The 2026 Curatorial Proposition

Across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, knowledge lives through making. It is held in the handling of materials, the construction of buildings, the cultivation of land and the rituals of everyday life. Shaped by climate, resources and human relationships, these practices carry generations of experimentation and adaptation.

Design Doha Biennial 2026 explores how this accumulated intelligence can shape contemporary design and future economies. It considers ancestral systems as living sources of technical, ecological and social knowledge, capable of informing how we produce, inhabit and share the world.

The curatorial proposition unfolds through four connected actions: Carry, Shape, Make and Return. Knowledge travels through people, places and practices. Designers reshape it through research, collaboration and experimentation. Making translates these encounters into materials, objects, spaces and systems. Return asks what value flows back to the communities and environments that sustain this knowledge, through recognition, skills, livelihoods and new opportunities.

This process brings questions of authorship and responsibility into focus. Whose knowledge informs a design? Who participates in its production? How are expertise and labour recognised, and how are the benefits shared? International exchange becomes meaningful through reciprocal relationships that strengthen the capacity to create and produce.

Fereej Al Asmakh provides an active setting for this inquiry. Its courtyard houses, shaded passageways and shared spaces embody knowledge of climate, hospitality and collective life. The neighbourhood connects the Biennial’s ideas to the experience of moving, gathering and making within the city.

The 2026 edition positions the region as an author of design knowledge, with Doha convening its exchange. Its ambition is to build lasting relationships between cultural expertise and contemporary production, enabling inherited knowledge to generate new possibilities for public life and economic opportunity.

Biennial Leadership

A Platform for MENASA

The Middle East, North Africa and South Asia form a connected geography of knowledge and making. Centuries of trade, migration and cultural exchange have carried materials, tools and techniques across its deserts, mountains and seas. These connections hold distinct traditions shaped by particular landscapes and communities, alongside shared approaches to water, shelter, food and collective life.

Underground water channels in Iran, Afghanistan and North Africa reveal related responses to scarcity. Earthen construction and palm weaving demonstrate how local resources become structures adapted to climate. Communal granaries, cultivated terraces and systems of shared water allocation connect making with the organisation of society.

Design Doha brings these practices into a shared contemporary conversation. MENASA provides a framework for recognising relationships across borders while respecting the authorship and specificity of each place.

Strengthening these connections creates opportunities for designers, craftspeople, researchers and manufacturers to work together. Inherited expertise can inform new materials, climate-responsive buildings, productive landscapes and shared-resource systems. Through commissions, research, production and market access, the Biennial seeks to translate this knowledge into livelihoods, enterprises and lasting cultural value.

Doha convenes this exchange, supporting a future in which the region’s communities help shape how their knowledge evolves, circulates and generates value.

Why Fereej Al Asmakh ?

Fereej Al Asmakh lets us stage the Biennial’s thesis, design as the passage of knowledge, at full urban scale. Its sikkas and courtyard houses still carry transmission; designers reinterpret that inherited fabric as transformation; ateliers embedded in the houses drive production; and a revived quarter of commissions and circular making reactivates economy. preserved yet unfrozen between Souq Waqif, Al Najada and Msheireb, the district is the perfect fit for our artistic direction: knowledge not exhibited behind glass but worked, traded and handed on, making the four threads walkable.

One of Doha’s oldest neighbourhoods, Fereej Al Asmakh contains 61 historic houses within approximately 326,000 square metres of traditional Qatari urban fabric. Its courtyard houses, narrow sikkas, mosques and shared spaces reflect principles of climate-responsive design, walkability and community life. Located between Souq Waqif, Al Najada and Msheireb, the district offers a rare setting in which architectural heritage can become part of a living destination for culture, creativity, commerce and community.

Design Doha Biennial 2026 will serve as a catalyst for the activation of Fereej Al Asmakh and a proof of concept for its future as a Living Heritage District. Through a four-pillar activation model, the Biennial will reintroduce cultural activity, public life and creative energy into the restored neighbourhood while demonstrating its long-term potential.

The Biennial Programme

Seven programmes turn Design Doha into more than an exhibition a platform to discover, commission, recognise, connect, exchange and experience design.

Exhibitions / DISCOVER

New and established design from MENASA and beyond.

Public Design Commissions / COMMISSION

New works created for Doha’s public realm.

Design Doha Prize / RECOGNISE

Celebrating outstanding design talent from across MENASA.

Design Doha Connect / CONNECT

Bringing designers together with buyers, media, institutions and industry.

Design Doha Shop / COLLECT

A marketplace connecting audiences with designers and objects.

Publications / DOCUMENT

Research and ideas that extend the Biennial beyond the exhibition.

Curated Tours / EXPLORE

Guided journeys through exhibitions, commissions and the city.

KNOWLEDGE · DESIGN · OPPORTUNITY · EXCHANGE

At its core, the Biennial activates multiple spaces for encounters, moments of shared thinking, exchange, and making, including interactive workshops that foreground knowledge transmission as a living practice. The public programme places dialogue at the centre, treating conversation itself as a form of design. Through the presence of leading international voices, Design Doha reveals how new relationships and imaginaries can take shape.