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Award-winning design: the Compasso d’Oro showcases the best of the Salone del Mobile
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The XXIX Compasso d'Oro ADI Awards Ceremony - Ph. ADI Design Museum
On May 22, 2026, just as the Salone del Mobile.Milano was ending one of its most significant editions, the ADI Design Museum presented the 29th Compasso d’Oro awards. This combination confirms that Milan is where Italian design measures itself against itself, its history and its ambitions
The Compasso d’Oro demonstrates again that Italian furniture design has never been just industry but material culture, and the 29th edition clearly confirms that the boundary line between object, system and story is blurring. The prize no longer goes only to the product itself, but to the coherence between form, process, communication and meaning. The message resonated strongly on the occasion of the Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026, with which this edition was especially closely interwoven.
Established in 1954 by Gio Ponti and La Rinascente, the Compasso d’Oro is the oldest and most authoritative award in Italian design. The international jury, chaired by Jasper Morrison, assigned twenty awards, many of them for products from the world of furniture, lighting and domestic design that the Salone showcases every year.
Read also: The Compasso d’Oro award for the Annual Report and an Honourable Mention for “The City of Lights”
The XXIX Compasso d'Oro ADI Awards Ceremony - Ph. ADI Design Museum
The XXIX Compasso d'Oro ADI Awards Ceremony - Ph. ADI Design Museum
The XXIX Compasso d'Oro ADI Awards Ceremony - Ph. ADI Design Museum
The XXIX Compasso d'Oro ADI Awards Ceremony - Ph. ADI Design Museum
The XXIX Compasso d'Oro ADI Awards Ceremony - Ph. ADI Design Museum
The XXIX Compasso d'Oro ADI Awards Ceremony - Ph. ADI Design Museum
The XXIX Compasso d'Oro ADI Awards Ceremony - Ph. ADI Design Museum
Setting the tone for the whole edition were two awards that looked at the system even before the individual object. The Salone del Mobile.Milano Annual Report 2024, curated by Susanna Legrenzi with the Department of Design of the Politecnico di Milano, received the Compasso d’Oro as an editorial and cultural project, with recognition going to the ability to give an account of design as an ecosystem. And The City of Lights, the major exhibition commissioned by FederlegnoArredo and curated by Beppe Finessi, set up by Formafantasma to the design by Lombardini22 and with graphic design by Leftloft, received an honorable mention as one of the most successful exhibition projects for its ability to tell the story of Italian lighting design in a definitive way. Among the product awards, MDF Italia received recognition for the Array sofa, designed by the Norwegian practice Snøhetta with a reinterpretation of the concept of modular seating of exemplary formal and constructive coherence. Flos took home an award for its Bilboquet table lamp, designed by Philippe Malouin, confirming the brand’s as the international benchmark for research into domestic lighting. And it returned among the honorable mentions with SuperWire by Formafantasma, confirming its extraordinary creative season. In the panorama of honorable mentions, the world of the Salone again proved outstanding. Minotti for the Nico table by Hannes Peer Architecture, Porro for Origata by Nao Tamura, console and bench inspired by origami, and Antrax IT for the Lana modular radiator by Michele De Lucchi. Mention also went to Arper with the Catifa Carta chair in PaperShell, a project combining formal lightness and research into sustainable materials.
It is precisely here that the Compasso d’Oro and the Salone del Mobile come most deeply together. They are not two parallel events but two sides of the Italian design system. One shows what exists, the other affirms design thinking. Together they are building the international reputation of national design year after year, welding together industry and culture, production and research, memory and innovation.
26 May 2026
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