The opening of this year's Kochi Muziris Biennale has been postponed at the very last moment. The Kochi Biennale Foundation announced the delay via social media late at night, hours before the event was due to open its doors, leaving artists, visitors and organisers to absorb the news almost as the first guests were expected to arrive. According to the foundation, the postponement stems from a combination of organisational challenges made worse by external pressures. Ongoing structural repair work at the main venues and poor weather conditions were cited as the compounding factors that forced the decision, turning what should have been a celebratory opening day into a scramble for contingency plans. The delay affects the biennale's flagship sites — Aspinwall House, Anand Warehouse and Pepper House — where the central exhibition was to be staged. The foundation was quick to stress that not everything is on hold: the associated programme of talks and the various satellite exhibitions will go ahead this week as originally scheduled, giving visitors in Kochi some of the intended experience while the main show is reworked. This edition, titled In Our Veins Flow Ink and Fire and curated by Shubigi Rao, brings together some 90 artists from around the world. The main exhibition will now open on 23 December, more than two months later than planned — a dramatic reshuffle for one of Asia's most closely watched contemporary art gatherings. Rao, a writer and artist known for addressing contested histories, has built the show around ideas of memory, language and endurance; the delay puts pressure on participating artists, lenders and the foundation's production teams to hold the exhibition's integrity across a reshaped calendar.