Preview: Salone Del Mobile 2025

It’s time for design at Salone del Mobile 2025 – here’s everything we can look forward to, says Wendyrosie Scott.

What To Expect From Salone del Mobile 2025

Frequently spotted sporting uniform black or multicoloured thick rimmed specs and adorned in the most sharply stylised garb, they swarm into the city of Milan and its Rho Fiera Fairgrounds in their droves. Their look is often as perfectly pieced together and as conceptual as the designs they create or flock to check out. That’s right: it’s time for the one and only Salone, or Milan Design Week. Here, we find ourselves at the design industry’s universal centre. Professionals, practitioners and visitors from far flung geographies gather in a ritual that has grown exponentially. It’s an annual must-see. 

What Is Salone Del Mobile?

Part trade fair, part art and design installation, with curation and discussion, Salone del Mobile presents innovations and notions saluting all things design, from furniture to lighting. Like islands, they emerge bringing new worlds – and we wait to capture, digest and reflect on as much as we can cover. 

Known as the Milan Furniture Fair, among other monikers, the Salone annually promotes projects and attracts businesses and brands, artists and collaboratives to showcase business, sustainable and creative innovation. Welcoming over 2000 exhibitors, with 168 brands showing at the Salone for the first time (with a consistently increasing presence from abroad), decision-makers, buyers, designers and investors from more than 150 countries will soon arrive for the 63rd edition of the Salone del Mobile. With the fairgrounds covering almost 170,000 metres, the gargantuan entity is regarded globally as the premier design event whose impact is immense, both culturally and financially.

As Maria Porro, president of Salone del Mobile, states: ‘We closed the 2024 edition with record numbers of over 370,000 professionals from 146 countries. This year, the Salone will yet again open in April with a totally sold out exhibition area, despite the uncertainties of the global scenario, which  illustrates the consistent commitment to improving the visitor experience and services to the public and exhibitors.’

Is it all big brands and business?

Absolutely not. For example, the Corraini Mobile Bookshop, curated by Corraini Edizioni, will provide an opportunity to discover an international selection of more than 110 publishers, including many independents from all over the world. Additionally, the Salone Satellite platforms 700 designers under 35, as well as 20 international schools and universities. The fair’s positive creative and financial impact also plays out across the city; especially within the Brera Design District, the notedly fashionable centre of design in Milan. 

What’s this year’s theme? 

Communication Campaign 2025, “Thought for Humans”, Salone del Mobile Milano | Concept Dentsu Creative Italia © Bill Durgin

The theme this year is Thought For Humans. Industrial manufacturing and sustainable innovation are key concepts; Thought for Humans acts as a reminder that every project must respond, in the name of emotional intelligence, to the needs of human beings (and surely extends to the greater natural world – the focus of last year’s event.) It also launches a new challenge: building worlds fit for the future.Under the spotlight of the Salone, visitors and participants connect with an unparalleled platform of aesthetics, functional and technological innovation, and an aim to transform the challenges of sustainability into competitive advantage and solutions.  

How is culture and creativity key to the Salone?

Intent on supporting an increasingly wide, multidisciplinary, future-focused vision and encouraging broader design dialogues, the Salone annually commits to its Cultural Programme. Four special projects feature on the 2025 programme: two in the city, two in the Salone Pavilions. The first to open to the public, on 6 April (until 18 May), is the installation by the established American artist Robert Wilson: Mother, which will be showcased at the Museo della Pietà Rondanini – Castello Sforzesco, with music composed by Avant Garde artist Arvo Part. It’s dedicated to Michelangelo’s masterpiece (which is recognised, together with Leonardo’s Last Supper, as one of the most iconic works of art in Milan).

Paolo Sorrentino, La dolce attesa Fiera Milano | Rho – Pavilions 22-24, Salone del Mobile Milano 2025 | © Margherita Palli

Meanwhile, Library of Light, by British artist Es Devlin, is a powerful performative experience taking place in the Cortile d’Onore of the Pinacoteca di Brera: a ‘beacon of knowledge’.

Key installations at the fair (Pavilions 22 -24) also platform the Italian Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino, accompanied by scenographer Margherita Palli and with a soundtrack by Max Casacci, conceived to pay tribute to a universal feeling: Waiting – a sincere moment in life, marked by the beating of a mysterious heart. 

Pierre-Yves Rochon, Villa Héritage, Dining Room (Blue) | Salone del Mobile Milano 2025 | © PYR

Villa Héritage (Pavilions 13-15) presents a visionary interior design project by the French architect, Pierre-Yves Rochon, who has designed some of the most exclusive addresses in international hospitality for over four decades, including the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Rochon is the final protagonist tasked with conceiving an  interior concept that reinterprets luxury in its timeless dimension: Villa Héritage redefines the concept of interior design, transforming it into a channel connecting memory and innovation, where luxury is not solely the aesthetic but a multisensory experience.

The Salone really does create an international hub which disseminates vital energy throughout the city, transforming Milan into the world design capital. It’s not to be missed.

Exhibitions To Check Out At Salone 2025

• Wellness, lifestyle, fashion and music combine to kick start the Salone at La DoubleJ– ladoublej.com
• Rugs and more with CC-Tapis – cc-tapis.com
• Furniture and fashion with Diesel – moroso.it
• Noted Italian design brand Porro will celebrate the work culiminating in their grand centenary – porro.com
• SCP, the sustainable British design brand, will celebrate 40 years in the business – scp.co.uk
• Form Fantasma explores ecology, sociology, politics and history within fashion, furniture and design – formafantasma.com
• Outdoor furniture combines with nature – ethimo.com/en
• Design Hotels and Universal Design Studio host a lobby installation with talks from Design Anthology Magazine – designanthologyuk.com

VISIT

Salone 2025 will take place at The Rho Fiera Fairground, Milan, from 8 to 13 April. salonemilano.it