Prada and design research studio Formafantasma are bringing the fifth edition of Prada Frames to Milan from April 19 to 21, 2026, held during Salone del Mobile at one of the city’s most sacred architectural addresses, the Sacrestia of the Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie on Via Cardosso 1, the same complex that houses Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Titled In Sight, this year’s edition takes on image making as its central subject, exploring the deepening instability between the real and the represented at a moment when the line between human authored and machine generated images has never been more contested.
What Prada Frames Is and Why It Matters
Prada Frames was conceived in 2022 as a deliberately idea led counterpoint to the product focused energy of Milan Design Week. A free, publicly accessible symposium where scientists, architects, activists, anthropologists, designers, and legal experts are brought together to think collectively rather than sell. Curated since its inception by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, the two founders of Amsterdam based studio Formafantasma, each edition has taken a single thematic lens and examined it with rigor and cross disciplinary breadth.
Past editions explored On Forest at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense in 2022, Materials in Flux at the Teatro Filodrammatici in 2023, and mobility and infrastructure in the 2024 edition, In Transit, staged aboard a Gio Ponti designed Arlecchino train. The choice of venue each year is as deliberate as the theme: Prada Frames uses architectural heritage as a frame within a frame, placing contemporary thought inside spaces that carry their own weight of meaning.
The 2026 Theme: Images as Force
The In Sight theme arrives at a moment of acute cultural anxiety about images and their authority. “Images, today, embed a net of entanglements, challenges and contradictions,” reads the official note from Formafantasma. “No longer a reliable depiction of truth, they embody a tension between the real and the represented, with distinctions between human authored and machine generated increasingly blurred.”
The three day program of lectures and conversations will address visual cultures, the environmental and social costs of digital imagery, the political instrumentalization of images, and the attention economies that govern how images circulate and are consumed. New to the 2026 edition is a night session, a special evening open to a wider public that will offer a synthesis of the ideas developed over the three days, accompanied by a live music performance using sound as an alternative mode of perception.
The Venue as Statement
The Sacrestia of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a Renaissance space traditionally attributed to Bramante, distinguished by inlaid wooden cabinets featuring early 16th century biblical scenes painted by Domenico and Francesco Morone. Staging a symposium about the reliability of images, human authored versus machine generated, truth versus fabrication, inside a room lined with pre modern religious image making is not accidental.
Formafantasma has consistently used the architecture of each edition’s venue as a form of silent curatorial argument, and the Bramante Sacrestia is arguably their most resonant choice yet. Formafantasma founders Trimarchi and Farresin have said, “Prada Frames is a space where different forms of knowledge meet,” and in 2026, that space is one of the most historically loaded in all of Milan. Admission is free, based on availability, with registration open at prada.com from April 13.
