Vienna Design Week 2026

Luxembourg will be the GAST – guest of honour – at the Vienna Design Week, in September 2026!

Luxembourg will take centre stage as Guest of Honour – GAST – at the 20^th edition of Vienna Design Week, held in Vienna, Austria, from 25 September to 4 October 2026.

The invitation comes at an important moment for Luxembourg’s design scene, which has gained visibility and momentum in recent years, alongside the continued development of its professional structures and networks. With a growing presence across international platforms, Luxembourg’s designers are contributing to an increasingly diverse contemporary design landscape.

For Vienna Design Week, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg, in collaboration with Design Luxembourg, will present a dedicated programme showcasing the breadth and diversity of Luxembourg’s design practices.

Luxembourg’s role as GAST provides a valuable opportunity to present its design scene to an international audience, while creating new opportunities for encounters and collaboration. Through a programme connecting designers, artists and professionals from Luxembourg and beyond, the initiative will highlight the distinctive perspectives emerging from Luxembourg and strengthen its place within the wider European design landscape.

Two-O-Eight: Designing Voices

Curated by Anna Loporcaro in collaboration with Design Luxembourg and organised by Kultur | lx, the exhibition Two-O-Eight: Designing Voices will form a central part of Luxembourg’s GAST programme at Vienna Design Week.

At a time when design exhibitions are defined by objects, this project moves from visibility to transmission: not what does Luxembourg design look like, but what does it sound like? Named after Radio Luxembourg’s historic 208 metres medium-wave frequency, the exhibition unfolds as a radio agora. Around thirty designers, teachers, critics and institutions speak rather than show in podcasts produced with Luxembourg’s public service Radio 100,7, structured around six thematic sections: from historical grounding and graphic identity to product and collectible design, social design, sound, and international trajectories.

Rather than representing a fixed design identity, the exhibition seeks to transmit something in motion, echoing Luxembourg’s own condition as a territory of circulation. Within the space, a temporary broadcasting station hosts live conversations and listening sessions over nine days. Visitors are not passive viewers but participants in a polyphonic score: they move through listening stations at their own rhythm, tune into a live programme, or linger in collective listening. Through the exhibition design, conceived by Rachel Hoffmann (Studio Abricot), the visitor takes on the role of the moderator – choosing which voice to hear, in what order and for how long.

Designers and experts participating in the podcasts

Alexandros Angelidis, Nicolas Boon, Ulrike Degen, Étienne Duval, Roxanne Flick, Gil Galvão, Jan Glas, Reza Kianpour, Sophie Krier, Nicole Lanners, Ruth Lorang, Isabelle Mattern, Frank Michels, Irina Moons, Juliane Morel, Dan Neven, Charles Nilles, Jules Péan, Giacomo Piovan, Miriam Rosner, Thomas Tomschak, Marie Vilay, Charl Vinz, Julie Wagener, Dunja Weber, Michel Welfringer, Cathy Wolter, Georges Zigrand.

The podcasts will be available on vinyl records on site and will also be broadcast on Radio 100,7 and Design Luxembourg websites from September 24.

Programme

Emma Hizette will host a series of live conversations at the heart of the exhibition, bringing together designers and creative practitioners from Luxembourg with their counterparts in Vienna and beyond.

• September 25 at 12:00 | Christophe de la Fontaine (Designer) x Christophe & Wolfgang Köchert (Juweliere A.E.Köchert) – Passionswege, VDW 2026 (LIVE)

• September 25 at 15:00 | Nadine Clemens (Design Luxembourg) x Elli Schindler & Christian Schöttel (Designaustria) (LIVE)

• September 26 at 12:00 | Annick Kieffer (Studio Polenta) x Jana Frantal & Hilal Avci (SIRENE Studio) (LIVE)

• September 26 at 15:00 | Julie Conrad (Julie Conrad Design Studio) x Peter Umgeher (Vandasye) (LIVE)

• September 26 at 17:00 | Performance by Aamar during the public official opening of the VDW

• September 27 at 12:00 | Rachel Hoffmann (Studio Abricot) x Gabriel Roland (Vienna Design Week) (LIVE)

• September 29 at 12:00 | Sophie Krier: Making Radio (LISTENING SESSION)

