The second edition of Design Mumbai, which will take place between November 26 – 29, 2025, reflects how India has begun looking inwards to evolve its design landscape. Set to take over the Jio World Garden in the heart of Mumbai, the design event in its forthcoming edition hopes to offer a glimpse of the future of Indian design through an array of installations reflecting the country’s cultural memory. The event focuses not only on the realised product, but also on the process of arriving at it, generating discourse on materiality, sustainability and mindful design. As a media partner, STIR peeks into some of the curious design offerings to take stage in this edition—works that essentially integrate storytelling with technology and material innovation within its creative conceptual core.

Travel Through India, the starting point of the show, will feature a tunnel made from colourful UV-printed aluminium panels by artist Juan Gerstl. Transforming the movement of visitors into a light installation filled with colours and reflections, the mirrored surfaces also double as a dynamic artwork. Inspired by a trip to India, the artist views the installation as a celebration of how travel influences and shapes our individuality.

THE Park Hotels, which partnered with Dutch industrial designer Richard Hutten for Design Mumbai 2024, are collaborating with Spanish designer Lucas Muñoz Muñoz for this edition. With an experimental approach, he will design a cafe using salvaged materials from the boutique hotel’s recent refurbishment projects.

Founder of his eponymous material-led design studio, Chris Lefteri will present PEELSPHERE—a circular design material made from a plant-based leather derived from tomatoes—and Panda Poop Seed Paper, which is produced using panda droppings. For the inaugural edition of Design Mumbai, the British designer staged an installation, Materials Lab, inviting curiosity and engagement with innovative materials.

Bringing the bistro culture to the Jio World Garden, global hospitality icon Soho House will return to the design event this year for the second edition of its members’ club pop-up, the Soho House Lounge. Embodying the brand’s ethos with its signature aesthetic, the installation will feature sculptural designs by Soho House member and Mumbai-based artist Vinita Mungi. Working with tactile clay, the Indian artist prompts a conversation between art, nature and self, encouraging the visitors to pause and reflect. Her work will be presented alongside craft and designs by local artisans, embodying the spirit of community.

Materials! Do touch!, a curation of this year’s Smart Materials Lab, forefronts three stories—Uplifting Tales from Nature, Unrefined Stories and Distorted Dreams. Sponsored by Royal Enfield, Uplifting Tales from Nature will feature natural materials that evoke the woodlands, including networks of mushroom roots and repurposed wood waste. Turning natural byproducts into environmentally conscious product designs, these innovations are contributing to a new age of sustainable design materials.

Unrefined Stories will be grounded in the brutalist aesthetic, featuring grey stone, rough concrete and unfinished surfaces. With a focus on industrial textures, this section will present the materials and the textures and cracks within them, as embodiments of resilience. Further, drawing on the themes of AI and its often dreamlike imagery, Distorted Dreams will highlight the trend of ‘self-focus and iridescence’, as mentioned in the press release.

Also taking place will be Jaipur Rugs’ Court of Carpets, a recreation of its 2024 campaign, the Jaipur Rugs Tennis Championships, with Indian tennis player Rohan Bopanna. The family-owned rug company’s young women artisans took to the carpeted court to play against Bopanna, using knitted yarn net, New Zealand wool tennis ball and tennis rackets strung with bamboo silk. Elsewhere, Srivan, a design installation by Indian architecture practice Studio Saar, will return to the design show, featuring a collection of forms made using Jodhpur stone, steel and cotton. The Anglo-Indian architecture firm draws its concept from one of the three types of Vedic forests, which support humanity by providing food, timber and plant-based products.

Partnering with independent design curator and creative brand strategist, Kamna Malik, Design Mumbai 2025 introduces The Object Edit, a showcase that will perform like a gallery of works. Encouraging discourse between the displayed works as pieces of decorative design, the installation will comprise furniture designs, art, lighting designs and functional art. The curious offerings are presented by select studios which include Objectry, AndBlack, Scarlet Splendour, Abner Lighting, and Stem and Beso.

Design Mumbai as a platform presents design as something to participate in, staging a kind of rehearsal for the Indian design scene, where material accountability, technological attunement and collaborative approaches matter as much as the products themselves. By illuminating a new path in the cultural trajectory of the country, it presents India on a global stage as an active contributor to the upcoming design trends and developments.

STIR, as a media partner, features the best of designers, studios, brands and special projects to watch out for at the second edition of Design Mumbai taking place from November 26 – 29, 2025, at the Jio World Garden in Mumbai, India. Explore our full coverage here.