Inside the POV Budapest 2025 Curatorial Concept

As anticipation builds for POV Budapest 2025 — one of Europe’s most international design gatherings, with guests from nearly 50 countries — we take a closer look at this year’s curatorial concept.

POV Budapest was never conceived as a platform for portfolio showcases. From its earliest moments, the aim was to create a space for critical discourse — a stage where multiple points of view could meet. Sometimes they would contradict. Sometimes align. But always, they would expand how visual culture is understood in the present moment.

In 2024, the curational arc unfolded under the themes of identity, standards, and dialect. A central question emerged: do the increasingly uniform aesthetics of screen design point toward a broader standardisation — a world where everything eventually looks the same? Or could these recurring visual patterns instead be understood as a Mittelpunkt — a shared foundation that, like a common language, makes room for dialects to develop organically? Just as English carries local accents and subtle cultural inflections, perhaps design can, too.

As Mátyás, co-founder of POV Budapest, reflects — last year’s speakers didn’t just define the discourse of 2024; they helped lay the groundwork for 2025:

In 2025, POV turns its attention to a new thematic lens: Making Sense.

This idea extends the previous year’s discourse, shifting focus toward the evolving role of the designer — not only as a craftsperson or stylist, but as a pro-active agent. A figure who initiates ideas, launches ventures, contributes as an integral part of product teams. Yet Making Sense remains intentionally open-ended: is it about logic and clarity — data, systems, analysis? Or is it about intuition, imagination, perception — the uniquely human ways of knowing?

This is a moment marked by saturation: of signals, information, contradictions. Designers no longer operate with a single orientation point. Instead, they must navigate multiplicity — layered truths, fragmented narratives. Making sense may sometimes mean building frameworks that help clarify. Other times, it might mean connecting fragments in unexpected ways. At once intellectual and emotional. Structural and poetic.

So who’s taking the stage this September?

From some of the most influential companies on the planet — like OpenAI and Revolut — to some of the world’s leading design studios, including Wolff Olins, Base Design, Mouthwash Studio, Studio Dumbar/DEPT®, and TwoTimesElliott. And that’s just the beginning. Explore the full lineup at povbudapest.com.

As the upcoming speakers prepare to take the stage, their individual interpretations of the theme begin to unfold. Each brings a distinct lens, shaped by their practice, their discipline, their cultural context. What emerges is not consensus — but a chorus of perspectives.

POV remains committed to discourse over display. This September 10–14, the stage opens again — an invitation to explore how meaning is made, and remade, in an ever-shifting visual world.

If you haven’t secured your spot yet, now’s the time — grab one of the remaining Late Bird tickets at povbudapest.com/tickets.

---