Open Call 2026

International Design Competition

NEXT GEN DESIGN 2026: “FUTURES WORTH LIVING“ 

Calling all brave creatives ready to disrupt with purpose.

WHY WE NEED YOU

We are living in a time of accelerated change, fractured by political instability, compromised social agreements, widening inequalities, rapid technological shifts altering how we work and relate, and mounting environmental pressure. Moments like this call for radical rethinking of priorities, questioning inherited systems, and evoking values that may have been sidelined – care, solidarity, responsibility, and love.

This is where you come in. As the generation growing up inside these contradictions yet not bound by the assumptions that created them, you have the chance to question what is taken for granted, sharpen your vision for the future, and claim your seat at the table to build a world that finally feels like home for everyone.

Under the slogan: „Futures Worth Living“, we encourage you to use design’s power to redirect trajectories—by disrupting systems that no longer serve, redefining relationships, and proposing new modes of living together, producing, caring, co-creating, and coexisting.

This competition is your platform to experiment with humanistic innovations—from circular tech and biomimicry to community-uniting rituals and hybrid solidarity networks—crafting solutions that boost youth self-esteem, active participation, and positive global impact. We seek youth-led solutions that heal divides, regenerate ecosystems, and inspire collective action for a just, united tomorrow.

WHO CAN APPLY

If you are aged 18 to 35, born, studying, or living in Europe, this is your moment. Whether you’re an individual innovator or part of a collaborative team, you’re welcome to submit up to five entries showcasing your vision for a sustainable future.

COMPETITIONS THEMES

Your project should respond to the overarching question: How can design—through objects, systems, spaces, events, technologies, and interactions—enable more just, resilient, and humane futures? Projects may include (but are not limited to):

• Circular, regenerative, and low-impact products and systems: Furniture, lighting, interior elements, tools, and everyday objects designed for longevity, reparability, reuse, material responsibility, and regenerative life cycles.
• Everyday practices rethought: Design solutions addressing daily habits, consumption, accessibility, shared use, and care—particularly in relation to contemporary youth lifestyles and realities.
• Humane and ethical applications of technology: Design projects critically engaging with AI, automation, algorithms, and digital systems—focusing on transparency, agency, fairness, accessibility, and human oversight, rather than efficiency alone.
• Human-centred making, local knowledge, and craft-based innovation: Design approaches that foreground manual processes, craftsmanship, material intelligence, repair, and situated knowledge, emphasising the visible human trace and irreplaceable creative agency—either as standalone practices or in deliberate dialogue with digital, automated, and AI-driven technologies.
• Design for care, inclusion, and wellbeing: Assistive devices, educational tools, mental-health-oriented solutions, disaster-relief designs, and systems that support dignity, accessibility, and collective care.
• Sustainable textiles, wearables, and fashion systems: Garments, footwear, and textile applications grounded in circular materials, ethical production, multifunctionality, repair culture, and alternative fashion economies.
• Housing, shelter, and adaptive spatial solutions: Prefabricated or modular housing, temporary shelters, community spaces, biomaterials, and climate-responsive construction systems.
• Food systems, urban farming, and waste reduction: Designs addressing food production, composting, redistribution, local agriculture, and resource-conscious food practices.
• Platforms and tools for collective action: Digital or hybrid solutions enabling sharing economies, mutual aid, repair networks, civic participation, and community-led initiatives.
• Community-supporting platforms and tools for collective action: Tools, systems, spaces, and participatory frameworks—digital, physical, or hybrid—that strengthen community bonds, foster inclusion and collective agency, enable sharing economies, mutual aid, repair networks, and support community engagement, mobilisation around common-good causes, and meaningful real-life human exchange.
• Nature-integrated and biodiversity-supporting design: Biophilic systems, urban–nature interfaces, and projects that restore ecological relationships and support biodiversity.
• Design for awareness, education, and cultural shift: Campaigns, participatory formats, educational tools, or design-led narratives that foster critical thinking, responsibility, solidarity, and long-term orientation.

