For the first time, Bulgaria will host the prestigious European Design Festival, an international event that has travelled across Europe’s leading capitals for the past two decades, bringing together the very best in contemporary communication design – graphic design, typography, digital products, illustration, animation, advertising, branding, and other creative disciplines.
It is both an honour and a pleasure for us to welcome the festival to Sofia and to host some of the most influential voices in European and international design. For four days, the city will become a place for exchange, inspiration, and dialogue about the role of design as a cultural, social, and economic force.
The programme includes an international conference, exhibitions, open studios, workshops, networking events with professionals from across Europe, and the European Design Awards ceremony – one of the continent’s most prestigious recognitions in the field of communication design.
Among the programme highlights is the two-day ED-Conference Talks at Toplocentrala, featuring some of the most exciting names on the contemporary European design scene:
Andrea Gassner (Austria), Atelier Andrea Gassner – one of Europe’s most awarded designers, recipient of the Henry Steiner Prize 2025 and founder of Austria’s leading studio for visual communication and spatial design.
Yannis Konstantinidis (UK, Greece), NOMINT – co-founder and creative director of the Emmy-winning animation studio, recognised with more than 100 international awards for design and advertising.
Krasimir Stavrev and Svetla Todorova (Bulgaria), punkt.studio – creators of key visual identity projects for the city of Plovdiv, including the communication design for Plovdiv 2019 – European Capital of Culture.
Maria Todorova (Bulgaria), NEXT-DC – founder and CEO of the independent digital agency behind projects for brands including Heineken, Jack Daniel’s, Canon and X (formerly Twitter).
Plamen Motev (Bulgaria), Fontfabric – creative director of the internationally acclaimed type foundry developing custom and retail typefaces for global brands.
Vangelis Liakos (Greece), Beetroot – co-founder of one of Greece’s most awarded visual communication agencies and member of AGI – Alliance Graphique Internationale.
Rozalina Burkova (Bulgaria) – internationally recognised illustrator and animator whose clients include The New York Times, Tate Modern, Gucci, Bloomberg and the Obama Foundation.
Léa Bruneau (France), Production Type – type designer and calligrapher, recipient of the TDC Ascender Award 2024 for her contribution to contemporary typography.
Melike Tascioglu-Vaughan (Turkey / United Kingdom), ICoD – President of the International Council of Design (ICoD), the world’s largest representative body for professional designers.
Paul Voggenreiter (Germany) and Miroslav Zhivkov (Bulgaria) – designer and artist exploring the intersections of graphic design, experimentation and artistic practice through collaborative international projects.
Frank Baas and Yuri Nauta (The Netherlands), G2K – partners at the award-winning strategy, design and digital agency recognised by the European Design Awards and Red Dot Design Awards.
Ivaylo Nedkov and Tsvetislava Koleva (Bulgaria), FourPlus – the creative duo behind one of Bulgaria’s leading strategy, design and motion studios with international recognition.
On 13 June, the European Design Awards ceremony will bring together nominated designers and studios from across Europe competing in categories including branding, packaging, promotion, publications, typography, illustration, digital applications, independent projects and special projects. The ceremony will be followed by the official festival party, where graphic designers Stefanie Nedelcheva and Vasil Iliev will take over the DJ booth.
Tickets for Day 1, Day 2 and the Awards Ceremony are available here. All ticket holders are invited to attend the official party.
For the second consecutive year, the International Council of Design will hold its Regional Meeting on 11 June as part of the festival programme. The one-day event will explore this year’s theme, Confessions of a Designer: Design, Decisions and Impact, examining how design decisions are shaped by uncertainty, tensions and trade-offs in a time of geopolitical, economic and technological change, including the rapid development of artificial intelligence. Registration is available here.
The festival programme also includes a series of exhibitions showcasing contemporary European and Bulgarian design. Be sure to make time to visit:
20 Years of European Communication Design is a major exhibition tracing two decades of Europe’s most celebrated design projects, demonstrating how communication design shapes the way we perceive, understand and interact with the world around us.
&NowEast brings together contemporary poster works from Eastern Europe, revealing the richness of the region’s visual culture through the eyes of a new generation of designers.
Sebastian Curi at L44 presents a site-specific exhibition by the internationally acclaimed Argentine illustrator, transforming his distinctive world of vibrant colours, dynamic characters and visual humour into an immersive spatial experience.
Book’n’Space showcases experimental publishing projects by students of the National Academy of Art, exploring the book as an object, environment and experience beyond the traditional boundaries of printed media.
Magic Between the Pages: The Journey of Bulgarian Children’s Illustration traces the development of Bulgarian illustrated children’s books over the past century through landmark publications and authors, revealing the richness of their visual languages, artistic approaches and cultural significance.
Reforms presents student projects from the National Academy of Art that rethink familiar everyday objects through the lens of sustainable design, circular economy principles and emerging patterns of consumption.
IKEA PS Collection presents the tenth edition of IKEA’s iconic experimental collection, which for three decades has explored the future of democratic design through playful, innovative, functional and bold solutions for contemporary living.
Visitors will also have the opportunity to take part in specially curated workshops dedicated to typography, screen printing, artificial intelligence and visual experimentation, as well as open studio visits and guided city walks that reveal Sofia through its architecture, visual culture and independent creative scene.
The full programme and the latest updates can be found here.
The presence of the European Design Festival in Sofia is an important sign of the maturity and potential of the Bulgarian design scene. It offers an opportunity for the local community to be seen within an international context, to establish new professional connections, and to engage in meaningful exchange with some of the most inspiring contemporary practices in European communication design.
At the same time, an event of this scale has a significant impact on the city’s international profile. We expect to welcome designers, studios, journalists and visitors from across Europe, placing Sofia firmly on the map of important cultural destinations.
Yet the significance of the festival extends beyond the professional community. It is also an opportunity to foster a broader understanding of the role design plays in our everyday lives — a subject that remains relatively unfamiliar in Bulgaria despite influencing almost every aspect of how we live, work and communicate.
Communication design is everywhere around us: in the digital services we use, the books we read, navigation systems, public spaces, packaging, and the visual language of institutions, organisations and businesses.
We hope the festival will inspire not only professional interest, but also a more critical awareness of the environments we inhabit and the ways visual communication shapes our behaviour, choices and culture.