Currents. Design in Berlin is a new, 3-day community-based festival highlighting the wide range of the city’s vibrant design scene from the 10-12th of September. Design and interior studios, brands and manufacturers, galleries and design schools will open their showrooms, ateliers and workshops, presenting their work at around 60 locations across the city. From exhibitions to workshops, from receptions to talks, from studio visits to interventions, this festival will explore the dynamic design and interior scene of Berlin, including long nights at the Currents Bar at the Eternithaus in Berlin-Tiergarten.

ETERNITY is a new art feature film by writer and director Susanne Regina Meures. As the globe unravels, a group of friends reunites for one final summer. Escaping a world shaped by war and a collapsing climate, they hit the road in search of something real, finding fleeting moments of hedonistic freedom under the burning sun. But as they try to escape reality, the past catches up with them. Set against the backdrop of a melting glacier, ETERNITY adapts Florentina Holzinger’s performance art for the silver screen to explore the defining question of our time: How did we end up on a dying planet?

‘Soft power’ is a term that emerged in the postwar geopolitical context and was later defined as influence based on attraction, exchange and the circulation of ideas, values and cultural expressions. In that vein, Anahita Sadighi founded Soft Power, a new trans-disciplinary festival and platform launching this September. Connecting contemporary art, music, performance and community radio while creating spaces for encounter, cultural exchange and shared experience, the festival will feature a main exhibition co-curated by María Inés Plaza Lazo, an ongoing radio programme curated by Refuge Worldwide, a 48-hour Sonnenraum dance floor, live performances, concerts, DJ sets, talks, workshops, communal meals and more, all happening at Haus der Visionäre.

Gallery Weekend Berlin kicks things off with Gallery Night during Berlin Art Week. From established galleries to young programmes, international and Berlin-based artists present new work across 54 galleries throughout the city. Keep your eyes peeled for the Wu Tsang show at Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi showing two new film works. At alexander levy, find the photographic and sculptural works of Sinta Werner whose starting off point are architectural structures and modernist systems, while at Contemporary Fine Arts (CFA), you’ll find new paintings and sculptures by Leiko Ikemura that deal with questions of perception. Plan your tour here. 

Rare Books Berlin, International Fair for Books & Prints, is a chance to unearth formerly hidden gems of cultural history. The fair gathers an exceptional breadth of material: from early printed books, manuscripts and incunabula to autographs, rare graphics, artists’ books, photography and special collecting items, all housed in the Kronprinzenpalais. 

With the exhibition Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice, the 36th Bienal de São Paulo comes to Haus der Kulturen der Welt. Taking place in Germany for the very first time, the Berlin edition of one of the oldest and most influential biennials unfolds as a distinct constellation of artistic positions, including newly conceived, readapted, and site-specific works. Bringing together more than thirty international artists across a wide range of practices, this abridged Berlin edition of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo calls for joy, imagination, and dreaming not as escape, but as vital ways of conjugating humanity.

Since 2014, the International Congress Center (ICC) in Berlin has been operating in preservation mode. To bring new life into the listed landmark and Berlin‘s icon and to create an internationally unique destination for arts, culture and the creative industries with a sustainable long-term perspective, the State of Berlin launched a Europe-wide ICC Concept Proposal Process on 25 November 2024. A decisive milestone has now been reached: an official recommendation has been issued in favour of the Project Partnership Quartier ICC which brings together leading companies and renowned experts from project development, urban planning, architecture, heritage conservation, arts and cultural management, engineering, construction and project management. Stay tuned!

Once a symbol of efficiency and growth, the office today reflects shifting realities shaped by digitalization, remote work, and artificial intelligence. Basel Social Club engages this condition through exhibitions, performances, music, gastronomy, and informal encounters that explore questions of labor, time, productivity, and rest. The building remains continuously activated throughout the week, with artists responding directly to its architecture and atmosphere.

He hung chairs from the ceiling and transformed interiors into colourful playgrounds; few designers have shaped design in the second half of the twentieth century as decisively as Verner Panton. To mark the 100th anniversary of the Danish designer’s birth, the Vitra Design Museum is presenting a comprehensive exhibition of his work at the Vitra Schaudepot. 

Unfolding like a living environment in constant transformation, artificial breathing organs, neural networks coming alive, echoing sounds and murky aquariums, the Fondation Beyeler has just opened a major new exhibition of Pierre Huyghe. The artist is renowned for his boundary-crossing works, where fiction and reality seamlessly merge. The exhibition invites visitors to explore Pierre Huyghe’s fascinating and uncertain world.

Architecture is always a reflection of its time. It is embedded in economic systems, political priorities, cultural movements, and technological developments, and is shaped by available resources and the prevailing values of the moment while it is never limited to the present alone. Against this backdrop, Cobe presents In Transformation: 16 projects on the theme of transformation in the exhibition. The examples from two decades encompass a broad spectrum of scales and typologies. 

In Ruin, curated by Kathleen Reinhardt, Henrike Naumann and Sung Tieu explore both the ideological ruptures and material traces of post-reunification Germany. With formal vocabularies ranging from maximalist opulence to minimalist clarity, they examine the enduring legacy of a once divided Germany and the socio-political upheavals of the 1990s transformation period and beyond.

Already in its 22nd edition, Gallery Weekend Berlin continues to reflect a city as multifaceted as ever. At the beginning of May, 50 galleries across 66 locations will open their doors, showcasing over 80 established and emerging artists from more than 30 countries. This year also sees the launch of Perspectives, a new sector featuring a rotating annual selection of galleries.

What’s going on? is the opening exhibition of the program by Dennis Brzek as new director of the Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin. The group exhibition is showing both existing works and new pieces created in dialogue with the site. The works on display raise questions about time, absence, and personal histories, using both private and shared memories as their material.