Venice Design Week 2026: From Contemporary Design to Murano Glass
What does design mean in a city that has been shaped by centuries of creativity, craftsmanship and experimentation?
In Venice, the answer can be found almost everywhere, from the proportions and decorative details of its historic palaces to the objects created by generations of artisans who have learned to work with glass, wood, textiles, stone and metal. Yet Venice is not simply a city that preserves beautiful things from the past: it is also a place where traditional knowledge continues to meet new ideas, materials and contemporary forms of expression.
This dialogue becomes particularly visible from 9 to 18 October 2026, when Venice Design Week brings exhibitions, installations, workshops and meetings to different locations throughout the city.
For travellers interested in design, however, exploring contemporary creativity in Venice can also be an opportunity to look beyond the historic centre. Just across the lagoon lies Murano, an island where one of Venice’s oldest artistic traditions continues to inspire designers, artists and master craftspeople.
A journey to Murano during Venice Design Week therefore offers an opportunity to understand design from another perspective, moving from exhibitions and finished objects to the fascinating relationship between ideas, materials and the people capable of transforming them.
Venice Design Week: contemporary creativity in a historic city
Venice Design Week is not confined to a single exhibition venue. Instead, its programme spreads across the city, involving galleries, cultural spaces, workshops and other locations and allowing visitors to discover design while simultaneously exploring Venice.
The 2026 edition, taking place from 9 to 18 October, once again creates a meeting point between the city’s extraordinary cultural heritage and contemporary approaches to design.
It is a particularly interesting relationship in Venice, where almost every building, interior and object seems to carry traces of the people who designed, built or decorated it. Contemporary designers working in this environment are inevitably surrounded by centuries of accumulated knowledge, which raises an intriguing question: how can tradition continue to influence design without simply repeating the past?
One possible answer can be found a short boat journey away, on the island of Murano.
Murano glass: where tradition meets contemporary design
Around the world, the name Murano is immediately associated with glassmaking, yet describing Murano glass exclusively as a traditional Venetian craft does not fully explain its continuing appeal.
Glass is also an extraordinarily versatile design material. It can be transparent or opaque, intensely coloured or almost invisible, delicate and minimal or transformed into large sculptural forms. Over the years it has been used for lighting, furniture, tableware, jewellery, decorative objects and works of contemporary art.
The skills developed by Murano’s glassmakers over centuries have made this experimentation possible. While techniques and traditions are carefully preserved, the material itself continues to offer opportunities for new interpretations, allowing master glassmakers to collaborate with changing tastes, ideas and approaches to design.
This is what makes Murano glass design particularly relevant during Venice Design Week. After visiting exhibitions and installations in the historic centre, travelling to Murano allows visitors to discover what happens when an idea encounters a complex material and the expertise required to shape it.
Seeing how an idea becomes an object
For anyone interested in design, one of the most fascinating aspects of Murano is the opportunity to move beyond the finished object and observe the process behind it.
During a Serenissima Tour excursion to Murano, visitors can enter a traditional glass factory and watch a live glassblowing demonstration by a master glassmaker.
Inside the furnace, glass is heated until it reaches a state in which it can be shaped. From that moment onwards, every movement requires experience, precision and an intimate understanding of the material. The glass is gathered, turned, blown and worked using techniques that may appear effortless when performed by an experienced artisan but require years of practice to master.
Watching this process provides an interesting perspective on design because it reveals the relationship between creative vision and technical possibility. A designer may imagine a particular form, colour or proportion, but bringing that idea into existence requires someone who understands how the material behaves and how far it can be pushed.
In Murano, design and craftsmanship therefore become closely connected rather than separate disciplines, with creativity depending on the dialogue between an idea and the knowledge required to transform it into a physical object.
Why Murano belongs on a design lover’s Venice itinerary
Venice Design Week encourages visitors to pay closer attention to the objects, materials and creative choices that surround them, and a visit to Murano provides a natural extension of that experience.
Seeing a finished glass object displayed in a gallery, shop or exhibition allows us to appreciate its aesthetic qualities, but observing the production process reveals another dimension. Suddenly, details such as thickness, balance, colour, texture and form become connected to a sequence of decisions and gestures made during production.
This also helps explain why traditional craftsmanship continues to matter in contemporary design. Innovation does not necessarily require abandoning techniques developed in the past; in many cases, those techniques provide designers with possibilities that would otherwise be unavailable.
