What makes a city a design capital today? A concentration of talent is no longer enough. Designers work internationally, creative communities stretch across national borders, and cultural identities are increasingly produced through networks rather than a handful of institutions. What matters, perhaps, is not only who works in a city, but whether that city can make those people visible as part of a shared cultural landscape.

Berlin presents an interesting paradox. Design has long existed alongside the art, architecture, fashion, music and nightlife for which the city is internationally recognised, yet its contemporary design scene has remained surprisingly difficult to perceive as a whole. There are established designers, independent studios, manufacturers, galleries and some of Germany's most influential design schools, but for years Berlin has lacked a city-wide event capable of connecting these different worlds. At the same time, the city itself has changed. Berlin's creative landscape has become increasingly international, with designers from different countries choosing the German capital as both a home and a place of production. The result feels less like a singular school of "Berlin design" than an ecosystem of different languages, backgrounds and approaches.

"Currents. Design in Berlin is the long-awaited opportunity to explore Berlin's dynamic design and interior scene."

— CURRENTS


It is precisely this multiplicity that Currents wants to make visible. Launching from September 10 to 12, 2026, the new community-based festival will bring together more than 80 participants across approximately 60 locations. Rather than concentrating them inside a fairground or exhibition hall, Currents unfolds through the places where the city's design culture is actually produced: studios, galleries, workshops, universities, showrooms and unexpected architectural spaces. "It's still far too little recognized how diverse and international Berlin's design scene has become. With Currents, there's now a platform to connect creatives with one another and showcase their work," explain founders Laura Ewert and Jasmin Jouhar, the Berlin-based journalists who developed the format together with members of the local design community.

What emerges from the programme is not so much a definitive portrait of Berlin design as evidence of its breadth. Historical manufacturers coexist with emerging studios; industrial design with collectible objects; commercial production with academic experimentation. Richard Lampert, for instance, represents a strand of German furniture culture built around collaborations with designers and the continued production of both contemporary and historically significant designs. At the other end of the spectrum, younger independent practices reveal how much the boundaries between furniture, art and material experimentation have shifted.

The interdisciplinary work of Berlin-based architect, artist and designer Thilo Reich occupies precisely this expanded territory. In Urban Tissue, presented at the Bundesstiftung Bauakademie, Reich investigates overlooked surfaces and structures found across the city, using casting, digital processes and material transformation to detach them from their original contexts.

Photo: Anne Deppe

That ambiguity is particularly visible at Maj van der Linden, a Berlin gallery operating between fine and applied arts, where collectible design and handcrafted, often unique objects are presented with a strong emphasis on material research and craftsmanship. Its forthcoming programme makes this position especially tangible. From September, the gallery will present Narratives of Making at Wohnen am Tacheles, an exhibition devoted to the stories embedded in processes of fabrication, alongside After Summer, a new seasonal showroom bringing together contemporary objects by designers and craftspeople.

These projects follow exhibitions such as Soft Reflections, which placed Dedar textiles in dialogue with collectible design, and Studio Jumi’s Neither Water Nor Land, where bicycle inner tubes, wool, silk and cotton were woven into raw steel frames to explore tensions between industrial waste and natural fibres. As the gallery describes Studio Jumi’s practice, the works operate “at the intersection of art, craft, and design,” while their beauty emerges through “traces of disruption”: irregular cuts, faded markings and the unexpected encounter between rubber and thread.

Photo: Clemens Poloczek


More than simply exhibiting functional objects, Maj van der Linden treats making itself as a cultural and artistic language—one capable of carrying narratives about labour, permanence, care and material transformation. Its presence reflects a broader shift in the design landscape, where the distinctions between gallery object, functional furniture and artistic practice are not disappearing entirely, but becoming increasingly porous and open to negotiation.

