Forward Festival Berlin 2026 bring a program on creativity and impact
Forward Festival Berlin 2026 returns to Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin on 27 and 28 August 2026 as an international creative conference focused on turning ideas into action. Across two days and three stages, the festival brings together more than 50 speakers from design, art, technology, advertising, typography, motion, photography, and creative business, positioning HKW as a meeting point for an industry looking for practical direction as much as inspiration.
The 2026 edition builds its program around the theme “Turn Ideas into Action,” a direct response to the gap between creative thinking and execution. Forward Festival treats creativity as a process that requires testing, risk, collaboration, and the discipline to move from concept to work. Through talks, conversations, workshops, exhibitions, side events, and an expo area, the festival gives designers, artists, marketers, technologists, and entrepreneurs a shared space to understand how projects are made, challenged, refined, and brought into public life.
Forward Festival Berlin 2026 opens its lineup with a wide international group of creative voices. Stefan Sagmeister brings his long-standing interest in design, meaning, and everyday life, while Gab Bois presents a practice known for surreal image-making and object-based visual culture. Brooklyn-based studio Anton & Irene, represented by Irene Pereyra, adds a perspective on digital design and culture-shaping experiences, with past work connected to clients including Spotify, IKEA, and The Met.
The program also includes Dinamo, the progressive type foundry known for treating typography as a tool for identity and attitude, and FutureDeluxe, the London-based studio working across motion, visual systems, technology, and immersive design for global brands. Further participants include Gemma O’Brien, EY Doberman, The Mill, Fake Plastic Brands, The Good Grief Collective, Vera van de Seyp, NotReal, Rocani, Studio 11:40, Allan Dransfield, Vanessa Olt, and Joe Taylor presented by Procreate, with more names still to be announced.
The Festival is designed to function beyond the stage. The HKW setting allows the event to operate as a temporary creative campus, where talks sit alongside exhibitions, workshops, studio encounters, networking formats, and evening programs. For attendees, the festival experience is not limited to listening to established figures; it creates conditions for exchange between independent creatives, studios, agencies, brands, students, and cultural workers who are navigating similar questions from different positions in the industry.
Founded in 2015, Forward Festival has grown into a European platform for creative culture, with editions connecting established practitioners and emerging voices across disciplines. In Berlin, the 2026 edition presents creativity not as a finished image, but as a working method with cultural consequences. By focusing on action, Forward Festival Berlin 2026 frames the creative conference as a place where ideas gain structure, collaborations begin, and the next phase of visual culture takes shape through practice.
Find the tickets here: https://www.forward-festival.com/page/tickets
All images courtesy of Forward Festival, shared with permission
https://www.forward-festival.com
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