Lake Como Design Festival 2026: Exhibitions, Villas & Studio Visits

Lake Como Design Festival 2026 returns for its eighth edition from September 12 to 20, opening villas, design archives, ateliers and architectural landmarks across Como and the lake. This year's theme, Confine, runs through nine days of exhibitions, installations, talks and studio visits, with Villa del Grumello and Villa Saporiti among the principal venues.

Ico Parisi's Design Archive opens to visitors, Draga & Aurel welcome the public inside their Como atelier, and Harry Miesbauer Yacht Design opens its studio. In Laglio, the historic Cantiere Ernesto Riva hosts a project by Central Saint Martins students examining the future of navigation on Lake Como.

Design Archives at Villa del Grumello

At Villa del Grumello, Future in the Past brings historic archives into conversation with contemporary design. Among the highlights, the Carla Badiali Archive presents drawings connected to the Italian artist and textile designer's collaborations with Hubert de Givenchy and Pierre Balmain.

A 1948 bar cabinet by Italian Architect and Designer Paolo Buffa brings another piece of design history into the villa. Its engraved decoration reproduces drawings by Neoclassical Painter Andrea Appiani for The Deeds of Napoleon, the cycle originally created for the Hall of the Caryatids at Milan's Palazzo Reale and later destroyed during the Second World War.

The exhibition continues into the surrounding park with In Nature, pairing photographs by Selene Magnolia Gatti with stories collected by Journalist Paola Manfredi from six people who left conventional city life for a closer relationship with nature.

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50 International Designers at Villa Saporiti

For the first time, the festival's Contemporary Design Selection moves into Villa Saporiti, the late-18th-century Neoclassical villa overlooking Lake Como. More than 50 designers, artists, architects, artisans, studios and galleries from around 30 countries participate in this year's selection, curated by Giovanna Massoni and directed by Festival Chief Coordinator Francesca Prandelli

Furniture and functional objects sit alongside works in ceramic, glass, textile, resin, metal, wood and biomaterials. The setting matters here. Villa Saporiti's elliptical salon and lakefront rooms bring contemporary pieces inside one of Como's distinctive 18th-century residences rather than a conventional exhibition hall.

Como’s Design Studios Open Their Doors

The Studio Visit program is where the festival becomes particularly interesting. Rather than keeping everything inside temporary exhibitions, it opens places normally associated with making, collecting, and preserving design.

Atelier Draga&Aurel opens its studio and workshop, where Draga Obradovic and Aurel K. Basedow work across collectible design and art with resin, concrete, Plexiglas, glass and metal. The Ico Parisi Design Archive also joins the program, while the former studio of late Como Artist Giuliano Collina opens for an exhibition examining his artistic relationship with Architect and Designer Ico Parisi.

Elsewhere, CASABIANCA, a contemporary house museum near the lake, screens La Casa di Cini Boeri inside rooms furnished with vintage and collectible design. Only 15 visitors are admitted to each screening.

Yacht Design on Lake Como

Lake Como's relationship with boats also enters the program. Harry Miesbauer Yacht Design opens its Como studio with models and materials from the sailing-yacht designer's projects. On September 16, Harry Miesbauer, Yacht Designer Alberto Simeone and Architect and Furniture Designer Oscar Buratti meet there for a limited-capacity discussion on design across their respective disciplines. Registration is required.

Further up the lake in Laglio, Central Saint Martins takes over the historic Cantiere Ernesto Riva from September 18 to 20. First-year students from the London school's Master of Design for Industry present Energy Poetics, developed with Volta27 around sustainable navigation and naturally occurring sources of energy. The project uses Lake Como itself as the starting point for objects designed around movement, craft and life on the water.

Textile Art and Collectibles Across Como

Lake Como Design Festival 2026 spreads into smaller Como addresses. Arte&Arte Miniartextil opens its textile-art collection by appointment and hosts a cocktail on September 18. Nosetta works with historic textile manufacturer Clerici Tessuto to show how an archival fabric travels from design and weaving into a finished bag. Meanwhile, The Storehouse of Immortal Objects brings Swiss studio Dracula into its Brutalist Como space with vintage and collectible design.

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