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19 February 2026

Premiere on the Road: Vienna Design Week Sets Dates for Its First Europe Tour — An Outlook

Vienna city view through a window with Vienna Design Week lettering, representing the festival’s international outlook.

A first step beyond Vienna: the Anniversary Tour

For the first time in its history, the Vienna Design Week will travel across Europe. The plans were published together with the confirmed dates for the 2026 festival in Vienna. Under the title Anniversary Tour, the initiative marks the 20th edition of the festival with a series of appearances at major European design events. It is a clear premiere: never before has Vienna Design Week presented itself in this mobile, transnational format ahead of its home edition.

The tour is conceived as a sequence of interventions rather than a classic roadshow. At each stop, the Vienna team will collaborate with local partners and institutions, offering temporary formats that reflect the festival's curatorial approach while responding to local contexts. The tour also functions as an early teaser, giving international audiences a first glimpse of the anniversary edition planned for autumn.

From a local initiative to an international platform

Vienna Design Week was founded with the Passionswege format in 2006. Its first full festival edition took place in 2007. From the beginning, the initiative was shaped by a curatorial mindset rather than a commercial fair model. It was established by Lilli Hollein, Tulga Beyerle and Thomas Geisler with the aim of making design visible across the city and connecting contemporary design with craftsmanship, urban life and social questions.

Today, the festival is led by director Gabriel Roland. Under his direction, and together with his team, Vienna Design Week has further strengthened its international profile. The newly announced European tour underlines this development and places the festival on an even broader international stage than before, while maintaining its strong base in Vienna.

International focus as a constant principle

International exchange has always been a core element of Vienna Design Week. Each year, a specific focus country or region is presented alongside international exhibitions, talks and collaborations. This structure allows the festival to combine local production with global perspectives and to position Vienna as a meeting point within the European design landscape.

Within Austria, Vienna Design Week is widely regarded as the most important design event. This status is based not on scale alone, but on its density: around 200 events, hundreds of participants and dozens of locations spread across the city. Design is not confined to exhibition halls but appears in workshops, former industrial spaces, shops and public institutions, turning the city itself into a temporary design route.

Formats, destinations and shared approaches

The festival's strength lies in its range of formats. These include hands-on workshop visits, thematic exhibitions, cross-disciplinary projects, talks and urban interventions. Together, they offer both a deep dive into specific practices and a broad overview of current design debates.

The destinations of the Anniversary Tour reflect a similarly diverse landscape of platforms and approaches. The first stop is Collectible in Brussels, a fair dedicated to contemporary collectible design. It is scheduled for 14 March. Other destinations on the tour include the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam, a research-driven institution for architecture, design and digital culture; and Milan Design Week, one of the world's most influential design weeks.

Further destinations are the Beta – Timișoara Architecture Biennial, which uses the city as an exhibition space; Křehký Mikulov, a curated art and design festival in South Moravia; World Design Capital Frankfurt RheinMain, a long-term regional program focused on social transformation through design; Clerkenwell Design Week, rooted in one of the world's densest design districts; and Concéntrico, which rethinks public space through temporary installations.

Together, these stations illustrate how design today is presented, tested and developed: as objects, as processes, as urban experiments and as shared cultural practice.

The 20th edition of Vienna Design Week will take place in Vienna from 25 September to 4 October 2026. Further information about the anniversary program will be released continuously in the coming months.


Image: View from a Vienna building across the city skyline, with the words 'Vienna Design Week' on a glass window offering a look over and beyond the city. Photo: © Vienna Design Week / Kollektiv Fischka Kramar.