Venice Design Week, Venice Fashion Week, and Venice Cocktail Week: three festivals for three creative weeks in Venice
Three weeks, three festivals: design, fashion, and cocktails are the Venetian Weeks. It begins with Venice Design Week on October 11 with the theme Tempora across museums, galleries, and artisan workshops; it continues from October 20 to 26 with Venice Fashion Week, featuring Dries Van Noten in conversation about creative projects with Sara Sozzani Maino, Antonio Mancinelli, and Adele Re Rebaudengo; it concludes with Venice Cocktail Week from October 22 to 26 with twenty-eight Venetian cocktail bars and bartenders from all over Italy.
Exhibitions, meetings, masterclasses, and installations spread throughout the city intertwine artisanal tradition, contemporary experimentation, and local culture. Let’s discover them:
Venice Design Week
From October 11 to 19
Info: rsvp@venicedesignweek.it
Registration on the website
The sixteenth edition of Venice Design Week presents Tempora as its guiding theme and a meeting point between eras, cultures, and knowledge. The city-wide festival involves museums, galleries, hotels, concept stores, and artisan workshops through exhibitions, conferences, meetings with designers, and thematic tours.
The program is divided into three main sections: Product Design, Interior Design, and Outdoor Design. The path dedicated to jewelry starts with the VDW Jewelry Selection themed Vortex, an international competition now in its twelfth edition, and continues with I don’t shine I have something to say at Libreria Giovanni at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, and Synesthesia, the result of the first Master’s in Contemporary Jewelry from the Academy of Fine Arts. It is the result of research that transforms matter into questions, gestures, and relationships. Contemporary jewelry becomes a living body, a tension between intimacy and collectivity, between the visible and the invisible. An invitation to observe transformation, where every form is a threshold and a possibility.
New for 2025: the exhibition on Baltic amber presented by the city of Gdańsk at Palazzo Pisani Santa Marina, featuring the winning projects of the Amberif Design Award 2025, open until the final day of Venice Fashion Week. The lighting path presents innovative lamps including Dondolina, winner of the Venetian Smart Lighting Award, and projects by Vistosi, Artemide, and Multiforme.
Read more.
Venice Fashion Week
From October 20 to 26
Info: info@venicefashionweek.com
Accreditation requests on the website
Venice Fashion Week promotes Venice as an international laboratory for those looking toward the future of fashion and design with an ethical, artisanal, and experimental perspective.
Among the highlights:
- Dries Van Noten will speak on Friday, October 24, with Sara Sozzani Maino, Adele Re Rebaudengo, and Antonio Mancinelli on how to support new generations of creatives and artisans at the Royal Gardens of Piazza San Marco. The Belgian designer will transform Palazzo Pisani Moretta into a hub of contemporary creativity and craftsmanship.
- On Wednesday, October 22, The Wise Hands, the event presenting conscious brands and young designers, will take place at Galeries Bartoux, the new cultural space established in the former Cinema Accademia.
- The 150th anniversary and the new creative project of Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua, one of the most important Venetian excellences, will be celebrated with an exhibition at Palazzo Venart Luxury Hotel.
- The international guest of Venice Fashion Week 2025 is the City of Gdańsk, with the international project The Amber Road: an exhibition featuring designers from around the world and a runway performance curated by designers Jola Słoma and Mirek Trymbulak.
- Open Ateliers returns to artisan workshops and art spaces, with walks to discover fashion locations, an appointment with Creative Morning Venice, and the Breakfasts with Designers, including The Alchemy of the Senses, a journey combining olfactory art, conviviality, craftsmanship, and design, with Atelier Lunardelli, Maison Valmont, and Venice Cocktail Week.
- The exhibition Venetian Glamour by Jacopo Ascari, curated by Federico Poletti, will showcase the Film Festival Red Carpet in the spaces of Ca’ Nani Mocenigo.
Read the full program
Venice Cocktail Week
From October 22 to 26
Info: info@venicecocktailweek.it
Free participation, in some cases by reservation, with cocktails available for purchase.
The full program will be online from October 10
Twenty-eight Venetian cocktail bars celebrate the fourth edition of Venice Cocktail Week: five days dedicated to mixology and the culture of responsible drinking. The event, created by journalist Paola Mencarelli, involves hotel bars, cocktail bars, and historic cafes with themed evenings and masterclasses, allowing visitors to explore Venice through different itineraries to discover the most creative cocktails:
Among the 2025 novelties: Barkeeper VCW25: the opportunity to meet bartenders at work in selected venues to discover techniques such as shaking, stirring, and muddling.
Eight new bars are participating in the event, including Il Piccolo Bar at Violino d’Oro, the Porto Lounge Bar at Palazzo Veneziano, and The “G” Lounge & Garden Bar with Gennaro Florio at Ca’ Nani Mocenigo.
Each venue presents a signature cocktail created for the event, while the Pop-Up Bar ICW brings bartenders from Florence, Cortina, Amalfi, and Tuscany to Venetian venues.
Read more.
Cover: A2byMatin ph. Marta Formentello.
