Helsinki Design Week takes over Helsinki from 28 August to 6 September. The 2026 theme, The Oncoming Other, invites visitors to experience encounters and shared urban spaces. The festival week marks the beginning of a two-year collaboration with the City of Helsinki to revitalize the city centre. Ticket sales and registration for festival events are now open.
Towards a more vibrant city centre
Helsinki Design Week launches a two-year project to revitalize Helsinki’s city centre with a seminar at the Event Square in Helsinki City Hall on 1 September 2–4 pm. The free seminar is open to everyone interested in the topic.
For decades, city centres have been built around retail, offices and public infrastructure. Digital commerce, remote work, changing consumer habits and new ways of living are challenging this established model.
A vibrant city centre cannot be created simply by developing streets, squares and parks. We must also ask what happens to ground-floor commercial spaces as banks, clothing stores and other traditional services disappear. Helsinki Design Week brings together experts in urban planning, business, design and culture to explore new solutions for the future of the city. The seminar is free and open to all.
The theme will also be explored at HDW Lab, located at the corner of Kluuvikatu and Aleksanterinkatu. Festival visitors can take part in workshops exploring the future of the city centre (2–4 September). Registration for workshops open in week 35. The programme is organized in collaboration with the City of Helsinki, WSP, Silt and CoPlanAI.
Design Market, PechaKucha Night and ticket sales
The festival week kicks off with Design Market, which this year offers more than incredible warehouse sale finds. Design Market Workshops invite visitors to learn hands-on skills from professionals in the field, with workshops ranging from drawing to textile repair techniques and a new life for old clothes. No previous experience is required. At the Cable Factory, HDW Children’s Design Week offers hands-on activities for the youngest visitors through three different walk-in workshops.
One of Helsinki Design Week’s most anticipated events, PechaKucha Night, will take place at the prestigious Finnish House of Nobility on 4 September. Speakers include Paris-based designer Marianna Ladreyt, who works at the intersection of furniture, object and fashion design, and Helsinki-based restaurateur Laura Styyra, known for the restaurant Kuurna.
Ticket sales for Design Market Workshops and PechaKucha Night are now open. Tickets are available here.
Open Studios, Design Diplomacy and registration
Curious city dwellers, design professionals and students will be treated to a guided Open Studios tour this year (28 August and 4 September). Open Studios offers opportunities to get inspired by and explore studios across different fields of design. You can explore the participating studios in advance here. Register for the guided tour via this link. Studios can also be visited independently during the afternoon.
The countries and speakers taking part in Design Diplomacy have now been announced on the event page. At the Residence of the Embassy of Ireland, Studio Saol’s Creative Director Brett O’Mahony will meet Finnish photographic artist Ananya Tanttu. At the Embassy of Belgium, Flemish artist Nel Verbeke, whose work explores emotions, will meet Sini Rinne-Kanto, a curator, researcher and doctoral researcher specialising in post-war design history. Design Diplomacy events are free of charge but require registration.
New HDW Meeting Points announced
Instead of a single main venue, Helsinki Design Week will be built around several HDW Meeting Points across central Helsinki this year. In addition to the HDW Lab, the Meeting Points include the installations Marimekko and Futuro at Helsinki Design Week and the Aalto 90 Pavilion, the street food pop-up Wild Mushroom Bar by Sami Tallberg, and the AD Museum space at Eteläranta 6. Explore all HDW Meeting Points here.
A guided tour of the Meeting Points will take place on 3 September at 4 pm and run for approximately 2.5 hours. The tour offers an introduction to the festival’s different locations and requires advance registration.
Wild Mushroom Bar by Sami Tallberg
To celebrate the early September harvest, Helsinki Design Week is bringing award-winning chef and author Sami Tallberg’s Wild Mushroom Bar by Sami Tallbergto the city centre. Inspired by Madrid’s renowned mushroom restaurant El Cisne Azul, the pop-up street kitchen focuses exclusively on wild mushrooms and will open at Aleksanterinkatu 9, in front of Kluuvi.
Wild Mushroom Bar is a collaboration between several creative partners. The project brings together designer Lauri Johansson, graphic designer Ilkka Kärkkäinen, and the companies Metos, Vaarnii, Durat and Saas Instruments. The event is also made possible by Kluuvi, which is providing the space and supporting the collaboration.
Wild Mushroom Bar will be open to the public for just four days, 2–5 September from 12 noon to 7 pm. In addition to mushroom dishes, the bar will also offer wine. No reservations. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis.
From an object to an architectural experience
To mark the 90th anniversary of Alvar Aalto’s iconic vase, Iittala and Hydro bring the Aalto 90 Pavilion to Helsinki Design Week: a seven-metre aluminium structure following the vase’s silhouette.
Designed with Lars Beller Fjetland and TABLEAU CPH and built with low-carbon aluminium from Hydro, the pavilion sits at the meeting point of Finnish design history, architecture and material innovation. For Helsinki Design Week, it is the setting for an exhibition by photographer Arno Rafael Minkkinen, presented by Iittala as part of The Spirit of Aalto.
For more than five decades, Minkkinen has photographed the relationship between the human body and the natural world, working without assistants or digital manipulation. Here he turns to another lasting Finnish form: the Aalto Vase.
He returns to selected works from his archive and pairs them with new photographs made for this project. Shown as diptychs, the images move between past and present, body and object, nature and design. Rather than photographing the vase itself, Minkkinen responds to the spirit of the vase. The exhibition is part of The Spirit of Aalto, Iittala’s anniversary-year series inviting contemporary artists to interpret the vase’s legacy in their own practice.
Inside the pavilion, architecture, photography and design meet across generations, serving as a reminder that this iconic design isn’t fixed in the past, but is a form still capable of producing new ideas, 90 years on.
