El Madrid Design Festival It faces its ninth edition having become more than just a meeting for specialists: it has transformed into a major cultural narrative for the city It connects museums, studios, brands, institutions, and entire neighborhoods around design. For just over a month, Madrid once again functions as an open laboratory where reflection, the market, experimentation, and everyday life intersect.
Between February 5 and March 8 A program is activated that is around 200 events and nearly 300 spaces scattered throughout the capital, with some exhibitions running until May. Under the now established motto of “redesign the world”The festival proposes to look at the city, objects and materials from the perspective of design as an ethical, social and economic tool, without falling into grandiloquent but also not naive discourses.
An exhibition heart in Colón: three shows that set the tone
The central focus of the festival is once again located in the Fernan Gomez. Cultural Center of the Villa, in Columbus Square, which becomes the epicenter of the curatorial discourse from the February 6th to May 3rdThat's where the three major exhibitions of this edition: André Ricard. Design in Use, Mediterranean Manifesto y Textile art in Guatemala: design and identity, conceived as a triptych on use, territory and identity.
Organized by The Factory with the support of the Madrid City Councilthe festival keeps Álvaro Matías at the helm of the direction and reinforces the idea that the Fernán Gómez functions as a kind of "base" from which a map unfolds, encompassing neighborhoods, showrooms, galleries, and independent centers. Institutional representatives such as [names of representatives] participated in the official presentation. María José Barrero, general coordinator of Culture for the City Council, along with the curators and representatives of the guest country, Guatemala.
André Ricard: the ethics of use in industrial design
The great retrospective André Ricard. Design in Use It is presented as the conceptual backbone of the festival. It not only reviews more than Six decades of work of someone who is usually defined as “the father of industrial design in Spain”but rather articulates a clear thesis: design understood as a service, as a concrete response to everyday problems, with a strong ethical and social dimension.
Curated by Marina Povedano and Arnau PascualThe exhibition avoids the classic chronology and organize the pieces by spaces of use.: the table, the kitchen, the bathroom, the study, the party… In this way, objects are placed where they make sense, moving away from museum fetishism to recover their status as tools for daily life.
Icons such as the following appear in the rooms Tatu lampice tongs Tong, the Barcelona 92 Olympic torch, bottles of Puig perfumes like Agua Brava, milk bottles RaniaDenenes shampoo bottles or Vit cocoa containers, Corberó kitchens, Moulinex juicers, and urban waste bins for the Barcelona Provincial Council. Most of them are on display. outside of display cases, at hand level, to emphasize its functional origin.
The tour is completed with sketches, prototypes, photographs and documents drawn from the archives of the Museu del Disseny de Barcelona and private collections such as that of Alejandro Mena, and accompanied by a documentary in which Ricard himself reviews his career. The focus emphasizes this idea of “invisible design” that users integrate into their daily lives without needing to recognize the author's signature.
The exhibition is a production of La Fábrica and Madrid Design Festival in co-production with Disseny Hub Barcelona y FADwith the support of companies like AC Marca and Tatay. The designer, who won the National Design Award in 1987 and was awarded the Madrid Design Festival Award 2025He is presented here not only as a creator of objects, but as a key figure in the dissemination and institutionalization of design in Spain.
Mediterranean Manifesto: matter, memory and a territory in tension
If Ricard's exposition focuses on the ethics of use, Mediterranean Manifesto shifts her gaze towards the ethics of territoryCurated by Mariona Rubio SabatésThe exhibition brings together more than thirty artists, designers and artisans who work with ceramics, glass, wood, basketry, mosaics and textiles, combining traditional crafts and contemporary material experimentation.
The exhibition space is conceived as a sensory landscape which appeals both to memory and to the fragility of the Mediterranean today. Far from the tourist postcard, the story underscores very tangible threats: pollution, overexploitation of resources, mass tourism and urban development pressure that strain the region's balance and endanger its ecosystems and cultures.
In this context, craftsmanship is presented as a resistance tool and carefully crafted. Self-published pieces, collectible designs, and objects born in local workshops shape an imaginary world that reclaims the imperfection and the mark of being handmade as an alternative to accelerated and impersonal production.
