comes with the regular museum ticket (€15, €7.50 reduced), and Venice residents get in free.