Milan Art and Design Cultural Network: DesignWanted

Culture belongs to everyone. In this spirit Milan MuseoCity 2026 is back, a city-wide initiative that every year invites residents and visitors to rediscover Milan’s cultural heritage through museums, archives and institutions. This year, the collaboration between DesignWanted and MuseoCity continues with the aim of highlighting the city and its creative ecosystem beyond the most prestigious events of the international design calendar.

Now in its tenth edition, the program — promoted by the Municipality of Milan in collaboration with the MuseoCity ETS Association — runs from February 6 to March 15, 2026, transforming the city into a city-wide cultural laboratory in conjunction with the Milano Cortina Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The topic chosen, “The Enterprises of Culture”, pays tribute to the vision and determination that connect art, design and cultural enterprise. For more than a month, Milan comes alive thanks to the participation of 124 institutions, including museums, foundations, archives and house museums. The program includes urban installations, special projects and exceptional openings, offering new opportunities to explore the city’s cultural landscape.

© Museo Fratelli Cozzi, MuseoCity 2026

M1 Underground Line © Fondazione Franco Albini, MuseoCity 2026

© Mattia Colombi, MUMAC Archive, MuseoCity 2026

© CASVA, DDL, BBB-Bonacina, Milan, 1970

© Pirelli Foundation, MuseoCity 2026

Among the most characteristic initiatives are Museums in the windowwhich transforms showrooms, galleries and retail spaces into temporary exhibition spaces through site-specific installations. In Via San Marco, the Atlas Concorde showroom hosts Light on dialoguea project developed with Eredi Nanda Vigo which transforms the space into an immersive environment where light, material and perception intertwine. The artist’s luminous works dialogue with the collections presented at Cersaie 2025, creating a meeting point between artistic research and contemporary design.

In the fashion district of the city, the Valextra boutique presents Valextra stopcreated in collaboration with Franco Albini Foundation. The installation pays homage to the M1 line of the Milan metro, designed in 1964 by Franco Albini and Franca Helg with graphics by Bob Noorda, evoking a vision of essential, rigorous design deeply rooted in everyday urban life.

Continuing this dialogue between art and design, Spazio UniFor hosts The City of Objects: Aldo Rossi and Francesco Somainian installation curated by Studio Klass with the Francesco Somaini Foundation. Here, Somaini’s sculptures from the 1970s meet the furniture designed by Rossi for UniFor, creating a quiet but multi-layered reflection on the relationship between object, architecture and urban space.

Alongside this city-wide programme, several special projects are taking place in different spaces in Milan. Among them, the Cymbals Iconic hosts of the Club 1956–2026: CHE IMPRESS! Italian businesses between heritage and futurean exhibition promoted by ON THE MAC which explores Made-in-Italy innovation, design and technology through products, posters and archival material from corporate museums and corporate archives.

The exhibition juxtaposes two symbolic years – 1956 and 2026, the first and most recent Winter Olympics hosted in Italy – tracing the social, stylistic and technological transformations that have shaped the country’s industrial landscape.

Continuing the dialogue between visual culture and sports, h Museum of the Twentieth Century present document Come on snow! Armando Testa and Sportan exhibition dedicated to the graphic work of the master of Italian visual communication. Through posters and audio-visual material, the show retraces more than thirty years of the artist’s career, revealing how gesture, speed and movement become images of impressive communicative power.

Completing the program there are many museums and archives throughout the area, including CASVA – Center for Higher Studies in Visual Arts, Franco Albini Foundation, MAIRE – ETS Foundation, Pirelli Foundation, Molteni Museum, ON THE MAC – Cimbali Group Coffee Machine Museum, Cozzi Brothers Museumand Kartell Museumcontributing to make Milano MuseoCity 2026 a truly city-wide platform where culture, entrepreneurship and design intersect.