Art & Culture

Seven Years Later, Amman Design Week Returns—Here’s What to Expect

BYLeila Khatib

September 29, 2026

Seven years was a long time to be gone, and we’re so happy that Amman Design Week is returning from Oct. 2 to 17 for its first edition since 2019. This year, it’s unfolding across the parks and on the courts, looking at the ordinary everyday life where design has always been, whether we called it that or not.

Curated by Faysal Tabbarah, head of exhibitions, and Khaled Al-Bashir, head of programming, the fourth edition is titled “Accumulations,” and it’s a fitting one. More than 220 designers, makers, and collectives fill its exhibitions and public programming across Ras El Ain, Jabal Al Lweibdeh, Jabal Amman, and Iraq Al Amir, and, for the first time, Aqaba. The focus is everything that surrounds an object before anyone calls it design. Think inherited knowledge, local materials, daily rituals, labor, and the changing environments we live in. Anyone who grew up in an Arab home will recognize that list.

Four permanent installations are designed to outlast the festival, and the two in Ras El Ain set the tone. In Ras El Ain Park, Civil Architecture’s Folly is a ceramic-tile shade pavilion that weaves thoughtfully around the existing trees. Just nearby, Abeer Anabtawi’s Nawwarat Amman turns a concrete area into an active basketball court. Its design takes cues from the staples on local produce carts and dining tables: wheat, mallow leaves, chamomile and tomatoes. Both are meant to remain active community spaces long after the festival wraps. It’s design you can sit under and play on.

Meanwhile, the exhibitions bring together more than 120 designers and collectives, including L.E.FT, Wesam Asali, Sama el Saket, Sahel Hiyari, Ammar Khammash, FADAA, Abeer Seikaly, East Architecture Studio, and New South. A residency developed with Ithra Design Week brings designers from Jordan and Saudi Arabia together. The Student Exhibition also returns, with 42 students selected from more than 200 applicants, a sign of how many young designers are ready to show their work.

Guests can also expect workshops, talks, walks, tours, and performances. Galleries, studios, cafés, and cultural spaces across Amman will also host events, so the festival reaches the places where the city’s creative community already meets and works. In Aqaba, exhibitions and public programmes developed with WUJŨD respond to the coastal city’s landscape and histories.

Queen Rania Al Abdullah founded Amman Design Week in 2016, and it still frames design as an immersive experience. This time that means shaded public spaces, a basketball court, and accessible venues across the city. It’s a revival that’s easy to walk into, and every fact from your original is still in it.

Amman Design Week runs October 2–17, 2026. Entry is free. Explore the full programme and registration details.

Main image: هناك سمكة في مصعدي – نور مجاهد There’s a fish in my elevator by Nour Mujahed. Amman Design Week 2019

Seven Years Later, Amman Design Week Returns—Here’s What to Expect

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