INTERNATIONAL JURY

Projects will be reviewed by a diverse international jury of design experts, forward-thinking innovators, social change-makers, and leading practitioners of sustainable and regenerative design:

[Mikser]

Henriette Waal, designer, researcher, co-founder of Atelier Luma  / artistic leader of Veenweide Atelier | The Netherlands

[BCDF]

Juan Umbert, Entrepreneur, CEO, Innovator & creative soul, Barcelona | Spain

[SDW]

Nikola Radeljković, industrial designer, Numen / ForUse | Croatia

[dA]
Elli Schindler, managing director designaustria and designforum Wien | Austria

[WDCD]

Emile Smeenk, designer, entrepreneur, founder of Cool Bricks and Nature Nomads | The Netherlands

ABOUT NEXT GEN DESIGN

Next Gen Design is a three-year program of co-learning, research, design competitions, workshops and exhibitions, connecting 5 prominent European design festivals – Mikser Festival in Belgrade, What Design Can Do in Amsterdam and 3 Design Weeks, in Vienna, Barcelona and Skopje – aiming to encourage young creatives living in Europe to create, adopt and disseminate just and sustainable design that contributes to European Green Deal and beyond.

WHAT YOU COULD WIN

Join the Next Gen Design Cohort 2026!

Winning this competition is an entry into a pan-European movement of change-makers. As a winner, your work and your voice will be amplified through the following opportunities: 

The Next Gen Design Traveling Exhibition

50 winning works selected by the International Jury will be included in the Next Gen Design Travelling Exhibition, touring Europe from May to November 2026. Your project will be showcased to international audiences, industry leaders, and peers at 5 partner festivals: Mikser Festival, Belgrade / Novi Pazar, Serbia: 5 – 7 June

The Next Gen Design Digital Showcase

Going beyond the physical tour, the winning projects land a permanent feature on the Next Gen Design digital platform. Curious? Check out the NGD Cohort 2025 winning projects.

The Next Gen Design Residency Program

The Next Gen Design Residency is about cultural exchange, rapid prototyping, and real-world impact. For each winning project, one representative – the solo author or one representative of a team – will take part in a collaborative residency with covered expenses. We are bringing 10 different designers from the Next Gen Design 2026 cohort to one of our five partner cities for the exhibition opening and an intense 4-5 day design sprint.

The Experience: 5 Cities, 50 Visionaries:  You’ll team up with peers from across Europe (in teams of 2–4) to hack local challenges, pitch to expert juries, attend design expert sessions and build the Next Gen Design network.

Financial  Coverage: As we believe in accessibility, residency organizers will make the travel arrangements or reimburse travel expenses for the participants – up to 400 EUR, provide accommodation or reimburse costs for affordable local lodging (hostels or rental apartments) – up to 50 EUR per night, and provide meals or reimburse boarding costs for daily meals – up to 50 EUR per day. At the later stage, each residency host will inform its participants whether they will directly book and manage the above arrangements or reimburse the costs to residency participants.

The Next Gen Design Residency Awards – 15  Monetary Prizes (3 per festival)

At each host festival, three residency projects will be selected by the local jury for the Next Gen Design Residency Awards. A total prize fund of 2,000 EUR per festival will be distributed as follows:

First Prize – 1,000 EUR

Second Prize – 600 EUR

Third Prize – 400 EUR

The Next Gen Design Residency Award fund is to be equally distributed among the winning team members and used for further personal education, exploration, and development of ideas in the field of circular design.

The Next Gen Design Residency Award Ceremony will be held at the end of the residency program at each host festival when the awarded projects will be announced publicly, in the presence of the festival audience.

Explore the Next Gen Design 2025 Residency Award-winning projects and teams.

CRITERIA FOR SELECTION

The Jury will evaluate submissions based on the clarity of their intent, the strength of their design thinking, and their capacity to respond meaningfully to contemporary social and environmental challenges. Particular attention is given to projects that demonstrate relevance to the lived realities of young people and propose responsible, forward-looking alternatives.

Criteria include:

• Relevance and rationale: Clear identification of a real need or challenge, and a convincing explanation of why this solution is necessary and timely.
• Originality and innovation: New ideas, fresh perspectives, or meaningful reinterpretations of existing solutions that demonstrate independent and critical thinking.
• Transformative potential: The ability to influence behaviours, practices, or systems, and to propose alternative ways of living, producing, or relating.
• Social value and collective impact: Contribution to inclusion, community strength, participation, and shared, humane ways of living.
• Environmental responsibility: Consideration of climate impact, resource use, biodiversity, and circular or regenerative strategies.
• Ethical use of technology and materials: Responsible, transparent, and human-centred application of materials, tools, and technologies, including digital and AI-driven systems.
• Design quality and usability: Coherence, functionality, accessibility, and quality of user experience in real-world contexts.
• Contextual awareness and feasibility: Sensitivity to cultural and material contexts, use of local knowledge where relevant, and potential for adaptation or scaling.

