Triennale Milano 2025

The 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition took place from 13 May to 9 November 2025. With the title "Inequalities", it was conceived as an important forum for reflecting on tendencies and contradictions of the present and on the urgency of the challenges currently facing our planet. It was a space for open, multilateral debate and interaction, in which a variety of disciplines, experiences, cultures and perspectives all came together. It comprised different exhibitions and special projects all over the Triennale building, that offered a huge variety of points of view and opened up to interdisciplinary perspectives.

The 24th International Exhibition was curated by Triennale Milano, with President Stefano Boeri in the role of Commissioner-General, and it was supported by the academic research and collaboration with 5 Milanese universities – Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Università Bocconi, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Politecnico di Milano, and the Università degli Studi di Milano – and with more than 20 international institutions–including the Arctic Center, the Democracy and Culture Foundation, Columbia University, the Norman Foster Foundation, Oficina del Historiador, Princeton University, and Serpentine.

The 24th International Exhibition presented a carefully orchestrated structure of 8 exhibitions and 10 special projects. Inequalities involved 28 curators and 341 authors from 73 countries, for a total of 7,500 square meters of exhibitions.

The exhibition included a series of international participations, called for under the auspices of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) through official government channels, building a global map of the most emblematic cities of the world on the theme of inequalities. The 24th International Exhibition was organised by Triennale Milano under the aegis of the BIE and was promoted in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, with the support of institutional members of Fondazione La Triennale di Milano: the Italian Ministry of Culture, Lombardy Region, the Municipality of Milan, and the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce of Milan, Monza, Brianza and Lodi.

Inequalities

The rhetoric about a globalised world has been swept away by the four major crises that have affected and differentiated the geography of the last twenty years: fundamentalist terrorism; the subprime crisis of 2007/8 and the social chasms created by financial speculation; the Covid-19 pandemic; the war in Ukraine and, finally, the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. With the gradual evaporation of the very concept of globalisation, the issue of inequality has powerfully returned to the centre of contemporary history.

The contemporary world, its cities and suburbs, all the living and working spaces of the human species are traversed today by multiple and contradictory drives, which tend to exacerbate racial, social, religious and cultural differences. These include the fundamental difference related to individual social mobility dynamics. Undoubtedly, in contrast to the growing phenomenon of the migration of bodies between different and distant areas of the planet, what is being curbed today in the cities of the world is primarily the social mobility of individuals – that is to say, their ability and opportunity to acquire a different educational qualification, change social status, improve their economic and cultural condition, and make transitions across the spectrum of gender identities over the course of their lives.

Inequalities aimed to map inequalities while at the same time searching for the most advanced political projects for a society in which differences constitute an intentional and mobile value and resource, to be recomposed within new forms of community. This research was intended to highlight not only the sphere of urban communities, but also the bio-political sphere of individual bodies.

The 24th Triennale Milano International Exhibition comprised 8 exhibitions, 10 special projects and a section dedicated to International Participations. The whole ground floor was focused on the geopolitical dimension of inequalities, and presented exhibitions and projects devoted to cities, being the epicentres of the phenomena of accelerating inequalities and simultaneously being the key players in addressing them at the local and international stage.

The first floor was dedicated to the biopolitical implications of inequalities, shifting the perspective to the scale of human bodies, health, gender, biodiversity with a variety of exhibitions, special projects and installations.

The International Exhibition also consisted of a public programme, a performing arts programme, and a participatory tour in 8 municipalities of Milan. A catalogue and a publication with essays from representatives of the world of academy, design, art were produced on the occasion of "Inequalities".