Participants include names from a new generation that questions conventional beauty standards, such as Casa Antillón, Emilie Lisi, Valeria Vasi, Worn Studio, Justine Menard or Sofia KarnukaevaAmong others. His works explore the possibility of a Mediterranean that, instead of remaining merely a decorative style, functions as disputed cultural archive and as a scenario for possible futures.
Guatemala, guest: textiles as a living identity
The third central exhibition, Textile art in Guatemala: design and identity, introduces a journey of more than 10.000 kilometers to connect the Mediterranean with Central AmericaGuatemala participates as guest country and transforms the Fernán Gómez into an immersive environment of suspended fabrics, color and sound reminiscent of markets like that of chichicastenango, considered one of the most vibrant in the region.
The exhibition, conceived by Idonika with architecture of Amarillo Studio and curated by Emiliano Valdés for INGUAT, it brings together huipiles from different communitiesTechniques such as backstrap loom weaving, jasper or brocade, visual projections and a sound piece that incorporates Voices and records of weaversThe installation invites us to understand textiles not as folkloric relics, but as sophisticated system of design, communication and memory.
During the presentation, the Guatemala's Minister of Tourism, Harris WhitbeckHe insisted that this textile heritage does not belong to the past, but is present and future, both for the Mayan communities and for the contemporary design within and outside the country. The exhibition highlights that each textile encodes stories, symbols, gender roles, hierarchies, and alliances, becoming a living language constantly updated.
With free admission between February 6 and May 3, the exhibition fits in with the festival's line of understanding design as cultural heritage in motion and as a tool for intergenerational transmission, something that is also reflected in other projects in the program.
Awards, trade fair and professional program: design as an ecosystem
Beyond the exhibitions, the Madrid Design Festival 2026 strengthens its professional dimension through the Madrid Design Festival Awards, which this year recognizes highly influential careers: the industrial designer Konstantin Grcic, the gallery owner and curator Rossana Orlandi and the architect and popularizer Juli CapellaThree profiles that represent different forms of impact on European design culture.
One of the big new developments of the year is FORMA Design Fair, presented as the first Spanish fair specifically dedicated to collectible designIt will take place from March 4-8 at Matadero Madrid and aspires to be a meeting platform between studios, galleries, brands and artisans, in a market segment that is still emerging in Spain but has a significant presence in other European countries.
In parallel, the program Madrid Design PRO It focuses on the festival's professional sessions, with workshops and presentations on biotechnology, new materials, social impact, sustainability and artificial intelligence applied to design. These sessions aim to bring together creative professionals, researchers, and companies, connecting design practice with current technological and social transformations.
The urban deployment is completed with Madrid Designs, a map that activates studios, showrooms, museums and neighborhood spaces, and this year incorporates Chamberi , the new design districtRoutes, open days, and specific activities in different areas of the city help to understand the festival as distributed experience and not only as a set of major exhibition milestones.
MINI and the Design Award: projects to improve urban life
Among the private support, MINI resumes the role of Official sponsor of the Madrid Design Festival 2026reinforcing a collaboration that has been growing stronger edition after edition. Within this framework, the brand organizes the 6th Edition of the MINI Design Award, focused on projects that address, from a design perspective, How to improve the quality of life in cities.
The following have submitted applications in this call for proposals more than 60 proposals Divided between professional categories and emerging talent, the proposals address issues such as mobility, public space, well-being, resource use, and social inclusion. The selection of finalists will be announced in the coming days, and the Winners will be announced on February 19th at a gala that will take place in the Free Institution of Education, a space with strong educational and cultural symbolism in Madrid.
During the event, attendees will also be able to visit “Life's Road / Highway of Life”, an installation by the Madrid-based artist and interior designer Iria Martínez, which proposes a conceptual journey where design, experience and movement They intersect to rethink the way we relate to everyday journeys in the city.
