Every year during Milan Design Week, while everyone else is focused on furniture and installations, Prada does something quietly different. It pulls together a room full of thinkers, scientists, architects, activists, artists, and starts a conversation that has nothing to do with selling anything. That is Prada Frames, and honestly, it might be the most interesting thing the brand does all year.
This April, from the 19th to the 21st, the fifth edition lands in Milan under the theme In Sight, and the location alone is worth talking about. Prada chose the Sacrestia of Santa Maria delle Grazie, a Renaissance space attributed to Bramante, its walls lined with inlaid cabinets depicting 16th-century biblical scenes. The church also happens to house Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. So yes, they are literally holding a symposium about image-making next door to one of the most iconic images ever made. That feels very intentional.
So What Is the Conversation This Year?
The theme is image-making, described by Prada as “a defining aspect of the immateriality of contemporary culture, and its preference for representation over facts.” In other words: in a world drowning in images, what do they actually mean? Who controls them? What do they do to us?
It is a sharp question for right now. We are all consuming hundreds of images a day without stopping to ask where they come from or what they are doing to how we understand the world. Prada Frames is carving out three days to sit with that discomfort, which feels both necessary and refreshing.
This year also introduces something new: a nighttime session on the opening evening, with a live music performance woven into the programme, not as entertainment, but as another layer of engagement with the theme.
Why It Matters to Us
The Arab world is no stranger to the politics of images, who gets to make them, who gets erased from them, whose stories get told in pictures, and whose get left out. A conversation like this one, happening at the intersection of culture, design, and power, feels very relevant from where we sit. As curator Simone Farresin puts it, Prada Frames is “a space where different forms of knowledge meet,” a place to reflect on the present and imagine different ways of thinking about the future.
Prada Frames “In Sight” runs April 19–21, 2026, at the Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan. Attendance is free with pre-registration on Prada’s website.
