The call for entries for the 5th edition of the Venice Design Biennale is open. It will take place from 5th September until 2nd November 2025.
This year’s theme, proposed by curators and project founders Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei, is Extinction / Salvation.
The Venice Design Biennale is a permanent forum on design culture, linking Venice to an international network of design leaders.
Every two years, it takes the form of diffuse design exhibitions in Venice, coinciding with the Architecture Biennale. Launched in 2016, it is divided between a main thematic group exhibition and a series of collateral projects in unique locations across one of the world’s most beautiful cities.
The fifth edition of the Venice Design Biennale, Extinction / Salvation, invites us to use extinction and salvation as polarized lenses through which we alternately observe contemporary design. Knowing that neither filter allows us to see reality in all its wavelengths. Knowing also that the filters are interchangeable at will. To jump from one side to the other, not to fossilize, to practice listening and irony, to write a survival manual and rewrite it again and again.
The Extinction / Salvation exhibition program will be divided into two sections: Venice Design Biennale | Glass and Venice Design Biennale | Collectible.
Curation
For the main exhibition, the call is open to independent designers, design studios, universities or design companies whose practice answers this crucial question:
Can design shape our lives today, offering us solutions for salvation, or must it guide us towards inevitable extinction?
At SPARC*-Spazio Arte Contemporanea in Campo Santo Stefano, the selection will be made up of one-off pieces and limited editions of design works in glass, while at SPUMA-Space for the Arts, a wide selection of collectible design pieces in a variety of media will be on show.
In both venues, the curatorial approach will highlight the potential of different materials and languages in relation to this edition’s theme:
Extinction / Salvation, a way of examining contemporary design through the opposing lenses of fate and hope.