This year’s Rog Design Days festival explores how design can move beyond human-centered thinking and respond more responsibly and empathetically to the complexity of our shared environment. We are looking for contributions grounded in practice: concrete work, tested ideas, and real-world interventions that open up new ways of designing, making, and living.

The call focuses on English speaking practitioners and organisations, including:

• Representatives of organisations similar to Center Rog
• Innovative design collectives and community-led initiatives
• Representatives of foundations and mission-driven organisations
• Innovative practitioners across design, architecture, crafts, urban planning, and engineering
• Activists working at the intersection of social and environmental change

It is particularly interested in hands-on, practice-based work, including:

• Built projects, prototypes, or implemented solutions
• New materials, processes, or production methods
• Community-based or participatory approaches
• New ways of working, making, or organising
• Material, spatial, or social outcomes

This call is not intended for:

• Purely academic or theoretical research without practical application
• Traditional academic conference papers or lecture-style presentations
• Abstract concepts that have not been tested or implemented
• Portfolio overviews without a clear focus on a specific project, process, or insight
• Promotional presentations without critical insight

Panel Speakers are invited to take part in one of the six thematic panels: Speculative Design Towards Positive Utopia; Rethinking Design: Cruelty-Free Materials and Circular Design; Intelligence Beyond Humans: Designing with AI; Living Design: Biodiversity, Biofabrication & Ethical Architecture; Ecofeminism: Rethinking Power, Gender and Nature; Interspecies Urbanism: Cities for Humans and All the Others. Each panel is composed of a moderator and up to 4 speakers/panelists. No key-notes are required. The panels are relaxed, 60-minutes discussions. Up to 10 minures of Q&A is forseen per session. Center Rog covers travel, visa, accommodation, and forum registration costs for accepted panel speakers from November 25 to November 28. The programme is complemented by a wide range of thematic workshops, offering opportunities to dive deeper into topics of particular interest.

Application deadline is 15.5.2026, 23:59 CET.

More information can be found here.