Global connections, new curatorial territories and an unprecedented openness to Contract. Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026 sets the coordinates for the project’s near future.

The countdown to the 64th edition of the Salone del Mobile.Milano, the most important international furniture and design industry event, from 21^st to 26th April, at Fiera Milano Rho, is on: more than 1,900 exhibitors (36.6% from abroad) and over 169,000 square metres of net exhibition space completely sold out. At the centre of it all is the eagerly awaited return of the biennial exhibitions: EuroCucina with FTK – Technology For the Kitchen, and the International Bathroom Exhibition.

Completing the picture is SaloneSatellite with 700 designers under 35 and 23 international schools and universities. These figures confirm that the Salone is not only the most important international furniture and design fair, but also an active and evolving cultural infrastructure: a relational and strategic driver that fuels global connections, disseminates shared visions and consolidates Milan’s role as the capital of contemporary design.

The common thread running through the 2026 edition will be an increasingly integrated architecture of content and exhibition itineraries. The Salone is also embarking on a new venture, which will lead to the debut of Salone Contract in 2027 — the Masterplan has been entrusted to Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten (OMA). From the interpretation of contexts to the visitor experience, integrated supplies and the strengthening of B2B networking.

Debuting also Salone Raritas. Curated icons, unique objects, and outsider pieces: 25 exhibitors will create a new platform, a bridge between special production and the design market, curated by Annalisa Rosso, Editorial Director and Cultural Events Advisor of the Salone del Mobile.Milano, with exhibition design by Formafantasma.

A Luxury Way will feature Aurea, an Architectural Fiction, an immersive installation designed by Maison Numéro 20: an imaginary hotel that transforms interior design into narration and scenography, leveraging the emotional and sensory dimensions of living. Bringing this narrative together and amplifying it, the communication campaign A Matter of Salone is a collective project that puts matter back at the centre as the origin and meaning of design, translating the transition from gesture to form and meaning into images, and a reworked visitor experience: a clearer and more intuitive wayfinding system will help visitors find their way around the fair more easily, fostering discoveries and encounters and making the complexity of the event easier to understand.

Learn more here.

 

Cover Image: Entries_Salone del Mobile.Milano 2025_©Diego Ravier

01: Salone-Raritas_Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026_Visual_©Formafantasma

02: Aurea_Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026_illustration_MN20

03: Communication Campaign_A Matter of Salone_Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026_©Motel409

The exhibition ‘A Future for the Past’ is part of a 2-year programme that aims to raise awareness about marble craftsmanship at the island of Tinos. The programme, in collaboration with marble atelier on•entropy and curator Maria Cristina Didero, brings together traditional craftsmanship and contemporary design and aims to showcase how their dialectic relationship can contribute to both social and economic sustainability.

Marble sculpting in Greece carries historical significance, as it is an art practiced for millennia and intertwined with the Greek cultural heritage. At the same time, today it can constitute a potential factor for social progress.

The research program, part of which is this exhibition, highlights precisely this aspect. Through kinaesthetic knowledge preserved across generations, the art of marble sculpting contributes to the strengthening of societal bonds within the villages of Tinos. Values such as the sense of belonging and the collective identity are brought to the forefront and consequently the quality of life improves. Especially during a period of intensive touristic development and gentrification at the island of Tinos, the empowerment of such values is more critical than ever.

The presentation of “A Future for the Past” at the Benaki Museum follows the successful installation at the international design hub in Milan and precedes a festival of marble craftsmanship at Tinos. The installation at Benaki Museum provides a unique opportunity for the museum’s contemporary greek marble exhibits to engage in a dialogue with the creations of tinian marble sculptors. These, in turn, will converse with a sculptural contemporary design object made by tinian marble sculptors.

Implemented with a hands-on, modern, inclusive and sustainable approach, this is an innovative synergy. It brings together the local and the international, and the traditional with the contemporary in the specific field of craftsmanship. The aim is that both, contemporary design and historic marble sculpting, can continue sustainably to the future, making Tinos a recognizable hub of cultural wealth.

After three years of research and development, RUINS SERIES, exclusively commissioned by Carwan Gallery is finally unveiled in Athens in June 2021

Carwan Gallery, in collaboration with IN Residence and Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, is pleased to present RUINS, a body of work by Roberto Sironi. The project, developed since 2017 and the result of four years of research, is enriched by a series of new works that complete the collection.

Ruins features a series of works that re-signify architectural fragments belonging to different historical periods and which refer to the most significant archaeological sites placed in the Mediterranean basin.

The project relates some constructive elements of the classical era as bases of columns, capitals, sections of amphitheatre with rudiments of the industrial era, such as the double-T beams, reticular structural elements and corrugated sheet metal, which are reshaped according to a new aesthetic perspective

The collection is conceived as a series of contemporary ruins, freely deconstructed and reconstructed, imaginary simulacra, programmed artifices where the materials and techniques of execution do not correspond to the original but rather become functional to the post-archaeological message conveyed, transmitting a feeling of “Indefinite time” that becomes hypothetical, evanescent, suspended.

Roberto Sironi got the opportunity to develop RUINS thanks to the selection of the international residency program IN Residence Design, curated by Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainò and to produce the works with bronze experts Fonderia Artistica Battaglia and Simone Desirò, Marmi Artificiali di Rima.

The project is also illustrated by a monographic publication curated by Barbara Brondi and Marco Rainò and published by NERO Editions, 2020.

Duration: June 3-August 28, 2021.

The ek exhibition pavilion, designed by Workroom2 Architecture – Alexandra Nikolaou, won the Visitors’ Choice Award for pavilions up to 20m² at this year’s 100% Hotel Show Pavilions Competition.

The pavilion was designed on the idea that the magazine, as well as architecture, are in perpetual evolution. To illustrate this concept, the architect staged an illusion technique using mirrors: the pavilion gives the impression of an endless tunnel, through the repetition of its structural frames, which results in the expansion of perspective depth. Initially, the structure appears bare, with its metallic supports made visible; progressively, the structural frame is dressed in mass, and shelters the exhibition space. Two wooden sideboards in the shape of a console, feature the magazines as if they were a museum exhibit. The materials chosen for the pavilion are coarse black sheet metal and MDF, to provide each magazine issue with better visibility.

This year’s Prizes were awarded to those pavilions that stood out in the visitors’ poll at the previous 100% Hotel Show exhibition and were delegated according to size. The winner of the “50+ m²” Category was Bagno y Bagno, and the “20-50 m²” Prize was awarded to Vagenas Contract Materials. The Awards ceremony was hosted by the 100% Hotel Show Exhibition organizer, Mr. Dimitrios Antonakos. Introducing the Pavilions Competition, where a visitors’ ballot runs all through the exhibition, saw a progressive surge in the quality of the pavilions’ design: Each year, the exhibition appears ever improving, and offers an exceptionally high-level experience to its many visitors. As a matter of course, ek is a media sponsor of the exhibition.