DesignTO Festival 2026

Attention art and design lovers! The 16th annual DesignTO Festival returns January 23 – February 1, 2026. Join us at multiple venues across Toronto for 10 days of inspiring exhibitions, installations, and events.

Going into its 16th year, DesignTO transforms Toronto into a creative hub, featuring over 100 free exhibitions and events. The Festival brings people together to celebrate contemporary culture, provides opportunities for emerging talent, and engages the community with exceptional and accessible public programming. Explore bold and ambitious ideas that respond to the climate crisis, social justice, technology, craft, and more.

For more information, and the full Festival Schedule, visit designto.org.

Festival Highlights:

2026 DesignTO Launch Party
January 23, 2026 | 7pm

Join us for the official 2026 DesignTO Launch Party at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, as we kick off our 16th Festival and celebrate DesignTO’s legacy of showcasing and sparking vital conversations about design’s role in shaping a better world.

Kick off the 10-day Festival while experiencing three floors of art with the ‘Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023’ exhibition, with sounds curated by local·global featuring Isabel Okoro and Adeola Abegunde. Be inspired by art and architecture, connect with the creative community, and dance the night away.

ALL LIGHT
January 23 – February 1, 2026

Lighting is an essential part of everyday life, both beautiful and functional, technical and sculptural. ‘ALL LIGHT’, an immersive exhibition, brings together 15 Ontario-based artists and light designers.

Design Hustle: what masters and new voices teach each other
January 27, 2026 | 6pm

‘Design Hustle’ is a candid, cross-generational exploration of contemporary design practice, through conversation with Arancha González Bernardo (Odami), Pat Hanson (gh3*), and Paul Lee (Mason Studio).

DesignTO Talks: Within the Weave
February 1, 2026 | 2pm

‘Within the Weave’ is a conversation tracing the meeting points of material and memory. This panel brings together artists Jennifer Coghill, Helen Kong, Kathleen Morris, and Amanda Rataj who explore how fragments of personal and environmental histories can be gathered and transformed into new, interconnected wholes.

DesignTO Tours: Material Memory
January 25, 2026 | 2pm

This walking tour invites you to explore artworks that reflect ongoing dialogues between artist, object, and environment. Moving through the neighbourhood, you’ll encounter works that have been added to and layered over time and across generations, highlighting how material practice becomes a vessel for memory, care, and interconnection.

DesignTO Youth: Otherworld
January 31, 2026 | 4pm

The DesignTO Youth ’Otherworld Showcase’ presents an evening of shared imagination through art and design, exploring the world not only as it is, but as it could be.

Ensemble presents pot-au-feu
January 23–29, 2026

Ensemble presents ‘Pot-au-feu’, the third edition of its ongoing series, bringing together both emerging and established Quebec designers.

hollis+morris Studio Tours
January 30, 2026 | 9:30am

‘DesignTO Tours: hollis+morris’ provides two opportunities for the A&D Community to take a deep dive into the 14,000 square foot Toronto production studio of hollis+morris, where furniture and lighting are designed, prototyped, manufactured and showcased on-site.

Ideas Forum: Advocating for a Better City
January 28, 2026 | 12pm

Changing Toronto’s built environment is challenging, requiring time, money, and collaboration. Yet many individuals and organizations are driving progress through advocacy, research, and design. The ‘Ideas Forum: Advocating for a Better City’ showcases their efforts through dynamic presentations and discussion.

Kensington Unearthed and (Re)formed
January 25 – February 1, 2026

Step into ‘Unearthed and (Re)formed’, an exhibition of ceramics crafted from wild clay discovered in the heart of Toronto’s Kensington Market. Each piece has been shaped with care and intention to reflect the neighbourhood from which it comes—and the community it continues to shape.

NORM AT MJÖLK
January 23-24, 2026

‘NORM AT MJÖLK’ is an exhibition of design objects and furniture designed by Copenhagen-based architecture and multidisciplinary design studio Norm Architects.

S.A.D.
January 1–31, 2026

‘S.A.D.’ is a series of eight evocative images inspired by metaphors of light by Chinese-Canadian artist and photographer Steven Beckly presented on five digital screens outdoors at Sankofa Square.

Soft Grid
January 23 – February 28 2026

‘Soft Grid’ is a textile installation by fibre artist Shao-Chi Lin, inspired by her time as an artist-in-residence at Le Germain Hotel Toronto.

Slow Furniture: Recent work from the Studio of Heidi Earnshaw
January 14 – February 28, 2026

Heidi Earnshaw’s furniture merges craftsmanship and contemporary design, emphasizing sustainability and mindful living. This solo exhibition features works that invite viewers to slow down and find meaning in everyday life.

TAPE
January 23 – February 21, 2026

‘TAPE’ features 9 designers, each one investigating adhesive tape. Each designer’s methodology for exploring tape can be pragmatic, poetic, historical or personal. Together, these objects will create an installation that looks at why and how the designers are connecting things: permanent or temporary, improvised or planned, literal or metaphorical.

TO ·BE·LONGING Portraits of Queer Living
January 23 – February 1, 2026

What makes your home queer? ‘TO ·BE·LONGING’ challenges heteronormative domesticity. The exhibition engages 40 queer community-submitted artifacts to showcase the nuances of home, inviting visitors to re-shape and reflect on intimacy, identity, and possibilities of queer living beyond the norm.

Traces
January 23 – March 29, 2026

‘Traces’ is a group exhibition featuring the work of ten local and international artists, designers and collectives (Hangama Amiri, Sonny Assu, Meena Chowdhury, Nilojan Jegatheeswaran, Jenn Kitagawa, Dennis Lin, Rose Nordin, Anahita Norouzi, Waard Ward, and Abhishek Wagle), exploring the weight of migration, forced relocation, and preserving culture and identity: what we carry, what we leave, and how we belong again.

Tracing Symmetries
January 14 – February 14, 2026

‘Tracing Symmetries’ is a photographic exhibition by artist and architect Safoura Zahedi inviting you into the living world of Islamic geometry: its history, migration, and imagined futures in contemporary art and architecture.

To see the full list of Festival programming, visit designto.org/2026-festival-schedule.

For more information, please contact:
Michael Madjus, Head of Marketing
DesignTO
michael@designto.org

Image credits:
1. ‘Jeff Wall Photographs 1984–2023’ exhibition public preview, photo by Dean Tomlinson
2. hollis+morris production studio, photo courtesy of hollis+morris
3. Photography by Steven Beckly