PASSAGEN
PASSAGEN Interior Design Week Cologne is Germany’s largest design event, taking place annually since 1990 with over 100 decentralized exhibitions across the entire city of Cologne – featuring presentations and events on design, craft, living, architecture and urbanism. Exhibitors include international manufacturers, interior design stores, design studios, the maker scene, showrooms, institutes, universities and initiatives.
PASSAGEN 2026
16.-22. Januar 2026
The decentralised design festival PASSAGEN will once again in 2026 present exhibitions and events on the state of the art in contemporary design throughout the entire city of Cologne – in particular in the city centre, in Kalk and in Ehrenfeld – with well‑known formats such as Designers Fair, design parcours ehrenfeld and the curated designer programme Cartes Blanches. The focus is on producing designers, applied crafts, designer monographs as well as presentations by universities, showrooms, creative collectives, galleries and shops. Universities include KISD with an exhibition at Labor Ebertplatz, Macromedia University at its own location, and the colleges for applied crafts in Münster and Garmisch‑Partenkirchen at Designers Fair in the Pattenhalle in Ehrenfeld. Selected works by designers from Dortmund and Düsseldorf as well as from northern Germany (Hafenholz) and Denmark (das kleine b), Berlin (Martin Neuhaus and feinesweißes), Cologne and the Netherlands (House of Thol & Friends) will also be shown in the Pattenhalle, as will the two Cartes Blanches for Rheinwolle and Jack in the Box – a homage to its founder Martin Schmittseifer – both from Cologne. The design parcours ehrenfeld once again features many projects between Pattenhalle, Venloer Str. and Körnerstr., including Deckenhoch at artrmx, Stahl Ton, Herrenbude, rock‑it‑baby, Verlag der Dinge, Utensil, k 18, Gemischtwaren, at Atelier Colonia: Leise Design, dropdead, Ursel Winkler; in the Ehrenfeld bunker three groups from Köln Design, Salon 2, Café Ehrenfeld, Alexander von Dombois and 2ndish (both Cartes Blanches), Dingfabrik and many others. The Cartes Blanches programme also includes projects by Raphael Klug at MBSY and RAFT collective at Machwerkhaus, by Thomas Schnur and Elisabeth Seidel in the Belgian Quarter – where there will also be stagings at odoART on Brüsseler Platz – and by Michael Growe in the Jan Kath showroom, as well as Aesthek with a temporary Avonté pop‑up store on Friesenwall and, in the Haus on Ehrenstraße, Yvonne Pauleit (Cartes Blanches) together with an exhibition of further designers with interior and lighting objects and accessories. In addition, there will be exhibitions at the Cologne Chamber of Crafts and in showrooms such as Qvest the room with Everyday Sculptures, Markanto with classic aluminium design and Hasenkamp with bathroom design. Design Post in Deutz celebrates its 20th anniversary with stagings of design icons in different living areas. bulthaup blaser & höfer in Marienburg presents new kitchen designs. Machwerkhaus in Kalk, alongside two Cartes Blanches exhibitions, will show an up‑to‑date overview of works by the “Machwerker” working there, as well as freeters, a 17‑member collective of spatial design creatives. KölnBusiness, main sponsor of PASSAGEN 2026, is organising a design hub as part of PASSAGEN, and the MAKK – Museum of Applied Arts Cologne – is also taking part alongside further showrooms in the city. iino aquino will open its new showroom for PASSAGEN 2026 as a pop‑up gallery for light, design and Japanese culture.
Büro Sabine Voggenreiter
"Büro Sabine Voggenreiter" was founded in Cologne in 1989 and has since organised design, architecture and art events, curated exhibitions and arranged competitions, workshops and symposia. In addition to the PASSAGEN design festival, Sabine Voggenreiter founded the architecture platform “plan – Forum for Contemporary Architecture in Cologne” in 1999 and launched the EU project Design Quartier Ehrenfeld – DQE in 2008, a bottom‑up urban development project in international exchange with partner projects in Barcelona, Istanbul and Marseille, accompanied by publications and studies on creative urban development, urbanism and productive urban landscapes.
Cartes Blanches
In 2026 PASSAGEN will once again be supported by KölnBusiness in highlighting selected on‑trend, young, sustainability‑oriented, up‑and‑coming Cologne designers, design networks and platforms as well as the maker scene with its own exhibition programme, which has taken place annually since 2023.
DESIGNERS FAIR
Designers Fair is a presentation platform for contemporary furniture and interior design, for design in the context of artisan craftsmanship and producing designers. Designers Fair was founded in 2009 as a cooperation between Heimatdesign Dortmund and PASSAGEN, developed together with Design Quartier Ehrenfeld – DQE and is now curated and organised by Büro Sabine Voggenreiter.
design parcours ehrenfeld
10.-16. Januar 2025
design parcours ehrenfeld – dpe is a programme created for the creative, maker and design scene in Ehrenfeld as part of PASSAGEN. Since 2008 it has taken place annually in cooperation with Design Quartier Ehrenfeld – DQE and Büro Sabine Voggenreiter, around the design clusters on Körnerstraße, Lichtstraße and Venloer Straße, as well as around the DESIGNERS FAIR venue Pattenhalle in the former industrial part of Cologne’s vibrant Ehrenfeld district.
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