The 3-day fair is getting so popular, it’s unofficially become a four-day show.
3 Days of Design — often stylized as 3daysofdesign or 3DoD — is Copenhagen’s annual citywide celebration of creativity across furniture, lighting, materials and interiors. Held each June since its founding in 2013, the 72-hour festival event which took place recently transforms Denmark’s capital into a curated showcase for design culture, drawing global architects, specifiers, buyers, media and tastemakers.
Now considered Scandinavia’s most important design event, surpassing in importance the Helsinki’s Habitare (Sept. 10-14, 2025) or Stockholm Furniture Fair (February 3–7, 2026), 3daysofdesign is rapidly becoming a global reference point alongside Milan and NeoCon, and the festival offers an immersive platform for both emerging and established brands to debut products, launch collaborations and engage with a design-forward international audience.
Unlike shows like NeoCon or Salone del Mobile, which center around exhibition centers or large fairgrounds, 3DoD is fully embedded into Copenhagen. Showrooms, heritage buildings, cafés, boats, galleries, hotels and even private apartments all participate, making the entire city a stage for design innovation. This urban integration fosters serendipity, deeper conversations and true hospitality.
This year, the event featured 600 exhibitions, exceeding 2024’s 400+ exhibitor roster. Attendees registered from 127 countries, signaling a broad global draw. Approximately 60,000 registered visitors, with actual footfall likely higher, surpassing 2024’s 45,000+ attendees.
And while the official event started on Wednesday, June 18, several established brands started press previews the day before, making this event to be a four-day affair, since there are so many activations. Just as Milan has Bar Basso as an unofficial meeting place, Copenhagen’s Palae Bar was the unofficial watering hole for everyone to meet. The city’s hospitality scene was certainly buoyed by the opening of the Petra Hotel, a new 40-key boutique outpost, created by Danish furniture firm &Tradition and Copenhagen Design Hotels.
Rising global prestige
With participants from over 127 countries and growing international exhibitor presence, 3 Days of Design is no longer just a Northern European showcase. It’s positioning itself as a global industry milestone. This means high visibility for brands beyond Scandinavia, and the festival was present with an influx of American, Japanese, Korean, Australian and pan-European visitors, especially industry buyers, editors and creative directors.
Unlike Milan or NeoCon, where exhibiting costs and scale have ballooned, Copenhagen offers lower cost participation (though not exactly cheap) and a curated, purpose-driven exhibitor selection process that makes it attractive for smaller or niche brands looking for impact, not just foot traffic.
Though growing quickly, the event remains walkable, welcoming and conversation-friendly — something that both attendees and exhibitors value. Even with global visibility, the feeling of access to brand founders, designers and direct dialogue remains a unique advantage.
Curated over commercial
The organizing theme for 2025, “Keep It Real,” celebrated authenticity, craftsmanship,and a human-centered, sustainable approach in design. 3DoD prioritizes curation over scale. While other fairs often focus on packing booths or maximizing traffic, this festival intentionally limits exhibitor numbers and emphasizes high design quality, authenticity and storytelling. This attracts design-savvy audiences — specifiers, boutique retailers, creative directors — rather than just bulk buyers.
It leads in sustainable innovation
Scandinavia is years ahead in circular design, material regeneration and ESG principles. At 3DoD, you’ll find real experiments like mycelium-based workstations, marble dust composites, and biomaterial seating and not just “greenwashed” marketing slides. It’s the most future-forward design show for office brands exploring sustainability. Fogia’s “Kern” tables made of marble waste is both elegant and commercially viable.
MycoWorks’ Reishi leather is a great example of a fungi-based upholstery, created by an American company, with workstation potential.
Danish brands used local woods, non-toxic finishes and even salvaged sailcloth in seating systems. Carl Hansen relaunched the 1952 Vita Sofa by Nanna and Jørgen Ditzel. The sofa’s organic design idiom, with its soft shapes, high back and armrests, creates a sense of serenity that generously invites you to take a seat.
Finnish design companies Artek and Marimekko joined forces for a limited collection that merges Marimekko’s art of printmaking and Artek’s technology of wood bending and co–created a conceptual installation that presented the limited–edition collection items for the first time.