HOW TO ENTER

Submit your entry by filling out the form at nextgendesign.eu/application-form by midnight, 24 March 2026. The Next Gen Design Exhibition will feature print materials, digital audio, and video content. All required submission elements should effectively communicate your concept and align with the provided guidelines. Applicants are required to submit the following:

Personal Information

• Link to online portfolio and/or website
• Biography of the author(s) (120 words)
• Personal quote about you and your design perspective (35 words)
• One portrait JPEG, A4 image, up to 12 MB   

Project Description

• Project title
• Highlight sentence capturing the essence of the project (35 words)
• Project description divided into three sections: 1. Define the problem/need you are solving or addressing with your project. Does it impact or reflect young people, and if so, how; 2. Please describe your project, reflecting on the concept, inspiration, materials, technical aspects, methods and process(es); 3. What makes your project innovative, and how does it address the Open Call criteria, such as environmental impact, social engagement, circularity, user experience, resource efficiency, and community-driven solutions? (each question has a limit of 150 words)

Visual Materials

• A4 size, JPEG, vertical and/or horizontal, 300 DPI, CMYK. Include photographs, 3D renderings, illustrations, drawings, sketches, diagrams, or similar visual materials that present your project. Up to 5 files for upload, with a total size limit of 12 MB per JPEG.
• Video, full HD mp4 file, 16:9, with the downloadable link, previously uploaded to one of the popular cloud services (WeTransfer, Google Drive, Dropbox etc.). Video materials can illustrate the need, process, demonstration, background stories, or 3D simulations related to your project.

KEY DATES

10 February – 26 March 2026 Competition open for entries

27 March  –  7 April 2026 Pre-selection and jurying process

10 April 2025 Public announcement of the Next Gen Design competition winners

14 – 16 April 2026 Online orientation meeting with all the winners

*The dates for the online preparation meetings for each residency will be determined and announced at a later time.

IMPORTANT NOTES

• The decisions of the International Jury are final.
• Any claims arising in relation to the authorship of a submitted project or potential plagiarism shall be the sole responsibility of the applicant(s).
• In the event of non-fulfilment of any of the rules herein, the curatorial team maintains the right to exclude the submitted entry from the exhibition and/or its author(s) from the residency program.
• By submitting this application, designers selected for the Next Gen Design exhibition commit to participating in the residency program and accompanying activities at one of the five partner festivals (excluding the festival in their country of residence, where applicable). The host festivals will be assigned to competition winners based on their top preferences indicated in the competition form. While we strive to accommodate everyone’s first choice, we cannot guarantee it due to limited availability. However, we will make every effort to meet the expectations of all selected designers.

• For projects submitted by teams, the residency program covers participation and expenses for one designated representative per selected project only. By submitting a group project, team members agree to nominate a single representative to attend the residency and related program activities on behalf of the team.

• Upon announcement of the competition results, the organisers will contact the selected designers and organise a collective online orientation meeting before finalising residency assignments. Each host festival will subsequently organise an additional online meeting to prepare participants for their residency.

• By submitting an application to the competition, applicants grant the organisers the right to use submitted texts, images, and video materials for non-commercial promotional, communication, and archival purposes, including exhibitions, publications, promotional materials, websites, and social media channels, with full credit given to the authors.

USEFUL LINKS

Next Gen Design Knowledge Hub

Design for the Surreal World? A New Model of Socially Responsible Design

Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change by Viktor Papanek

Field Guide to Human-Centered Design by IDEO

Design Perspectives: Design for Health and Wellbeing – Design Council UK

Community Driven Design

Guide to Replication of Community Hubs by Mikser

Megatrends 2026 Forcing Finland to Reinvent Itself

Circular Design Resources – Ellen MacArthur Foundation

7 Resources to Level Up Your Circular Design Game by WDCD

Circular Design Guide

Re-Thinking Progress: Circular Economy Video

Circular Design Learning Journey

Design for Circular Economy

Jan Boelen on recycled plastic

NEXT GEN DESIGN TEAM

Barcelona Creativity & Design Foundation / Barcelona Design Week

Isabel Roig

Eugènia Martí

designaustria

Tamara Koenig

Mikser / Mikser Festival

Maja Lalic 

Jelena Matic

Jelena Krivokapic

Ksenija Pantelic

Public Room / Skopje Design Week

Aleksandar Velinovski

What Design Can Do

Pepijn Zurburg

Richard van der Laken

INFO & INQUIRIES

competition@nextgendesign.eu
www.nextgendesign.eu
nxtgen.design

COMPETITION LINKS

Competition text: https://nextgendesign.eu/open-call-2026/
Application form: https://nextgendesign.eu/application-form/

Next Gen Design has evolved from the Young Balkan Designers initiative and is supported by the European Commission through the Creative Europe Programme.