Tag: creative community

Komplekt and Sofia – hosts of the European Design Awards & Festival 2026

From June 11 to 14, the large-scale event will bring together the European design community and the creative energy of Sofia. Applications for the competition program are open until February 13, and the winners will receive their awards live in Bulgaria.

For the first time in Bulgaria, the European Design Awards and Festival—one of the most prestigious international platforms in the field of communication design—will take place. Sofia was selected to host the event in 2026, continuing the tradition after Luxembourg (2023), Naples (2024), and Ljubljana (2025). This June, the capital city will welcome its 20th edition. The rich festival program will be accompanied by the official awards ceremony honoring the most successful design projects – the European Design Awards, also known as the ED Awards.

The selection of Sofia as host reflects its growing role as a hub for cultural exchange, contemporary thinking, and the development of creative industries within a European context.

The European Design Awards and Festival will bring leading figures in contemporary communication design to Bulgaria, turning Sofia and the country into a center of the European design scene.

From June 11 to 14, the program of the European Design Awards and Festival 2026 will feature a two-day lecture forum on communication design with international professionals, open-access exhibitions, studio visits, a meeting of the International Council of Design (ICoD), practical workshops, and opportunities for exchange across various fields of communication design.

The festival is part of Sofia’s broader efforts to encourage international exchange in design, culture, and innovation, creating an environment for encounters between professionals from different sectors and generations.

“It is an honor for us to organize an event of such magnitude. Our mission is to turn Sofia into a place of inspiration, encounters, and new perspectives. Design is a bridge between the local and European design communities, but it is also an expression of a culture that drives society forward, challenges it, and enriches it,” say Adriana Andreeva and Boyana Gaurova from Studio Komplekt.

“Our support for the European Design Awards & Festival is part of Sofia’s long-term vision to invest in the city’s creative potential. Design is the way contemporary cities tell their stories, develop their environments, and build connections beyond traditional economic sectors,” comment representatives of Visit Sofia.

Visitors to the large-scale event will discover the work of established and emerging Bulgarian design studios, take part in curated urban walks with a cultural program, and attend the highlight of the event—the official ceremony presenting Europe’s communication design awards. The European Design Awards recognize projects distinguished by high quality, strong concept, innovation, professional execution, and impact on audiences.

Professional designers, studios, agencies, independent authors, and young talents from across Europe can submit their projects in a wide range of categories, including graphic design, visual identity, typography, digital design, packaging, posters, editorial design, and other areas of contemporary visual communication. This year, the competition introduces an updated and expanded category covering motion design, emerging technologies, identity, and comprehensive branding systems. The deadline for submissions to the European Design Awards 2026 is February 13, and the winners will receive their awards live in Sofia.

“Sofia is a city in transformation—raw, powerful, and filled with creative energy. You can feel that something is about to happen—this makes it the perfect stage for a festival that gives voice to bold ideas and new perspectives,” shares Demetrios Fakinos, Director of the European Design Awards and Festival.

Each edition of the festival is distinguished by a strong visual identity developed by a local design studio. The visual identity of the Sofia edition has been entrusted to the award-winning creative agency Next DC.

European Design Awards & Festival 2026 is organized by Studio Komplekt in partnership with European Design Awards and the Bulgarian Convention Bureau, with the support of OP “Tourism” – Visit Sofia and the Sofia Municipality, as part of the city’s efforts to strengthen its role as an open European capital for culture, design, and creative exchange.

Follow the festival program on the Facebook and Instagram profiles of Studio Komplekt, as well as on the websites europeandesign.org and studiokomplekt.com.

MELBA Meetings with Aleksi Ivanov, Nikolay Bozhilov and STUDIO TASH

On 30 September, at 19:00, we look forward to welcoming you to the 29th edition of MELBA MEETINGS at Toplocentrala. Our guests are Aleksi Ivanov, Nikolay Bozhilov and STUDIO TASH.

Aleksi Ivanov is a multidisciplinary artist working in the fields of contemporary mural art, illustration, and street art. He began doing graffiti in 2003, later moving towards street art and specifically the revitalization of neglected urban spaces. His style is illustrative and easily recognizable, featuring characteristic characters reminiscent of cartoon heroes that interact with their surroundings.

Nikolay Bozhilov is a fashion designer whose work unites sculptural functionality with a harmony between nature and technology. In 2013 he graduated with honors from the National Academy of Arts, later earning a PhD in fashion design. He is co-founder of the creative space CONETS, and his academic background combined with his contemporary aesthetic has established him as a leading name on both the Bulgarian and international stage.

Nikolay is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Triumph Inspiration Award (London, 2010), the Golden Needle for “Young Designer of the Year” (2010 and 2013), the OFFFASHION Prize (Poland, 2011), the Big See Award (2022), and the Kyoto Design Award (2023). His collections, created with an ethical approach, have been featured in prestigious media and showcased at platforms such as Sofia Design Week, Berlin Fashion Week, and Slovenian Design Week.

