The 7 Standouts at 3 Days of Design 2026

Copenhagen in June belongs as much to locals diving into the harbour at Islands Brygge after work as it does to lovers drifting through the canals in small boats, with picnics of smørrebrød and natural wine on board. For visitors, it’s about cycling through sudden bursts of rain, ducking into one of the many super chic cafés for a kanelsnegl and flat white, or discovering an antique shop stacked with vintage Royal Copenhagen. But this year from June 10 to 12, the city took on a different rhythm as 3 Days of Design welcomed more than 60,000 design enthusiasts in search of what’s next in contemporary design culture.

Drawn by a program where originality and sustainability are prerequisites, visitors were given rare access to hundreds of open studios, showrooms, exhibitions, and installations spread across Copenhagen’s eight design districts, all without registration, which is completely on brand with Danish open access to good design. The success of this year’s festival reflected its theme, Making This Moment Matter, signalling a shift from the exclusive to the intentional. Rather than chasing volume, spectacle, or novelty, the festival championed depth, craft, and context, a sensibility Scandinavian design has long embodied. The weather may not have delivered endless 18-hour sunshine, but what stood out instead was a more grounded experience: brand collaborations that felt considered, heritage thoughtfully reactivated, and material innovation explored with quiet confidence.

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Project Materia x Mater

The second chapter of Project Materia brought together nine internationally renowned artists, each invited to create a single object in Matek, a circular material developed from coffee shells, sawdust, and recycled plastic. The exhibition captured a broader shift in design culture, from material prestige to material accountability. Where value was once tied to rarity and extraction of materials such as marble, bronze, and exotic woods, Project Materia turns that hierarchy inside out, treating what was once left over as the starting point rather than residue. Next stop is Paris and London, as the touring collection of these sculptural objects, which it’s hard to believe are formed from a composite material bent into such organic shapes, continues to evolve.

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Royal Copenhagen x Griegst

Approaching porcelain as a goldsmith and sculptor rather than an industrial designer, Arje Griegst created the Triton series for Royal Copenhagen in the 1970s. At a time defined by utility and restraint, it stood apart, deliberately impractical, neither stackable, efficient, nor easy to produce. Its sculptural forms require masterful firing and meticulous hand-finishing, pushing porcelain to its most exhausting and expressive limits. Seen today, the revival of Triton felt especially resonant within Collectors—consider yourselves warned.

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Vipp x Mesura

After a personal Vipp campus tour with Sofie Egelund, daughter of Jette Egelund (who expanded Vipp after inheriting her father, Holger Nielsen’s, original bin and workshop), it was reassuring that restraint was not the brief. The experience flowed into the playful, buttery yellow installation, an oversized conversation pit titled From Guesthouse to Playhouse by the Barcelona-based studio Mesura. Drawing on the social spirit of hygge, the space championed participation and togetherness, an atmosphere carried through the campus, from shared moments in the kitchen to a chef carving paper-thin slices of prosciutto served with wine. That sense of Vipp extends beyond Copenhagen, with the brand’s guest houses around the world offering the chance to experience its design philosophy in a lived-in setting.

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Iittala at Ofelia Plads

At Ofelia Plads, a harbourfront setting that comes alive during Copenhagen’s midsummer celebrations, the familiar silhouette of the Aalto vase was reimagined as a monumental seven-metre-tall walk-in pavilion designed by Tableau CPH to mark its 90th anniversary. Roughly the height of a two-storey house, the structure was constructed from Hydro’s low-carbon aluminum, making it both lightweight and significantly less carbon-intensive than conventional aluminum. Visitors could step inside the flowing contours of one of design’s most recognizable objects, experiencing it at an architectural scale. Tucked inside was the Aalto 90 City Vase Collection, a limited-edition series inspired by six creative capitals around the world. The Copenhagen edition, warm, candlelit amber, felt especially perfect, echoing the city’s golden summer light and immediately landing on my list of things to bring home (and in my carry-on).

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Ferm Living

For the first time, Ferm Living opened its offices and in-house design studio to the public, transforming the historic building’s first floor into a temporary exhibition space. In Copenhagen’s former naval district of Holmen, Kuglegården carries a layered history of craft, storage, and production, a living backdrop that offers a first glimpse of the autumn/winter 2026 collection. Form of Life marks Ferm Living’s 20th anniversary, reflecting the brand’s evolution over two decades with small models of past and present products on display together. When everything is reduced and grouped, you see the internal logic, soft edges, muted palettes, repetition of tactility, and how materials like glass, metal, and textiles are in tune across collections. What not to miss: granitas at the legendary outdoor party in the lush garden.

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Normann Copenhagen x Niels Bendtsen

Niels Bendtsen is a Danish-born, Vancouver-based furniture designer whose work we’ve long lived with at home, including his oak Bensen table from his flagship Inform. Known for his restrained, engineering-led approach, he treats production and process as integral to form, creating pieces that are as considered in how they are made as in how they look. Since the 1970s, his work has responded to constraints such as shipping, fabrication, and material efficiency, treating them as drivers of design rather than limitations. His best-known piece, the Ribbon Chair, now reissued by Normann Copenhagen as the Limit Lounge Chair and held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, was designed to ship as a flat-pack in response to rising shipping costs during the 1973 oil crisis. At the Copenhagen showroom, the reissue was the belle of the ball, indoors and out, where clusters of chairs became a natural focal point for conversation.

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A-N-D

During 3 Days of Design, A-N-D unveiled its first European flagship in Copenhagen, marking an exciting extension of its Vancouver base and reinforcing that Canadian design increasingly part of a global conversation. For a Canadian visiting Copenhagen, this felt especially meaningful. On the opening night, the rain held off, and the courtyard was packed with industry friends, creatives, and design enthusiasts from Canada and elsewhere, gathered in support of the brand’s European debut, with the custom Copenhagen-based cocktail brand Aeris x A-N-D cocktails circulating throughout the night. A highlight was the necklace of glass Contour and Pebble pendants strung along a 10-foot dining table by fellow Canadian exhibitor Christian Woo.

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