deTour 2026, Hong Kong’s annual flagship design festival, will take place at PMQ, SoHo’s hub for design, over ten days from 20 to 29 November 2026. Organised by PMQ and sponsored by the Cultural and Creative Industries Development Agency (CCIDA), the festival brings together local and international creative talent, inspiring the public to reimagine design through exhibitions and a diverse range of activities. As a platform that supports creative design talents, PMQ is committed to connecting the design community, fostering creative and cultural exchange, and nurturing local creative entrepreneurs.
This year’s programme spans exhibitions, interactive installations, creative workshops, Creative Voice sharing sessions and guided tours. For the first time, deTour will feature a pop-up shop where visitors can browse and buy limited-edition products from local and international designers, as well as lifestyle items and festival merchandise, bringing design into everyday life.
“BETTER, NOT PERFECT”: Prototypes for Tomorrow
deTour 2026 is centred around the theme “BETTER, NOT PERFECT: Prototypes for Tomorrow”. Shin Wong serves as curator-at-large, alongside architects Aron Tsang, Wesley Ho and Dennis Cheung, and mixed-media artist and designer Chilai Howard.
This year’s festival features 14 works by creators from Hong Kong, Chinese Mainland and across the world. Diverse and imaginative, their works span speculative tools, adaptive materials, social design, digital rituals, urban interventions and immersive experiences. Physical and virtual, analogue and AI-assisted practices sit side by side, inviting the public to see design as an ongoing conversation that connects people, places and possibilities.
In a city shaped by constant creation, adaptation and evolution, this theme finds a fitting home. Here, design rarely starts from scratch. More often, it begins with existing conditions, responds to change, and looks for a better way forward between constraints and possibilities. Therefore, the curatorial team understands design as a continuous practice, measuring progress not by perfection, but by a willingness to rethink, refine and try again, so that things become better than they were before. Small changes can make a real difference, and that is the spirit “BETTER, NOT PERFECT” embraces.
Three Zones, Multiple Ways to Be “Better”
deTour’s works are arranged into three zones, showing how design turns possibility into everyday reality, evolves concepts into physical forms, and even influences the future.
THE CONCEPT LAB: An Everyday Object +1 New Idea
Curated by Aron Tsang and Wesley Ho, THE CONCEPT LAB starts with an everyday object and one new idea. Its six works trace how a concept rarely arrives from nothing and more often grows out of close observation of the objects and scenes we take for granted. These small ideas carry the seeds of change, and they develop through experimentation.
The zone encompasses wearables, ceramic landscapes, furniture and urban micro-infrastructure. Featured works include “Plasma Organism”, which reinterprets Hong Kong’s traditional neon craft as jewellery; “Seed Terrain”, which explores new ways to grow plants through a combination of contemporary ceramics and material research; “SECOND RAIN”, which reimagines air-conditioner drips as a cooling mist; and “Sip of Zen”, which turns celebratory sips and toasts into a collective composition. Emulating a development engine, the zone reveals the research, testing and experimentation that underpin every idea.
THE IRL FIELD: +1 Iteration
If THE CONCEPT LAB asks “what if this existed?”, THE IRL FIELD responds with iteration. Curated by Dennis Cheung, the zone gathers six works, including furniture, lighting, ceramics and objects, each shaped by long-term research and iterative improvement through testing, proving that “better” is often only a tweak away. In this zone, creators work with discarded city materials, from foam and paper to soil, exploring new possibilities for their reuse. Highlights include “Tofu”, which converts discarded industrial foam blocks into seats and side tables with a hand-coated, stone-like finish. “From waste to glaze, an urban alchemy” turns urban waste into colourful, Hong Kong-inspired glazes. “Beyond the Circle” repurposes the wood lathe to create forms that break free from conventional circular forms. Also working with timber, “Wood As It Is” splits and works the wood along its natural grain, embracing imperfections as integral to the making process.
THE FUTURE TRACK: +1 Dimension
The future is not only about technology and efficiency, but also about emotion. Curated by Chilai Howard, THE FUTURE TRACK presents two large-scale installations in which co-creators reinterpret everyday objects in surprising ways. This showcase blurs the boundaries between art, design and technology, inviting visitors to pause, smile and reconsider the familiar.
deTour 2026 also marks the Hong Kong debut of renowned international creator and designer Matty Benedetto, whose popular project “Department of Everyday Problems / Unnecessary Inventions” transforms a familiar retail setting into an immersive reception and display space. Through his signature humorous inventions, he turns small everyday hassles into inventive designs that bring a knowing smile. Visitors leave their daily hiccups at the counter and browse a catalogue of selected inventions, discovering how these delightfully “unnecessary” creations can bring joy and a fresh perspective to everyday life. The worries visitors leave behind may even inspire Benedetto’s next invention.
A variety of public programmes will be available for all ages throughout the festival. They give a closer look at the works and the inspirations behind them. On offer are cross-disciplinary creative workshops and Creative Voice sharing sessions led by local designers, which bring together diverse voices from the design and creative community, as well as guided tours led by curators, designers and creators from diverse disciplines, taking visitors step by step through the exhibition and its design philosophy.
For more information about the deTour 2026 design festival and public programmes, stay tuned for updates on deTour 2026’s social media, and visit the official website: https://detour.hk/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/detourhk/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/detourhk/
deTour 2026 – design festival
Date: 20 November – 29 November 2026
Opening Hours: 11am – 8pm (11am – 3pm on 20 November)
Venue: PMQ (35 Aberdeen Street, Central, Hong Kong)
Admission: Free Entry
