Gdynia Design Days 2026

Gdynia Design Days is Poland’s major summer design festival, held annually in Gdynia since 2008 and now in its nineteenth edition, coinciding in 2026 with the city’s centennial.

The festival treats design as a tool for social change, using each year’s theme, 2026’s is Closer, to explore ideas of community, accessibility and everyday life rather than presenting design as a purely aesthetic discipline. Programming centers on the Pomeranian Science and Technology Park alongside partner venues across Gdynia, combining exhibitions, workshops, lectures and thematic walking tours with a broader year-round programme of talks and meetings. Its thematic pillars have included health-centered urban design, human-technology relationships and community-building through shared public spaces, reflecting an emphasis on incremental, human-scale improvement over grand design statements. As Gdynia itself is a planned, twentieth-century modernist city, the festival’s focus on everyday design resonates with its host’s own urban identity.