The eighth Lake Como Design Festival runs from 12 to 20 September.
Eighteen exhibitions, a dozen venues, and a theme the organisers call Confine, which is Italian for border. They mean it in both directions: the line that separates, and the place where two things touch. On a lake that has been the frontier between Milanese money and Swiss quiet for two hundred years, it is a less abstract idea than it sounds.
Villa Saporiti opens on the 12th. Villa del Grumello follows on the 13th.
Tickets, hours and the one rule people get wrong
A full ticket is 20 euro, reduced 10 for students, over-65s, carers and architects on the Como and Lecco registers. Under-14s go free, as do visitors with disabilities. Sold online and at the doors.
Here is the rule that catches people. The ticket is valid for one person and grants one entry to each location, not unlimited re-entry. Plan a venue as a single visit and finish it before moving on.
Main venues run 10am to 7pm. The Serra del Grumello bistrot runs 7pm to 11pm and is free to enter, which makes it the obvious place to end a day.
The festival is not only in Como
Most coverage files this as a Como event. The 2026 map says otherwise.
In Como itself: Villa Saporiti on the Passeggiata Lino Gelpi, a late-18th-century neoclassical building; Villa del Grumello with its park and glasshouse on via per Cernobbio; the Accademia Aldo Galli; the cloister of Sant’Abbondio; the Conservatorio; the Novocomum, Giuseppe Terragni’s rationalist block; Borgovico 33; the Archivio Design Ico Parisi; Francesca Brambilla Comunicazione; and Lobby Nomade in the deconsecrated church of Santa Caterina.
Then it leaves town. The Cantiere Ernesto Riva, the historic boatyard at Laglio, hosts Energy Poetics by Volta27. And three exhibitions sit at the Politecnico di Milano campus in Lecco: Alpine Landscapes, Unstable Borders and The Eternal Feminine.
Lecco is forty minutes round the other arm of the lake. Give it its own day or skip it honestly.
What to see first
Contemporary Design Selection at Villa Saporiti is the commercial heart of the festival and the part with the clearest curatorial line. Giovanna Massoni curates it for the fourth consecutive year, with Francesca Prandelli directing. More than fifty designers from around thirty countries, among them Matteo Ragni, Gerard Kuijpers, Barbara Munsel and Carolien Janssens.
Future in the Past takes Villa del Grumello from the 13th, and it is the one to walk slowly. Inside it, the 1in16 project, curated by Francesca Brambilla from an idea by Paolo Vallara, and Proporzione Mediterranea from Giustini Stagetti. The names on the walls run from AG Fronzoni and Lina Bo Bardi to Lupo Borgonovo and Elisa Ossino, with Cappellini, Jaipur Rugs and the Archivio Carla Badiali among the collaborators.
Two more worth the detour. Ico Parisi and Giuliano Collina: Shared Art sits in the Archivio Design Ico Parisi, which is the correct address for anyone who came to Como because of Parisi in the first place. And Beyond the Border occupies the Novocomum with the Order of Architects, putting a show about borders inside the building that broke the rules of Como architecture in 1929.
Alberto Granata takes the cloister of Sant’Abbondio, with Eugenio Bitetti as curator. After Evidence is at the Accademia Aldo Galli. Atto Puro is at the Conservatorio.
The programme around the exhibitions
Sunday 13 is the busiest day off the main circuit. Pilates with TAAMI at the Hotel Villa Flori at 10am, Living Archives at the Accademia at 5pm, and back-to-back events at the Serra del Grumello: a book launch at 5pm and a talk on minimalist design at 6pm.
Friday 18 brings My-Name concerts to the Conservatorio at 6pm.
The last day is the good one. On Sunday 20 the chef Mirko Gatti leads a foraging walk from the Serra del Grumello at 10am, at 100 euro a head, which is the only paid event in the side programme. At 6pm there is a book launch on Ico and Luisa Parisi. Several of the agenda events are free but need an email to register.
Where the festival has got to
It started in 2018. The organisers, the Wonderlake Como association, count more than 650 designers and galleries shown since then and more than 100,000 visitors through the doors.
That growth has changed what the week is for. The early editions were a weekend of villas; this one runs nine days, spans two cities, and has a hospitality strand that takes visitors into five hotels. Design weeks that reach this size usually spawn an unofficial fringe. Como has not published one, so the festival map is the whole map.
Staying, and eating
September on Lake Como is the best month and the busiest, and hotel stock is the constraint every year. Our guide to the best hotels on Lake Como is the place to start, and Lake Como EDITION is the newest room in the water.
For dinner, Bellagio and Varenna are a boat ride away and worth the crossing on a clear evening. Como town itself empties out after the shows close, which is why the Serra bistrot fills up.
If you are building an autumn around Italian craft rather than Italian design, Homo Faber in Venice is the other date in the diary.
Luxury.it perspective
Collectors and dealers should book the Villa Saporiti day first and treat the rest as a bonus. Anyone who comes for the buildings will get more out of the Novocomum, Sant’Abbondio and the Parisi archive than out of any single object on show.
And anyone travelling with somebody who does not care about chairs should know that the villas and their parks justify the ticket on their own. Villa del Grumello’s garden runs down to the water.
Nine days is long enough that you do not need to fight the weekend. Come midweek, take Villa Saporiti in the morning and the Grumello in the afternoon, and let Lecco go unless the Politecnico shows are the reason you came.
Related guides
Our wider Lake Como hotel guide covers the whole shoreline, and Lake Como Palace and Villa O are the two rooms arriving next year.
For rooms during the festival, boat transfers and gallery introductions, contact Luxury.it Concierge.
