This article is part of our Design special report previewing Milan Design Week.
Salone del Mobile, the international furniture fair in Milan, opens on Tuesday with the comfort of a steady heartbeat.
The six-day event, which anchors the festival known as Milan Design Week, has been an annual ritual with few interruptions since 1961. But this year it also marks a time of palpitating uncertainty as the strained economies of Europe, the property sector crisis in China and the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration threaten this highly networked industry.
“It’s a complicated moment,” said Maria Porro, the Salone del Mobile’s president. France and Germany, the leading buyers of Italian furniture, have retreated while the American market has stepped up.
According to the Salone’s 2024 annual report, American imports of Italian wood and furnishing sector products in 2023 were 2.13 billion euros ($2.3 billion), second only to France and just ahead of Germany.
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States also remain reliable customers because of a boom in real estate development in the region and a lack of local furniture producers, Ms. Porro said.
Globally, individual consumers are making fewer purchases, she added. The forces driving furniture sales are office and residential buildings, hotels and institutions. But the long timeline of large architectural projects brings a potential for canceled contracts should businesses or investors face hardship.
If there is malaise, it will likely not be obvious when the Salone unveils its new offerings at the exhibition center in Rho, a town northwest of the city center. Last year, the fair received 371,000 visitors, lending it a frenetic energy and long lines. (Good luck making a quick stop to buy a panini at lunchtime.) Large crowds are expected again.
The biennial Euroluce lighting exhibition will return to the fairgrounds, as will trade shows devoted to furnishing accessories and the workplace. And talent hunters will once again flock to SaloneSatellite, a showcase for designers under the age of 35.
The fair has also commissioned installations by the French interior designer Pierre-Yves Rochon, the Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, the British artist and stage designer Es Devlin (in Milan’s Brera district) and the American theater artist and director Robert Wilson (at the medieval Sforza Castle).
And then there are the hundreds of activities of Fuorisalone, which means “outside” the official event.
Throughout Milan and stretching about half an hour north to the town of Varedo (site once again of the annual Alcova design show), artists, manufacturers, retailers and furniture-loving civilians will take in the glamour and ingenuity of newly hatched artifacts.
You can thank the Salone for Milan Design Week’s outpouring of aesthetic brilliance, Ms. Porro noted.
“The role of Salone is to create an interconnected platform for companies,” she said.
“But also the role is to be this ecosystem that brings almost 400,000 people to Milano. It’s the great attractor.”
