Wake up, conspirators.

A gentle, sulfuric breeze tickles your nostrils, the desert dust you knew, once upon a time in a distant dream, percolates on your windowsill. There's an alarm clock ringing in the distance - the Sea is calling for you.

It's been two years since the organism known as the Bombay Beach Biennale last appeared - a wild, untamed entity, owned by all and by none - a circus of madmen, a collective of renegades, a social sculpture made of imaginary landscapes. When the clock ticks midnight and ushers us into a new year, the Biennale rustles from its slumber, emerging from the cave of its hibernation, hungry for antics, mystery, and games.

You may know us for our spectacle, our mystery, our tomfoolery. BBB is quite good at revealing very little of its strange machinations. There is certainly no organization like it in the world. But we are an Organization - a humble contingency of stewards, building systems tailored to the unique spirit of a collective body that refuses to congeal into a recognizable shape.

2026 marks 10 years of the Bombay Beach Biennale, though Year 8 in its enactment. Our principles have remained the same:

No tickets.
No commerce.
No advertising/marketing.
The dates are never published publicly, they're only spread by word of mouth.
The Biennale is not a spectator sport: participation is required.

The Biennale is, has always been, and will always remain free. To throw a gathering of such scale and stature, year after year, without hiding it behind a paywall, is an act of improbability. It's a commitment to what others deem to be impossible, fueled by the dedication of hundreds of conspirators who defy the rules of the market and refuse to let what's come before dictate what is in our realm of possibility.

If you're new here, we'll explain the rules of the game. We'll say it again, for those who missed it the first time - The Biennale is not a spectator sport. Participation is required. There are three ways to take part:

Make Art. Bring your vision, your craft, your experiment to the desert.
Volunteer. Build, clean, cook, paint, carry, host — the town runs on shared labor.
Donate. If you cannot give time or art, then give resources. Give us money. This sustains the free programs, the community initiatives, the impossible works of imagination.

The Biennale can only exist if every single person who graces our shores disavows spectatorship in favor of participation.

The rules are simple. Don't want to play by the rules? Well then, you needn't play the game. But the stewards are watching you, and someone somewhere is keeping score. Won't you help us create the impossible? Won't you help us render our dreams possible - even, dare we say, probable?

If you've been lucky to experience our temporary autonomous zone, you know we spare no expense. Our taste is of the highest degree, driven by the delicious contradictions of opera staged in a trailer, academic philosophy lectures on the second story of stacked shipping containers, jazz clubs materializing at midnight, a circus on a beach mades of bones.

It takes money to make magic, and while we'll never let it be a barrier to your participation, if you find yourself wondering where your money should go, we kindly ask for your consideration. Contrary to popular belief, our budget does not only go to spectacle. Our budget goes to:

Hardworking staff that produces the architecture required to facilitate our collective creation expression - over 150+ artists each year, and the number keeps growing.
Artist grants, the majority of which are earmarked for resident and underprivileged artists.
Mechanisms that keep us safe - medic services, permits, insurance, portapotties, signage, parking lots, etc.
Season-long programming, from New Years to our climactic finale.
Community-driven initiatives, like monthly town-wide feasts, weekly community forums, the facilitation of Kids Club, which connects Biennale artists with the youth of Bombay Beach, providing opportunities for pedagogy and skill shares.
Town-wide connection, providing recurring touch-points between the Biennale and our host community - the lifeblood of Bombay Beach, those who came before us, and those who will come after us.

2026 marks a milestone - 10 years of art for art's sake. There is surely nothing else like it in the world... Help us keep it sustainable, healthy, and thriving. Help us create the impossible, and keep on conspiring.

Your favorite (dis) Organization,

The Bombay Beach Biennale

Bombay Beach Biennale

Ten Years at the Edge of the World

Bombay Beach was never supposed to exist. A presumed ghost town stranded on the shore of the Salton Sea—the largest, most environmentally-wrought inland body of water in California—Bombay has become both a monument to collapse and a stage for resurrection. Though it was never abandoned, it was mostly forgotten, until a circus of conspirators began to occupy its ruins.

In a place abandoned by industry and ignored by government, artists, dreamers, and desert dwellers have built a cultural revolution. We have turned broken motels into opera houses, cracked foundations into dance floors, rusted trailers into temples, and streets once empty into carnivals of light, music, and fire.