STUDIO TASH is a design studio founded by Margarita Rangelova and Marta Moskova. The two met while studying at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, where they discovered shared interests and aesthetic pursuits that brought them together as a creative duo. With backgrounds in metalworking, ceramics, glass, and textiles, Margarita and Marta combine sensitivity to material with an experimental approach. In the work of STUDIO TASH, natural forms and textures intertwine with bold artistic exploration to create objects that captivate, invite interaction, and transcend their practical function.

Organizer: Komplekt
Main partner: Fashion Days

MELBA MEETINGS is part of the Melba Design Initiatives by Studio Komplekt. In Melba Meetings we present current and remarkable projects by local design heroes. Experience and know-how are shared about their realization, with a focus on the ideas, details, and processes behind each one.

MELBA LIVE XIII with Monocle Design Editor Nolan Giles

This is the 13th edition of our beloved format MELBA LIVE and first for 2021. Well, we’ve left behind a year of only digital events. Crossing our fingers this would be a different one and we’ll be able to welcome you some time soon in a hall somewhere in central Sofia. Enough of the gloom and regrets, because we have a splendid occasion to get you in front of your screens and hop in a Zoom live streaming this end of January.

Melba Live welcomes a very special guest for its first 2021 edition. Nolan Giles is the renowned design editor of Monocle and host of the superbly curated radio show Monocle on Design. Meet him live online to get a glimpse of his view on what are some of the major shifts one can expect when it comes to design and architecture impact in everyday quality of life.

Nolan Giles has been covering major events in the design and architecture spheres and translating their meaning and influence in an engaging voice for years now, bestowing him the credit of a connoisseur and an important critic for the discipline. His articles and the radio show he is hosting are making sense of what is valuable or detrimental, and what could be a transformative movement with future implications for everybody. Nolan Giles has traveled the world and met with some of protagonists leading design and architecture to new fields, revealing their effects in social, political, environmental, educational, entrepreneurial and lifestyle matters. Nolan Giles tries to keep a healthy dose of critical rhetoric when it comes to overviews and predictions.

MELBA LIVE XIII will take place on the 28th of January at 19:00 in ZOOM. Registration is free thanks to our favorite partners Fashion Days and via Eventbrite here. For news and updates – check the Facebook event.

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MELBA LIVE is part of the Melba Design Initiatives created and curated by Studio Komplekt. They present remarkable in their approach projects by local design heroes in various fields of design in an inspiring and honest ways.

MELBA LIVE #1

At the end of March, we launched a series of curated meetings MELBA LIVE at which we get acquainted with up-to-date and remarkable projects realised by local design heroes. The invited guests share experience as the main focus is the ideas, details and processes behind each task. Like the online MELBA archive, here we rely on the quality and deliberate blending of design spheres as well.

In this first edition we had the honor to welcome the latest professional endeavours by Sklada and N8, Venelin Shurelov and NEXT-DC.

Galia Zannato / Sklada and N8 told the story of the Ping-Pong production – a propitious collaboration between the showroom for high end design brands and Bulgarian visual creatives. In this game of ping-pong between them as producers and the designers as creators of new objects, each one has an important role in the exchange of ideas, their processing and the final realization, which manages to appear in all its wonderful glory – labeled and branded on the shelves of 8 Shishman Street. Galya also mentioned the humanity as an important trait of design – as the discipline which takes care of our everyday enjoyment of life through the use of well-designed objects, clothes, devices and environments.

Venelin Shurelov talked about his interactive installation Abecedarium Bulgaricum – placed in the buildings of the Council of Europe in Brussels on the occasion of the Bulgarian EU Presidency The name of the project is a direct reference to the Bulgarian alphabet and its idea is for the visitors to get acquainted with the rareness of the Cyrillic alphabet in the form of a game. Venelin presented in more detail the motives for his decisions in the presentation of the installation and the collaboration with other designers, such as the DontDIY architectural studio, whose furniture is actively involved in final stylish presentation.

Pocket Science is a campaign by VISA with a concept and realization by our MELBA partners – NEXT-DC. Extremely meaningful and adequately engaging teenagers, the campaign aims to get them to learn more about money management by providing them with attractive incentives – cool clothes and accessories. And as the presentation showed – the amount of t-shirts, sweaters, hats and other was immediately exhausted.  But the strongest proof of the success of the initiative is the result of the interactions with the students, which through the completed petitions succeeded in bringing the financial literacy as a main course in the curriculum of the secondary schools throughout Bulgaria – currently the class “Our Money” is a fact in 50 schools in over 30 Bulgarian cities.

We are preparing MELBA LIVE #2 for the 31st of May / Thursday after 7 pm at Generator with a free entrance. Expect more news soon.