MINI will also take advantage of the new environment of FORMA Design Fair Madrid to present a special collaboration for the first time: the new edition MINI x Paul Smithwhich brings into dialogue the automotive brand's characteristic engineering with the vision of the British designer. Beyond the object itself, the company frames its presence at the festival within the BMW Group's cultural commitment in Spainlinking mobility, design and local creativity.
Design and social transformation: the case of TetuánCrea
The festival map isn't limited to the city center or the big brands. Emerging platforms like TetuánCrea They consolidate another aspect of the Madrid Design Festival: the one that understands design as tool for social and neighborhood transformationWith barely three years of existence and recently established as an association, TetuánCrea has brought together 44 partners and 30 creative studios between La Ventilla and Cuatro Caminos.
Their participation in the 2026 edition is structured around three main axes: the project “Nurseries”, a new edition of open studios and the exhibition “enLANA2”With these initiatives, the association reinforces its role as platform for cooperation between designers, neighbors, social entities and young peoplewith the festival as a showcase but also as a starting point for processes that extend beyond February.
The project “Nurseries”, developed in conjunction with the Young North Association, uses creative laboratories and processes of co-design with students and teachers from the schools in Vallecas and Fuencarral to devise a pop-up shop Titled “OFFLINE – Connecting Human Shop”, the exhibition was presented at Fiesta Design at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza. It showcases garments customized by vocational training students and objects created in collaboration with the artisan workshop. Soulemfocused on the social and labor integration of women.
Norte Joven emphasizes that this experience is important for young people. a break in the educational routine which helps them gain confidence, express themselves through other languages, and relate to their environment in a different way. According to its director, many of those who have already gone through the program acknowledge that this type of project allowed them re-evaluate their ideas and face new stages with greater confidence.
Showrooms and city branding: the Marazzi example in Madrid
Businesses linked to design also take advantage of the festival to open their doors to a wider audience. The ceramics firm marazzi joins the programming with a 300 m² showroom at the confluence of Serrano and Juan Bravo streets, designed by the studio ACPV ARCHITECTS (Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel)During the festival dates, the space is transformed into a open creative lab.
The tour starts at The Welcoming Room, an installation that recreates a domestic environment where the The kitchen acts as a social hub.In this setting, large ceramic slabs coexist with collections such as Crogiolo, inspired by artisanal imperfections, and surfaces that resemble marble or three-dimensional reliefs generated with state-of-the-art technologies.
In addition to the exhibition area, the showroom hosts a program of workshops and guided tours distributed throughout February and early March. Sessions are included on artificial intelligence applied to design with Virginia Núñez Machado, encounters that explore the relationship between ceramics and textiles with Lucía Güemes and Casamance, and guided tours to explore the space. All activities require bookThis allows for controlled capacity and closer attention to attendees.
With these initiatives, the festival also promotes an image of Madrid as benchmark setting for innovation in interior design and materials, giving visibility to how companies integrate research, brand storytelling and cultural programming.
A festival that can be viewed from both the inside and the outside.
With almost a decade of experience, the Madrid Design Festival has become, at times, difficult to fully graspHowever, this expansion reveals a specific way of understanding design: not as a discipline confined to museums or fairs, but as something that It goes through the house, the street, the company, and the neighborhoodFrom the table lamp to the community fabric, from the industrial object to the Mediterranean territory or Guatemalan textiles.
In interviews given to specialized media outlets and radio stations such as Capital Radio, its director, Álvaro MatíasRemember that the festival was born relying on a existing ecosystem in the cityChanges in urban planning, interior design, hospitality, and retail showed how design was transforming Madrid even before the festival itself existed. The motto “Redesigning the world” It was conceived precisely to accommodate that diversity of approaches and disciplines.
Between awards, fairs, neighborhood projects, showrooms and international exhibitions, the 2026 edition offers a broad overview of the place that design occupies today in Spain and in EuropeMore than a showcase of new products, the festival functions as a relationship map in which the ethics of use, material memory, textile heritage, the collectables market, education, technology, and urban commitment intersect, making it clear that designing, ultimately, involves making decisions about how we want to live.
