Salone Internazionale del Mobile - 21st to 26th April 2026

The leading international event for the design industry will be held from 21st to 26th April, at Milan’s Rho Fiera fairgrounds. Following the 2025 human-centric campaign Thought for Humans devised by the sensitive, documentarist American photographer Bill Durgin, the Salone del Mobile.Milano is continuing its process of reflection on the meaning of design with A Matter of Salone, the communication campaign for the 2026 edition. While design was explored last year as a language in the service of people, the starting point for this year is even more original: matter. Matter that can be touched, read and interpreted. Matter that preserves memory while also concealing as-yet undiscovered potential. This ambivalence is what forms the basis for A Matter of Salone, a collective project by Motel409 involving six contemporary creative figures: the photographers Charles Negre, Eduard Sánchez Ribot and Alecio Ferrari, and the set designers Studio Végété, Laura Doardo and Stilema Studio. The project has generated a stratified system of images, built by several different hands, in which each intervention amplifies the common vision. The approach was deliberately multidisciplinary, in a bid to convey the complexity of the initial idea through a language made up of matter, light, gesture and transformation. The result is imagery that channels both concreteness and abstraction, a visual composition capable of evoking as well as explaining, deeply connected to the culture of design.

Maria Porro, President of the Salone del Mobile.Milano, had this to say: “What we were trying to achieve with A Matter of Salone was to put matter firmly back at the centre as the origin of design thinking. Living matter, that allows itself to be interrogated, transformed and navigated. This campaign is an invitation to see design not just as a result, but as a collective process, which takes shape in the dialogue between hands, knowledge and visions. This is how the Salone continues to narrate its own time: starting from what really matters.”

Ingenuity, vision, innovation, sustainable excellence and emotion make up the familiar lexicon of the companies and brands that exhibit at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, which has now been proved to be increasingly more global, inclusive and in dialogue with the entire creative and productive furnishing system. Each year, the trade fair gives shape to its mission as a laboratory of experimentation and cross-pollination, a place to meet, to interface and create new business opportunities. It is here that prototypes and innovations in terms of furnishings, domestic spaces and lifestyles are presented: bedrooms, living and dining areas, entrance corridors and service areas, outdoor spaces with their furniture and cupboards, upholstereds, tables and chairs set the scene for a narrative that starts with this room, exploring how the way we live is changing and, consequently, home living and furnishing.