  #1 Sophie Krier Podcast 006, 2026

  #2 Talk Radio Day* Radio 100, 7, 2018

  #3 PPPPPPlateau 99.5 FM**, 2011

• September 30 at 15:00 | Anna Valentiny – Zwischen den Schichten der Zeit (Flâneries (1) x d’Lëtzebuerger Land) (LISTENING SESSION)

• October 2 at 15:00 | Lynn Harles (Studio Harles) x Sithara Pathirana (Klima Biennale Wien) (LIVE)

• October 3 at 15:00 | Sarah Meyers (Meyers & Fügmann) x Alice Jacubasch (Vienna Business Agency) (LIVE)

• October 4 at 12:00 | Selling Happiness, Shaping Minds — A Radio Luxembourg Story (LISTENING SESSION)

  
  

  Episode #1 — A Radio Born Powerful by Nouha Ben Salem and Monyck de S. Santos

  Episode #2 — DJ Culture by Magnus Hugo Chan Kwok Cheong and Nicole Olenskaia

  
  

A programme beyond the exhibition

Alongside Two-O-Eight: Designing Voices, Luxembourg’s GAST programme will extend into a series of events and encounters with Luxembourg artists and designers.

These complementary events create opportunities for exchange between Luxembourg and Austrian practitioners, bringing together different disciplines, generations and perspectives. Through conversations, performances, presentations and participatory formats, the programme will highlight the breadth of Luxembourg’s creative ecosystem and encourage new connections between local and international practices.

September 29 at 15:00

Ecotonalities – on air

How does the territory of Luxembourg sound like? ECOTONALITIES: NO OTHER HOME THAN THE IN-BETWEEN is a multiperspective field-recording piece developed by Ludwig Berger for the Luxembourg Pavilion, curated by Valentin Bansac, Mike Fritsch and Alice Loumeau, at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale. The composition explores how current ecological and digital developments are shaping the landscape, weaving together recordings from characteristic locations across Luxembourg – from data centers and forests to energy infrastructures and artificial lakes. An extended version of the sound piece will be broadcast at the Festival Headquarters; accompanied by readings from the field research documentation, it invites listeners to explore the Luxembourgish territory at Vienna Design Week from a new acoustic perspective.

October 1 at 15:00

Curating Thoughts: Between Space and Print

Lecture by Anna Valentiny & Jerome Becker

Anna Valentiny (M.Arch.), partner at Valentiny hvp Architects and founder and managing director of Point Nemo Publishing, and Jerome Becker (M.Arch.), co-founder and co-director of MAGAZIN as well as co-founder of the Vienna Architecture Summer School, explore the intersection of architecture, publishing and curatorial practice through their respective work.

Drawing on their long-standing collaboration on ADATO, an independent architecture magazine published since 2016, the lecture reflects on the ways in which architectural thinking can extend beyond the built environment into publishing, editorial practice and curating. Together, they will share insights into their approaches, experiences and ongoing dialogue between space and print.

October 2 to 4, from 10:00 to 17:00

A Shape of Sound

Workshop by students from the Lycée des Arts & Métiers in Luxembourg

A Shape of Sound is a participatory and growing installation made of upcycled CDs. Led by designer and educator Gilles Gardula and his Design 3D students, it takes the form of a large suspended structure whose prismatic light shifts with each disc added. These reflective objects, carriers of music and sound, echo the spirit of our radio agora. Visitors are welcome to participate and help the structure grow.

September 24 to October 4

PLATFORM

As part of the PLATFORM programme of VIENNA DESIGN WEEK 2026, two Luxembourg-based creative practices will present distinct perspectives on contemporary design, materiality and memory: Galerie Subtile and Tatiana Bifouri.

Galerie Subtile presents Où la Terre Rencontre le Ciel, an immersive installation centred around the first public presentation of Nature Céleste, a sculptural and modular table co-created with designer Valentin Bony. Bringing together ceramic, glass, sand and steel, alongside works by Erik Barray and Marion Delaporte, the installation explores the dialogue between craftsmanship and Luxembourg’s industrial heritage, creating a sensory landscape where design, nature and material memory converge.

With Mémoire en Fil, Tatiana Bifouri brings a Luxembourg-born project across borders for its first international presentation. Using thread as both material and metaphor, the project explores memory, transmission and the journeys that connect people, places and stories. Vienna marks the first stop of this new chapter, as Mémoire en Fil begins its journey beyond Luxembourg.

© Visual identity by Studio Sirene, Vienna Design Week