NYCxDESIGN, New York City's official design week, is coming back May 14–20, 2026, with a citywide sprawl of exhibitions, talks and installations across all five boroughs. Organizers expect more than 163,000 designers, makers and design fans to show up, with roughly a third of that crowd traveling into the city specifically for the festival.
According to NYCxDESIGN, the festival calendar runs May 14–20 and will be fully searchable through a new mobile app that maps events by neighborhood and discipline. This year's theme, "Design Connects Us," is framed as a cross-sector push that puts architecture, industrial and graphic design in direct conversation with tech initiatives and public projects.
Major installations and trade shows
SHINE, a waterfront exhibition of original lighting objects curated by Harry Allen, will light up The Seaport and bring together about 70 designers, according to The Fluxx. It is set up as one of the festival's marquee showcases, with the river as a backdrop and a tight focus on experimental illumination.
The International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) and WANTED will return to the Javits Center from May 17–19, per the ICFF schedule. Nearby, the Afternoon Light Design Fair is scheduled to run May 16–19 at downtown WSA, bringing more than 80 exhibitors under one roof for a concentrated hit of contemporary furniture and object design.
AI and the future of design
NYCxDESIGN is also leaning hard into tech. The festival has expanded its AI-focused programming into a full-day Future Now AI Summit at Cornell Tech on May 19, with a keynote from Phil Gilbert, formerly head of design at IBM, and panels featuring designers and technologists from Adobe, Google DeepMind and MIT Media Lab, as reported by officeinsight. Organizers say the summit will dig into how generative tools are reshaping authorship, practice and the business side of design.
How to plan your visit
Registration and the full event calendar are live on the festival site, and the NYCxDESIGN mobile app is intended to help visitors build a detailed itinerary in advance, according to NYCxDESIGN. With multiple ticketed keynotes and trade-show days on the schedule, organizers recommend booking early for ICFF sessions, the AI summit and the festival's opening-night party.
"NYCxDESIGN represents a global platform that showcases the ideas, talent, and innovation that make New York City such an influential design destination," Ilene Shaw said in remarks published by the New York Real Estate Journal. For designers and curious New Yorkers alike, the week keeps studios, showrooms and streets plugged into the same ongoing conversation about the future of how the city lives and works.