Several Danish and European brands launched modular furniture systems, not just for flexibility, but for emotional comfort and sensory wellness. Think soft upholstery, pastel tones and intuitive assembly. For example, Frama’s adaptable shelving and desk units, are designed like open toolkits, and Ferm Living’s Work Lounge bridges home coziness with professional ergonomics. Hay reissued Mario Bellini’s iconic Amanta sofa from the 1960s, which has been updated with sustainable materials and new color options. The end result is that manufacturers are building systems that feel personal and not just configurable, especially in hybrid, hospitality-forward workspaces.
Manufacturers like these are showing the way that office furniture brands must go beyond FSC labels and start exploring regenerative or upcycled raw materials that are visually compelling and ethically grounded.
Human-centered vs corporate-driven
Office and contract fairs like Orgatec or NeoCon still lean toward open-plan systems, acoustic pods and tech integrations. 3DoD, by contrast, explores emotions, tactility and craft. It puts the human experience first, which is perfect for brands aiming to create spaces that reduce burnout, promote wellness, or reflect hybrid work realities.
The aesthetic and product innovation are more relatable
Scandinavian design’s emphasis on beauty, simplicity and functionality makes 3DoD products immediately appealing for modern offices: modular seating with soft tactility, subdued tones that play well in biophilic settings, and objects designed for movement and reuse. It’s not about flashy novelties. It’s deep utility and design literacy.
Maharam showcased its Stick Frame presentation system, designed by Leon Ransmeier, marking 10 years of collaboration with Maharam. The reconfigurable, modular stainless-steel grid structure featured 18 new and recent product introductions across three labels: Maharam, Edelman and Knoll Textiles, which included an Ilse Crawford–collaborated recolor emphasizing a humanist, color-led approach, and archival reissues from Sheila Hicks and Alexander Girard.
Danish textile brand Kvadrat teamed up with Vitra to transform its showroom into a pop-up café. The space showcases Vitra’s new collection of furnishings upholstered in Kvadrat textiles.
Material Matters Copenhagen: A New Material-Centric Design Fair
During 3Days, Copenhagen hosted another the inaugural Material Matters Copenhagen, a newly launched fair from the same organizers as Material Matters London dedicated entirely to material experimentation and research. Held in the historic Gammel Dok district, it showcased 12 curated exhibitions focused on biomaterials, recycled composites and advanced surface technologies. Unlike the broad lifestyle approach of 3 Days of Design, Material Matters offered a focused, specialized platform for professionals at the intersection of R&D, material science and sustainable manufacturing. It offered deep dives into novel substrates, surface finishes and circular solutions. This makes it especially relevant for office manufacturers looking to pioneer sustainable, research-led product development without the noise of broader lifestyle marketing.
One new competing exhibition that launched alongside 3Days, was the Other Circle: A Post-Disciplinary Creative Salon in Copenhagen. Held from June 18–20, 2025, Other Circle debuted as a radical new event at The Lab in Copenhagen’s creative north, coinciding with Copenhagen Design Week and running alongside 3 Days of Design. Rather than focusing on traditional categories like furniture or lighting, Other Circle presented a blended platform that dissolved boundaries across design, art, fashion, music and food. Curated as a live, cross-disciplinary hub, the exhibition featured more than 50 participants ranging from emerging collectives to fashion labels and culinary collaborators inviting visitors into a multi-sensory cultural dialogue rather than a conventional show floor experience. One of the best experiences was a talk on The Role of Media in Post Disciplinary Creative Culture and included speakers Dan Thawley, curator at Matter & Shape; Hanna Nova Beatrice, CBO at NoGa; and designer Sabine Marcelis.
With all the criticisms of the Milan Furniture Fair, with its takeover from big corporate brands, especially from the fashion and automotive worlds, the huge experiential installations with little new product, and the long, long lines — all of that is absent with 3days of design.
3 Days of Design 2025 showcased how Scandinavian design continues its quiet revolution by melding timelessness with innovation, heritage with future technologies, minimalism with bold soul. Its ability to unite designers, manufacturers and users around shared values of authenticity, sustainability and craftsmanship makes it especially relevant for office furniture thinkers looking to create products that are built-to-last, people-centered and deeply resonant.
