No prizes for guessing the topic of this festival: the Vienna Design Week does what it says on the label, with an eclectic array of events across the city.
- Annual international festival of design held throughout Vienna
- Features regular themes and one-off tracks
- Festival HQ moves each year
- For both professionals and the curious layperson
- 2026 dates: Sept 25 – Oct 4
- Book tickets for the MAK design museum*
- See also:
- Vienna in September & October
- Design exhibitions in Vienna
What’s the DESIGN WEEK all about?
(Urban Food track back at a previous event; press photo © Herd Open Kitchen – Vienna Design Week)
Design Week showcases design projects, innovations, processes, and approaches through a wide range of exhibitions, workshops, lectures, tours, and more.
In doing so, the festival presents design as an interdisciplinary endeavour, where aesthetics, sociopolitics, and practical application all meet (perhaps for coffee served out of remarkably elegant yet entirely usable mugs).
Each year has specific tracks and core themes, some consistent across festivals. The regular Urban Food & Design track, for example, explores new concepts in the realm of local food production, distribution, and consumption.
A strong international flavour always runs through the programme.
(Design is a strong focus of the lovely MAK museum on Stubenring)
The festival HQ shifts each year, and 2025 found it in the former workshops and showrooms of a car dealership on Wiedner Hauptstraße in Vienna’s 4th district.
The previous year, the HQ was in the DOCKS business complex (Landstraßer Gürtel 49 & 51) within Village im Dritten: an ongoing large urban development project with an array of residential, business, educational and green spaces.
Although the HQ hosts many activities, Design Week events take place throughout the city. Numerous partners contribute everything from exhibitions to one-off talks.
So you have relevant museums like the MAK or the Furniture Museum participating, but also designers, commercial entities (Lobmeyr were on board in 2025, for example) and many other organisations and locations.
For full details of the festival and the wide-ranging programme, visit the official website.
2026 dates & tickets
I don’t have 2026 details at the time of writing, other than the dates: September 25th to October 4th. Ticketing requirements typically vary on an event-by-event basis, so check that official website for details.