We have always known the Sea was dying.
We have always known the world was burning.
And yet—what better place than here, what better time than now, to prove that art is not a luxury, but survival itself?

The People’s Biennale

The Biennale has always existed outside of the commercial art world. It belongs not only to our international community, but to the people of the Salton Sea, the Imperial Valley, and the Coachella Valley—communities too often dismissed as poor, rural, and forgotten. Imperial County is the poorest in California, yet it is the site of one of the richest imaginations in America.

Through our first-ever public grant program in 2024, nearly every award went to local and underrepresented artists. They staged the region’s first LGBTQIA+ drag show. They created couture fashion out of trash found along the poisoned shoreline. They gave voice to the contamination of our water, to the reality that art here is never separate from survival. The Bombay Beach Biennale facilitates the creation of over 150 artists, technologists, and philosophers. Each year, we host an academic philosophy conference, film festival, circus, opera, ballet, jazz club, alongside a myriad of multi-media installations, gallery shows, and performances.

Everything we do at the Biennale is free and open to the public. Which is why we need your support.

We raise money so that children of this community can see themselves as artists, so that neighbors can witness their lives transformed into theater, so that the desert can remind the world that creativity is oxygen.

Bombay Beach Biennale

Why Now?

The stakes could not be higher. Around the world, arts funding is being cut. The climate crisis accelerates. Economies collapse. Politics veer into extremism. Consensual reality is marked by an age of fracture and disintegration.

And yet, the Biennale persists, because it is proof that another way of living is possible—one built not on extraction and despair, but on imagination, generosity, and communion. The Bombay Beach Biennale is a 10-year experiment in survival, community, and art at the end of the world. It is a beacon in a time of darkness. And now, as we prepare for our 10th Anniversary Biennale in 2026, we need your help to ensure that this miracle in the desert not only survives, but thrives.

What Your Support Means

Your donations will:

Expand our public artist grant program to uplift local and underprivileged voices
Fund large-scale, impossible works of art that transform the town into a living gallery
Support infrastructure and resources for the community of Bombay Beach including community feasts, programming for the youth community of Bombay, and the facilitation of three months of public programming
Sustain the most improbable, beautiful, and necessary cultural experiment in America
Pay our dedicated team of producers living and fair wages

Every dollar given is tax-deductible through our newly minted 501(c)(3) - the Bombay Beach Institute for Industrial Espionage & Post-Apocalyptic Studies. Yes, your madness is a tax write-off. Every donation is a seed planted in dry ground. Every act of generosity is proof that imagination is stronger than despair.

A New Way to Fundraise

In 2025 we formally launched the Bombay Beach Institute, a federally recognized 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to sustaining the cultural, educational, and ecological work born in Bombay Beach. The Institute now serves as the official fiscal sponsor of the Bombay Beach Biennale, ensuring that every donation is fully tax-deductible while providing the organizational backbone for our year-round community programs, youth initiatives, and large-scale artistic experiments. With this step, we’ve secured the infrastructure to grow responsibly and transparently, guaranteeing that the Biennale remains free and open to all while strengthening its future for the next decade and beyond.

A Call to the Madmen, the Visionaries, the Clowns of Peculiar Taste

Our social fabric is crumbling. Our world is both flooded and on fire. And so we must build stages in the ruins. We must make art not in spite of collapse, but through it.

This is the Biennale’s promise: that in the harshest desert, by the most toxic sea, community and imagination will continue to bloom.

Join us. Stand with us. Become part of this ten-year dream that refuses to die.

Artwork & Photo Credits:

Walking Dream (Rosalie Barnes, Marcus Guillard, Michael Christian, Shannon Gray), photo by Andrew Small
Bombay Beach, photo by Scott London
Showtown (Stefan Ashkenazy), Bombay Boom (Jonathan Hart), photo by Ruben Avendo
Living Legends of Bombay Beach Take The Runway, feat. Sonia Herbert (Brenda Kenneally), photo by Laura Austin
Dining Upon the Sea (Chris "Ssippi" Wessman), photo by Laura Austin
The Institute/Zig Zag Plaza, photo by Laura Austin
The Bombay Beach Museum of Bombay Beach (Tao Ruspoli), photo by Oscar Contreras

The Bombay Beach Biennale 2026

10 Years of Renegade Art, Music & Philosophy on the Shores of the Salton Sea