Dutch Design Week 2026 returns to Eindhoven from 17 to 25 October with a theme that goes back to the core of the discipline: R.A.W., short for Rebel Authentic Worth. At a time when so much of daily life feels optimised, filtered and packaged, DDW turns its attention to what can’t be fully controlled. The idea is simple. Design doesn’t start with perfection, it starts with the urge to break open existing structures, try things out and ask questions.

For nine days, the 26th edition of the festival will show not only finished work but also early, rough iterations. Some projects grow across several editions, so returning visitors can follow how they develop over time.

Discover Dutch Design Week 2025

Dutch Design Week 2025. Photo Max Kneefel, courtesy Dutch Design Week

R.A.W.: the DDW 2026 theme explained

The organisers point out that the word “design” is now used more widely than ever, and sometimes that blurs what makes it distinctive. With R.A.W., DDW chooses the unpolished and the experimental, and puts the design process itself at the centre: questioning, testing and opening up alternatives.

Eindhoven fits this approach well. The city has long been in transition and has built a close bond with design, with a habit of imagining, making, testing and starting over. Its industrial past works less as a backdrop and more as the ground on which a growing design ecosystem keeps building new connections. As DDW puts it, design at this edition can be confronting, uncomfortable, hopeful, or simply beautiful.

Discover Dutch Design Week 2024

Sonic Maze, Grand Project Dutch Design Week 2025. Photo Max Kneefel, courtesy Dutch Design Week

Dutch Design Week 2026 Beacons: Emma van der Leest and Anab Jain

Each year DDW names its Beacons, pioneers who put together a project, event or exhibition for both the public and professionals. Past Beacons include Julia Watson, Piet Hein Eek, Lidewij Edelkoort and Yinka Ilori. For 2026, the Dutch Beacon is biodesigner Emma van der Leest and the international Beacon is Anab Jain of Superflux. Both share a focus on caring for the planet, though they work at very different scales.

Emma van der Leest (born 1991) is a Rotterdam-based biodesigner, researcher, lecturer and author who works with living organisms such as fungi, bacteria and algae to develop fully compostable materials. She founded BlueCity Lab, a circular hub for designers and entrepreneurs. In Hall D of the Klokgebouw she will set up The Biodesign Warehouse – Department Store For Life, which brings the familiar format of a department store together with science and biology. The aim is to show how biodesign is already moving into everyday life and scaling up into an industry.

Anab Jain co-founded Superflux in 2009 with Jon Ardern. The studio is known for speculative design and experiential futures, and in 2022 received the Royal Designer for Industry title from the Royal Society of Arts. Its work has been shown at MoMA, the V&A, Tate Modern, the Vitra Design Museum and the National Museum of China. Jain, who teaches at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, will give a lecture built around one question: what role can design play in a changing world, shaped by climate extremes and technological and geopolitical shifts? Her answer points to design as a way to make possible futures tangible, something people can step into rather than just talk about.

Emma van der Leest and Anab Jain

Eight large-scale installations across Eindhoven

Working with Bureau Binnenstad Eindhoven, DDW turns the city centre and the Strijp-S district into an open-air exhibition. The eight installations came out of an open call for designers and are free to visit throughout the week. Together they form a walking route that touches on inclusion, community life, public space and health.

In the city centre

• BLAUPAUSE, Kollektiv Plus X (18 Septemberplein): three trailers turn into blue wooden structures, a stage, a grandstand and a kiosk, showing how public space can take on new functions for a short time.
• Huis, een installatie over drempels, Studio Kars en Boom x RAUM (Nieuwe Emmasingel): a colourful play space on wheels where children with and without disabilities can play together without barriers.
• FIELD, Isabel + Helen (Stadhuisplein): wind-powered turbines on wheels that visitors can move around, creating patterns that keep changing.
• Consultation Room of the Future, Atelier Van Lieshout (Markt): a seven-metre golden bird perched on a giant egg, unveiled on 28 August to open the cultural season. Inside the egg, visitors can get things off their chest, while the work asks whether AI and robotics really help mental health, or whether human contact matters more.
• Waiting for the Bus, Luca Ortmann (Demer): yellow steel tubes shaped into a spot to sit, lean and wait, a reminder that pauses are part of city life.

Umbra Pavilion, Grand Project at Dutch Design Week 2025

In Strijp-S

• Blind Spots, Fairspace × Studio Shruthi Venkat × Sagitta Creatives: a web of cameras, screens and voices that changes as visitors leave their responses behind, bringing up hidden differences in how safety is experienced depending on identity.
• Colonic Cleansing Clinic, Atelier Van Lieshout: an intestine-shaped structure that looks at how illness, treatment and recovery could fit into daily life. Like the golden bird, it belongs to Van Lieshout’s project Sanitas Futurum on the future of wellbeing and healthcare.
• Electric Grand, Antoon Versteegde + Bart van Dongen: an electric piano opened up into a bamboo structure, with each note coming from its own speaker. Visitors stand inside the instrument while the two artists improvise.

Polestar Design Rides and We Harvest Wind

DDW 2026 also launches a multi-year partnership with Polestar. The Polestar Design Rides will run daily from 17 to 25 October, carrying visitors between DDW venues in cars topped with design objects. At the Klokgebouw, artist Thijs Biersteker presents We Harvest Wind, an interactive installation on renewable energy, and Polestar will show its new Polestar 4 SUV to the Dutch public for the first time.

Why visit

For nine days the whole city gives itself over to design, with an open, curious and hands-on mood that feels closer to a lab than a trade fair.
Built on Eindhoven’s industrial past, the week brings together designers, companies, schools and researchers in an ecosystem where new ideas, partnerships and talent keep coming through. With the theme R.A.W., DDW 2026 shows design as it takes shape, from rough first ideas to finished work.
Eight large-scale installations turn Eindhoven’s city centre and Strijp-S into a free open-air design route.
The Beacons, Emma van der Leest and Anab Jain, bring biodesign and speculative futures into a public debate.
Works by Atelier Van Lieshout, Thijs Biersteker and young designers take on health, inclusion and energy.
Polestar Design Rides make it easy to move around the festival venues from 17 to 25 October.

Dutch Design Week dates and more
October 17-25, 2026

• Location: Eindhoven, with main hubs in the city centre and Strijp-S
• Size: 350,000+ visitors, 2,500+ designers
• Theme: R.A.W. (Rebel Authentic Worth)
• Beacons: Emma van der Leest and Anab Jain (Superflux)
• Public installations: eight, free to visit

Dutch Design Week (DDW) locations are generally open daily from 11 am to 6 pm, though hours can vary slightly by specific venue or exhibition
Paid admission: discover more on Dutch Design Week website DDW.nl