Murano offers a particularly clear example of this relationship, because centuries-old knowledge continues to provide the foundation for objects that can feel entirely contemporary.
Discovering Venice from a different perspective
The journey from Venice to Murano adds another element to the experience, because travelling across the lagoon changes the way visitors perceive the city itself.
From the water, Venice gradually reveals a different geography. The dense network of calli, bridges and squares gives way to a wider landscape in which bell towers, islands and distant buildings become reference points on the horizon.
The lagoon is not simply the scenery surrounding Venice; it is one of the fundamental elements that shaped the city’s development, its architecture and the lives of the communities established on its islands.
For visitors attending an event dedicated to design, this change of perspective feels particularly appropriate. Design often involves reconsidering familiar objects and environments, looking at them from a different angle in order to understand how they work and why they have taken a particular form.
A Venice lagoon tour offers something similar, allowing travellers to see a city they may already have explored on foot from the perspective that has defined it for centuries: the water.
More than a century of exploring the Venetian Lagoon
For Serenissima Tour, travelling across the lagoon is part of a history that began more than 100 years ago.
Serenissima Tour is a brand of Serenissima Motoscafi, the historic Venetian company that has been organising boat excursions to the islands since 1924. Over the decades, generations of travellers have boarded its boats to leave the historic centre behind and discover the different identities of Murano, Burano, Torcello and the surrounding lagoon.
Today, visitors can continue this tradition aboard panoramic boats, accompanied by onboard staff who welcome passengers and provide information and assistance during the navigation.
The boat journey is therefore not simply a practical way of reaching Murano. It becomes part of the experience, connecting the historic centre with the islands while allowing visitors to appreciate how closely the different communities of the lagoon are linked by water.
From Murano to Burano: design, colour and craftsmanship
Murano is not the only island that can offer inspiration to travellers interested in creativity and design. Continuing across the lagoon brings visitors to Burano, whose visual identity is immediately recognisable thanks to the brightly coloured houses lining its canals.
Colour is one of the defining features of Burano, transforming the entire island into an extraordinary visual composition in which architecture, reflections and everyday life continuously interact.
The island also has its own important connection with traditional craftsmanship through lacemaking, a practice based on intricate patterns and exceptional manual precision. This gives Burano another interesting connection with the themes explored during Venice Design Week, demonstrating how materials, colours and techniques can contribute to the identity of a place.
Combining Murano and Burano in the same excursion therefore creates a particularly varied journey. Murano introduces visitors to glass, furnaces and the transformation of material, while Burano offers a completely different visual environment shaped by colour, pattern and traditional craft.
Travellers who have more time can continue to Torcello, adding a quieter and more historical dimension to their exploration of the lagoon.
Take Venice Design Week beyond the exhibitions
For visitors coming to Venice Design Week 2026, the exhibitions, installations and events taking place throughout the city offer an excellent introduction to contemporary creativity, but the experience does not need to remain within galleries and cultural spaces.
Crossing the lagoon to Murano provides an opportunity to see how one of Venice’s most famous materials continues to connect past and present. Watching a master glassmaker at work reveals the knowledge behind the finished object and demonstrates how traditional skills can continue to support new forms of creativity.
From Murano, the journey can continue towards Burano and, for those wishing to explore further, Torcello, turning a day on the lagoon into a broader discovery of the different creative identities that have developed across Venice’s islands.
In this sense, the lagoon provides an ideal continuation of Venice Design Week because it demonstrates that, in Venice, tradition and innovation have never been completely separate worlds. The knowledge of the past can become the material from which new ideas emerge.
Discover Murano and the Venetian Lagoon with Serenissima Tour
If Venice Design Week inspires you to look more closely at materials, objects and the people who create them, continue your journey across the water with Serenissima Tour.
Travel to Murano, visit a traditional glass factory and watch a live glassblowing demonstration before continuing towards the colours and craftsmanship of Burano or dedicating a full day to Murano, Burano and Torcello.
A journey across the Venetian Lagoon offers the opportunity not only to discover some of Venice’s most fascinating islands, but also to understand how creativity, craftsmanship and design remain deeply connected to the places in which they were born.
Discover Venice beyond the exhibitions and experience the creativity of its lagoon from the water.
Keep reading on the islands:
- Art and History: Discover Venice Islands Museums – Murano, Burano, and Torcello
- Enchanting Murano, Burano, and Torcello Islands, Venice hidden gems by water
- Boat Tours in Venice Italy; the enchanting charms of minor islands in the Venetian Lagoon
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