Rise of Design Festivals: How Many Are Too Many?

In a world rife with glossy furniture and abstract architectural installations at every design week, there is a need to question the creative and sustainable impact of these events and the products they exhibit. By Arshan Hussain

The latest edition of Salone del Mobile.Milano opened to the usual buzz in April 2025, reaffirming Milan’s place at the heart of the global design conversation. With an impressive attendance of 302,548 visitors and more than 2,100 exhibitors from 37 countries, the world’s largest furniture and design trade fair continues to grow—not just in numbers, but in ambition and influence. That growth, sustained since its inaugural edition in 1961, is emblematic of a broader trend: the global proliferation of design, architecture, and art events.

From biennales and triennials to design weeks, expos, and festivals, such gatherings have surged in both number and scale in recent years. These events — once niche or regional — now serve as vital cultural barometers, bringing together practitioners, institutions, and publics in a shared celebration of creative innovation. The Salone may be one of the oldest and grandest, but it is part of a much larger, increasingly interconnected ecosystem that’s reshaping how we encounter design on the world stage.

Over the past two decades, design festivals have exploded in number. From global flagships like Milan Design Week, London Design Festival, and Dutch Design Week to newer, regional events in cities like Cape Town, Seoul, Mexico City, Dubai and Bangkok, design is increasingly celebrated as a cultural force and commercial opportunity. The broader public and businesses now recognize design’s value beyond aesthetics — as a problem-solving and innovation tool, while cities view design festivals as engines for tourism, urban branding, and creative economy stimulation. And at the other spectrum, platforms like Instagram turn installations and exhibitions into viral content, incentivising visually stunning but often shallow experiences.

Alongside the Salone, the Venice Biennale and Maison & Objet were some of the earliest prominent design shows until the early 1990s. It is particularly the last two or three decades that witnessed an exponential boom in these events. By the late 1990s, major cities began vying for recognition as creative hubs, which introduced the first ‘city-wide design’ fairs. In the next two decades, design found itself at its most commercialised and globalised, with an expanded international circuit of festivals dotting the planet—most of them a rehashed version of their precedents. With the advent of social media and, thus, increased visibility, such events have become almost ritualistic for design enthusiasts.

Beyond the usual exhibitions, design shows serve product launches, panel discussions, workshops, open studio tours, and exclusively elitist invitation-only parties in their menu.

Many of these shows take over a whole city or a region wherein regular neighbourhoods are advertised as ‘design districts’, making such fests accessible for people from non-design backgrounds.

Cross-cultural dialogues, particularly, received a much-needed impetus, especially at the Salone Milano 2025 where Annalisa Rosso, Editorial Director and Cultural Events Advisor at Salone del Mobile.Milano who played a pivotal role in shaping the cultural and intellectual direction of the world’s foremost design fair spoke about the importance of it: “Cross-cultural dialogue is not only enriching — it is fundamental to shaping a design culture that is truly responsive to the complexities of our time. By bringing together different experiences and visions, we are able to question established paradigms, uncover unexpected synergies, and foster new forms of innovation.”

Innovation or Imitation? Rethinking the Role of Design Festivals

After a brief subsiding period during the Covid-19 pandemic, the world is back to experiencing a deluge of design shows in all shapes and sizes. We are entering a phase of oversaturation not only in that there are too many of such events happening around us but also in what is being displayed in the name of design innovation and uniqueness.

The rise of design festivals has had a profound effect on designers and the way they create, produce, and show design. In a highly competitive market, these events offer the perfect platform for exhibiting one’s portfolio of products to a range of viewers—from the highbrows in the field to potential customers and media. “The fairs, with huge footfalls, are created to network and connect with B2B and B2C customers where long-term relationships can be created. [They] also play a big role in adding to a brand’s marketing and growth,” says Preeti Singh, Brand Growth Advisor and former Brand Director at India Design ID, a popular design week that happens in Delhi and Mumbai every year.

“It is true that design shows are coming up everywhere. But it is a direction that the market has to take because that is where the money is. The design sector has seen huge growth, with interior design currently a $140 billion market globally. International brands are seeking newer markets like India and the Middle East for the large number of buyers they provide,” adds Singh.

“These events spark new perspectives, foster creativity and connect innovators, ultimately pushing the boundaries of design,” says Sajal Lamba, Co-Founder & Director of Wriver, a high-end luxury furniture brand based out of Gurugram, India.

