Design Week in Bratislava

We invite you to the Bratislava Design Week festival, which will take place from September 24 to 28, 2025.

BRATISLAVA DESIGN WEEK, THE CITY LIVES BY DESIGN! is the largest international festival of contemporary design in Slovakia.

This year, the festival will take place in the premises of the dormitory on Svoradová Street, which is opening to the city under new management and undergoing its own transformation. It is here that the festival develops its theme of transformation this year – transformations of space, the art scene and the very thinking about design.

“We want to show how design responds to social challenges – the climate crisis, digitalization and new forms of cooperation are themes that resonate throughout the entire program,” says festival director Ľubica Hustá.

Main guest: International platform Parentesi Cinema (IT) with an innovative approach to moving images created by designers, architects and artists.

Main exhibition: Grand Hotel Bratislava Design Week
Slovak designers versus the hotel part of the dormitory on Svoradová.

Exhibitions of designers and design students at the Open Call platform in the legendary Club S and not only there.

EDITION MAJSTRI will present the work of ceramics by Juraj Marth (1939 – 2019): It is not indifferent what stories we tell

Pecha Kucha Night in the gym

Super Gastro Design Safari, Open Architectural Studious Tour, apartment lectures

Debut of a new social design platform at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Parallel Area – exhibitions, discussions and presentations in many other selected spaces in the city.

TRANSFORMATIONS AS A COMMON LINE

This year’s Bratislava Design Week brings international guest Parentesi Cinema, a new exhibition format at the Grand Hotel Bratislava, a special event Pecha Kucha Night, a selection from an open call without a fee, and the debut of the social design platform at the Academy of Fine Arts. The festival combines the transformations of space, scene, and society into one experience: Bratislava Design Week 2025 is not just a design exhibition, but a manifesto for the search for new forms of coexistence and creation.

MAIN GUEST: PARENTESI CINEMA

The main guest of Bratislava Design Week 2025 is Parentesi Cinema – an international platform for the moving image, created by designers, architects, and artists. Parentesi Cinema works with spatial installations and film formats that transcend the traditional understanding of cinematography and allow even an idea without an object to find its way to the audience.

Their presentation in Bratislava will present a new way of thinking about image, space and storytelling in a time when production may not always be possible, but ideas should not remain unsaid.

NEW FORMAT: GRAND HOTEL BRATISLAVA

The Grand Hotel Bratislava exhibition will bring contemporary Slovak designers to the hotel part of the boarding house on Svoradová. This part of the building, opened in the 1920s and rebuilt after the revolution, carries a specific atmosphere of post-revolutionary taste. Here, the designers will present their work in confrontation with the historical deposits of the space, creating a unique dialogue between the past and the present.

PECHA KUCHA NIGHT IN THE GYM

One of the highlights of the festival will be the Pecha Kucha Night in the dormitory gym. The dynamic format of the 20×20 presentations meets the atmosphere of a space that generations of students remember. The combination of Bratislava Design Week and Pecha Kucha Night is an event that connects two established lines of the Bratislava cultural scene.

MASTERS EDITION: Juraj Marth: It is not indifferent what stories we tell

Curator: Viera Kleinová, professional cooperation: Dagmar Marthová

You will no longer see many of the works of ceramicist, sculptor and designer Juraj Marth (1939 – 2019) in public space today. Although he was one of those (along with Imrich Vanek and Jozef Sušienko) who left a strong ceramic mark in it since the late 1960s.

Since his student days at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Prague, he has been creating works that, within the limits of the planned economy, were created as original works in a Bratislava studio. After 1989, he tried self-production of limited designer editions of tableware and devoted himself to the design of home fireplaces.

He invested the most energy in the monumental creation of sculptural works for architecture – he created around 60 of them throughout Slovakia. Many of them did not survive the reconstruction or destruction of architectural environments. In Bratislava, for example, these were monumental reliefs at the M. R. Štefánik Airport, in the Istropolis Trade Union House or in the Danube Hotel.

His stories transformed spa, recreational, hospital and school buildings – from the well-known monumental reliefs on television in Mlynská dolina to hidden works, such as the relief in a kindergarten in Ružinov, Bratislava.

OPEN CALL WITHOUT FEE

This year, the festival announced an open call without a fee, as a response to the complicated situation in culture. Dozens of authors applied to the call, who will present their projects in the former Club S – a legendary space of the Bratislava music scene. The festival is thus reviving a place that for years only lived in memories.

NEW SOCIAL DESIGN PLATFORM

A new social design platform is debuting at the Academy of Fine Arts, which in its first output disrupts the traditional concept of a café. In cooperation with the organization Človek v orozneňí and the Goriffee roastery, a space is being created where drinking coffee is combined with reflection on coexistence, social responsibility and quality of life.

PARALLEL AREA

The festival will also include the Parallel Area program, which will expand the design map with the Čin Čin gallery, KVETENA florist, Konsepti store, Závodný space, Studený showroom, Brot bookstore, Kompot store, Old Town Library, Swäg café, and Kút museum shop in the Bratislava City Museum MMB.

Location: Bratislava
Date: 24.09.2025 – 28.09.2025
Time: from 8:00 am – 8:00 pm
Entrance: free

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