The Salone in the city Just as it does every year, the Salone del Mobile.Milano will also encompass the city, which becomes an active part of its narrative, from the opening evening at La Scala to the talks at the Design Kiosk, a wander through the manifesto buildings of Architectures of Freedom and the new City Guide, designed to be kept in your pocket even after the event.
The opening evening at La Scala
For the sixth year running, the Salone is renewing its ties with the Teatro alla Scala Foundation. The opening evening will feature a concert by the Teatro alla Scala Orchestra, conducted by Michele Mariotti, with Giuseppe Albanese at the piano. The programme will range from Mozart to Čajkovskij, marking the launch of the week with an event bringing together musical excellence and contemporary culture and reaffirming the dialogue between design, music and cultural institutions.
Design Kiosk: publishing, public discourse and community
The Design Kiosk will be back in Piazza della Scala as a cultural hub and lively stopping place. An open-air publishing-based space, where design is narrated through books, magazines and conversations, building a programme that covers every day of the week.
Curated by Reading Room, the programme includes a series of meetings blending architecture, publishing and visual research, held at 6.30 pm from 17th to 26th April. A conversation with Bianca Felicori will kick off the series, introducing the Architectures of Freedom project and her urban itinerary. This will be followed by conversations on the subject of independent publishing and its contemporary evolutions, featuring protagonists such as Cose Journal and NONSENSE, exploring new narrative languages and formats.
The narrative will continue with international perspectives on living and on design. Ark Journal will explore the relationship between space, sensitivity and narration, while Holiday Interiors and Gardens will put together an imaginary home that crosses different eras and geographies. With C Magazine, an iconic object such as the chair will become an editorial device, capable of generating a multiplicity of perspectives. The series will wrap up with Never Too Small, which will propose a reflection on contemporary living, in which quality, ingenuity and sustainability will serve to redefine domestic design.
Architectures of Freedom: five locations, a fresh reading of Milan
In Piazza Sant’Eustorgio, one of the busiest locations in the city during the Salone, a newsstand entirely dedicated to the event will become the starting point for an urban itinerary put together by Bianca Felicori, founder of Forgotten Architecture. The project, developed for the Salone, will invite people to cross the city by touching five emblematic buildings, transformed into chapters of a contemporary story.
The route will take in the Sormani Library by Arrigo Arrighetti, the Collegio di Milano by Marco Zanuso, the Casa a Tre Cilindri by Bruno Morassutti and Angelo Mangiarotti, the Church of San Giovanni Bono by Arrigo Arrighetti and the building by Luigi Moretti in Corso Italia. Key milestones in the history of Milanese design, all different in scale, language and context.
At each stage, installations created by K-WAY featuring light textiles will be implanted onto the architecture as temporary presences, conveying mass and lightness, permanence and the ephemeral. What emerges will be a city that is not merely limited to being observed, but is crisscrossed and reinterpreted, where architecture becomes an experience and a narrative device.
Salone in the City: a guide to reading Milan
Available in printed and digital format, Salone in the City is not just a guide to events, but a tribute to Milan, beyond the temporary dimension of the most international week of the year. It starts at Fiera Milano Rho, continuing into the city, inviting the reader to experience beloved places, discoveries and urban rituals by visiting 150 locations gathered into a collective map informed by word of mouth. Milan itself is entrusted with the task of narrating the areas and highlights worth visiting during Design Week. In a fresh passing of the baton with the latest edition of Art Week, the guide to major exhibitions – running from April until the summer – flags up an increasingly lively system of museums and foundations. There will be no shortage of showrooms for Salone exhibitors: actual urban showcases illustrating the future of living, 365 days a year. There will be a specific focus on Common Archive – La Notte Bianca del Progetto, which on the evening of 24th April will invite people to discover an extensive and globally unique heritage, transforming memory into a shared experience. A Salone del Mobile.Milano Observatory event, supported by the Lombard Region and the Municipality of Milan.
April 21 – 26, 2026
https://www.salonemilano.it/en
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