Yet, barring a few standouts, design and architecture shows have become grand spectacles of architectural installations, furniture pieces, and products, some of which are either subtle iterations of classic works or unnecessary abstractions with little pragmatism. To stand out in the overpopulated world of design, some of the displays are compromising on meaning, practicality, and freshness. A wide promotion of the design fairs on social media has led the designers to seek acknowledgement in digital engagement, media attention, and commercial sponsorship, instead of criticism from within the industry. This has resulted in an abundance of Instagrammable products that are sapped of longevity and essence when the focus should be on research-driven design.

“While striking visuals capture attention in a world of shrinking attention spans, there’s a growing void in meaningful, responsible design,” notes Lamba. “Lately, the repetition of the same products across multiple festivals has led to a sense of disillusionment, diminishing the core purpose of these events. By following a specific theme, organisers can avoid redundancy and nurture the intent behind these curated experiences,” says Joya Nandurdikar, Founding Partner at Untitled Design & Furgonomics, a New Delhi-based multidisciplinary design practice that works closely with artisans and craftsmen.

A walk through any of the typical design festivals ends up as an overwhelming dump of conceptual designs and prototypes, few of which move beyond the exhibition space.

“Thoughtful design isn’t just about aesthetics; it’s about creating experiences that intuitively respond to human needs,” says Lamba. Such products, designed keeping in mind their aesthetic appeal, are befitting for the fleeting trends that float online, but, at times, struggle to find buyers outside.

“Rather than shifting the focus entirely [from aesthetics], design festivals should strike a balance celebrating aesthetic innovation while keeping the creative spirit alive,” says Nandurdikar.

The argument would not be complete without mentioning the environmental concern attached to the design festivals. In a time of a climate emergency such as ours, there is a clear indifference about the carbon footprint associated with the manufacturing process of the exhibited products.

“Sustainability and material consciousness need to take center stage, shifting the conversation from aesthetics alone to thoughtful innovation that balances form, function, and impact,” says Lamba. “Craftsmanship, sustainability and green design are now huge pursuits in design, and they are innovations in response to the times we live in,” says Singh.

A handful of designers or architects who exhibit sustainable practices in their work have little effect on the unsustainable ways of the industry. Our design, art, and architecture festivals are leaving piles of exhibition waste behind with nowhere to go except the landfills. Moreover, the sponsorships for such events are taken over by automobile and non-design brands that are inadvertently promoting mass manufacturing instead of sustainable practices.

Ironically, sustainability and green design may be the most used words at the panel discussions held at almost all of the design shows. Yet the preachy part takes the better of most of the speakers and practicing consciously gets left behind at the stage.

However, there are design weeks that have kept the spirit of meaningful design innovation intact. In 2014, Dundee, a city in Scotland, was recognised by UNESCO as the UK’s first ‘design city’.

The city has since leveraged the recognition to stir its design and architectural heritage scene, a part of which is the Dundee Design Festival. What makes the show exceptional is its accessibility, inclusive attitude, and zero-waste commitment. Students from a top art school located in the city and people from local communities are among the 180 designers who exhibit their work at the fest. With this, the festival is encouraging skill growth, employment, and capacity building while bringing in the local flavour and variety to the exhibitions.

Similarly, Copenhagen’s design show 3 Days of Design is free of tickets and open to anyone irrespective of their professional background, paving the way for design diversity.

While they help in keeping oneself abreast of the latest in design and architecture, at this point the design festivals need to shift their focus from serving endless newness to putting energies into curating meaningfully.

“As this market of design fairs matures further, there will be a greater need for them to take a point of view on their curation, instead of only providing a physical marketplace,” comments Singh. “The organisers have a bigger responsibility as they help shape the design ecosystem substantially. With the means and the power to curate discerningly, [the onus is on them] to promote newer ideas and discourse and provide a stable and vibrant platform for architects, brands and designers to showcase something that is away from the norm.”

The current model, which rewards quality over quantity, ought to filter down to fewer ideas that are realistic, transformative, and influential. With their spotlight and fame, such fests can highlight and provide more space for products, projects, and conversations that champion social, cultural, and environmental causes.

Instead of stacking design brands and serving Apéritif extravagantly, these gatherings can act as points of pausing and reflecting on our design practices. The emphasis must shift towards finding solutions to some of the most pressing questions like climate and its relationship with the materials and built environment.

Exploring more creative and carbon-efficient ways of producing, transporting, and exhibiting products at such events can benefit the design world and the planet at large. For its 2025 edition, the Venice Architecture Biennale has launched a Circular Economy Manifesto aiming to host a sustainable exhibition. Here is to hoping that the Biennale lights the way in guiding the industry to a more creative and sustainable way of running a design festival.