Industry

Design, in the Milan ecosystem the number of companies grows by 2.6%

Presented the second edition of (Eco) Sistema Design Milano: Annual Report 2025 of the Salone del Mobile. A 278 million euro impact for the city is confirmed

19 December 2025

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Design, in 2024 the number of companies in the Milan ecosystem grew by 2.6% compared to 2023. According to data from the Milan Monza Brianza Lodi Chamber of Commerce, the 2,333 companies and sole proprietorships in Milan and its province (with 7,719 employees: +1.7% over 2023) that carry out activities specialising in design represent a new all-time high since 2009 in 2024. Over the last 16 years, their number has in fact grown by 70.5%. If self-employed workers specialised in design (contained in the latest elaborations by the Symbola Foundation and Tagliacarne Institute on ISTAT-Asia data for 2023) are also included in the perimeter, the total comes to 7,360 subjects, up 8.4% since the last survey.

These are some of the numbers that emerge from the second edition of (Eco) Sistema Design Milano: Annual Report 2025 of the Salone del Mobile presented on 19 December, which analyses the impact of the event and the design week on the city and acts as an observatory for the entire sector, from the industrial to the cultural point of view. New in the latest edition, the mapping of museums, archives, galleries, publishers, universities and design schools, exclusively or complementarily engaged in the field of design culture: there are 533 of them.

Once again this year, the research project conceived and promoted by the Salone del Mobile has entrusted the reading of the urban dimension of the event to the Design Department of the Milan Polytechnic, with the general curatorship of Susanna Legrenzi, Press & Communication Strategy advisor of the Salone.

The last edition of the Show, last April at Rho Fieramilano, recorded 302,786 attendees from 160 countries at the fair, while in the city the schedule saw a 25.7% increase in initiatives compared to 2024, for a total of 1,667 events, surveyed in the MDW 2025 survey by the Municipality of Milan. The event confirmed an economic induced activity of 278 million euro (+15% compared to 2023, the year of the Euroluce Biennial), a peak in digital spending (+18% compared to the previous month) and a share of international visitors at its highest: according to the Lombardy Region's Regional Observatory of Tourism and Attractiveness, during the week of 7-13 April 2025, a total of 136.157 arrivals, 80.2% of which were foreigners (+4.5%, compared to the 2024 edition), while overnight stays amounted to 412,500 in the city (+11.4%) and 543,565 in the province (+13.7%).

Also record-breaking was the use of the metro (+39.6% on average) and sharing mobility, which saw a real boom in scooters, with 13,853 rentals during the week: a growth of 73.2% on the annual weekly average from April 2024 to April 2025.

"We have chosen to turn the Salone into a permanent observatory because only by reading and interpreting the data is it possible to govern the economic, cultural and urban impact of a phenomenon that redesigns Milan every April," explains Maria Porro, president of the Salone del Mobile. "The 2025 figures confirm the Salone as a major international attractor of a growing ecosystem, more international, more complex, increasingly interdependent with the territory, its resources and services. For the Salone, this commitment has a goal: to provide the city with a tool for awareness and joint work on the future".

According to Stefano Maffei and Francesco Zurlo, professors at the Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, who participated in the report, the growth of the Salone and Design Week in the city "also highlights structural fragilities, however, that require new policy tools: light but effective governance architectures, but above all a system of rewards capable of orienting virtuous behaviour and widespread quality. Only in this way can Milan consolidate its role as an advanced design ecosystem, generating stable and inclusive impacts'.

"The Show is much more than a trade fair, it is a permanent workshop where industry and design dialogue to create added value to the supply chain of which it is an expression, strengthening the sector's ability to confront and dialogue with international markets," adds Claudio Feltrin, president of FederlegnoArredo, bringing an industrial point of view. "A fundamental prerogative," he continues, "for a sector that exports over 50% of its furniture production and is increasingly called upon to diversify markets and business models. In the first nine months of 2025, the data from FederlegnoArredo's Study Centre show that there is a substantial hold on the supply chain's exports, amounting to 14.2 billion euros, with +0.4%". The main markets include France (2.2 billion), the USA (1.5 billion) and Germany, while China (320 million) drops out of the top ten, recording -9.9%.