Elsewhere, Vogel Studio and Interior Dialogue bring different perspectives on contemporary interiors and object culture, while collaborations involving Berlin's universities underline the role education continues to play in shaping the city's creative identity. One particularly interesting example is MONO x UdK, a collaboration that grew out of a short-term project within the UdK's Design & Social Context course, accompanied by Johannes Seibel as External Guest Advisor in spring 2026.

“We see great value in thinking of design education as something open and
permeable rather than something that takes place within a closed sphere –
connected to the city, to inspiring places and to projects that people from a wide
range of disciplines can benefit from."

— Johannes Seibel, Mono

Photo: Ruben Riermeier


For Currents, design students Garance Pröbsting and Jan Cichon have worked with Mono to develop and build a temporary pop-up stand serving French fries and ice cream. More than simply an installation, the booth becomes the setting for the first public presentation of a new Mono product, itself designed by UdK student Oskar Poetsch. The project brings education, industry and storytelling into the same experiment: students are not simply exhibiting academic work, but actively shaping how a new industrial product enters the public sphere.

“We wanted to create a social and spatial ecosystem, creating a place where people could connect with one another, encounter Mono’s evolving perspective and engage with its role within the
design scene.”

— Garance Pröbsting, UdK

Together with initiatives such as Einfach Gut — UdK & Friends, MONO x UdK points to an idea of design education that extends beyond the university itself and into the cultural and commercial life of the city. This dialogue between established industry and emerging talent feels central to Currents' identity, reflecting a Berlin design scene where industrial production, experimentation and increasingly hybrid practices can coexist within the same platform.

Courtesy of Luis Frey

The city itself becomes part of that argument. One of Currents' most intriguing locations is the Jalousiefabrik in Kreuzberg, a previously inaccessible factory that will open during the festival to present designers working at the intersection of design and art alongside established furniture manufacturers. Rather than neutralising these objects within a conventional exhibition architecture, the industrial setting places them back into conversation with production, material and Berlin's own urban history.

The festival also offers an opportunity to rediscover pieces of the city's architectural design heritage. Eternithaus, for example, becomes part of Currents not simply as a venue but as another layer in this wider reading of Berlin through design and architecture. In this sense, moving through Currents becomes a way of encountering the city itself: not through a single exhibition, but through a network of spaces with very different histories and functions.

This decentralised model inevitably recalls the formats that have helped cities such as Milan and Copenhagen transform design weeks into cultural events extending far beyond the professional industry. Yet Currents' challenge is different. Berlin does not need to reproduce the Salone del Mobile or 3 Days of Design. Its opportunity lies precisely in finding a format that reflects the fragmented, independent and interdisciplinary character of its own creative community.

For Alberto Pallaoro, founder of DEORON, which comes to Berlin after appearances during Milan Design Week and 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen, that potential is precisely what makes the first edition significant. "This edition is a celebration of a city that inspires us endlessly, one full of talented creatives that deserves far more attention globally alongside the other major design weeks."

Courtesy of Valuarte

"We're planting a seed together with the Berlin community, working to bring this city the recognition it's long deserved."

— Alberto Pallaoro, DEORON

Pallaoro's idea of "planting a seed" perhaps gets closer to what is at stake than the conventional ambition of establishing another date on the international design calendar. Creative cities, after all, are not defined simply by the number of designers who live in them, but by the relationships, institutions and informal networks that allow individual practices to become a cultural ecosystem.


Courtesy of Naomi Elser

For Berlin, this feels particularly relevant. Its design scene mirrors the city's broader cultural identity: industrial production, collectible design, craft and experimentation coexist within an increasingly international creative community. This is perhaps where Currents finds its strongest purpose. Rather than trying to define what "Berlin design" should look like, it brings these different voices together while allowing them to remain distinct, turning a dispersed creative landscape into a visible community. In doing so,

Currents suggests a broader idea of what a design capital can be today: not a city defined by a single style or industry, but one shaped by connections, exchange and plurality. And perhaps the question is no longer whether Berlin deserves to be recognised as a design capital, but what Currents might reveal about what a design capital can mean today.

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Words: Simone Lorusso