Amsterdam Fashion Week 2026: City as a Stage

Amsterdam Fashion Week returned from September 1 to 5, 2026, spreading more than 40 shows, presentations, exhibitions, talks and workshops across the Dutch capital. Rather than concentrating the programme around a single venue, this year's edition continued to treat Amsterdam itself as part of the fashion week, moving between museums, historic buildings, shops and unexpected everyday settings. The programme brought emerging designers together with established names while entering the second phase of AFW's partnership with Copenhagen Fashion Week, which introduces its Sustainability Requirements framework into the selection process ahead of a full rollout in September 2027.

The week began by bringing fashion into dialogue with material and spatial design. Amsterdam Fashion Week's opening dinner gathered 130 guests inside a monumental canal house on Kloveniersburgwal, where designer Sabine Marcelis collaborated with natural-stone company SolidNature on the setting. Marcelis designed bespoke stone candleholders that ran along communal tables, framed by translucent curtains and soft lighting, turning the dinner itself into a carefully composed installation that blurred boundaries between fashion, objects, and interiors.

This openness also appeared in designers looking directly at Dutch identity. At the monumental Molen van West, Ruben Jurriën presented Maak Nederland weer Gezellig!, mixing embroidery, comic drawings, oversized denim, reinterpretations of the Dutch clog and the recurring figure of Toetie, a childhood plush toy turned superhero. The collection approached national symbols through affection and humour, while asking what ideas such as familiarity and gezelligheid might mean today. Elsewhere, The New Originals transformed Nxt Museum into a gathering space for Home Is Where the Heart Is, combining streetwear, live music, performance and film with stories of migration and family.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

Perhaps the clearest example of AFW26's interest in collapsing fashion into ordinary life came from Camiel Fortgens, who staged his SS27 show inside an Albert Heijn supermarket at Stadionplein after opening hours. Models pushed shopping trolleys and carried baskets through aisles of cheese, frozen food and soft drinks while employees continued stacking shelves. Against this deliberately mundane backdrop, Fortgens' familiar vocabulary of cotton shirts, denim, bombers and layered outerwear revealed exposed seams, raw hems, and reversed construction, absorbing the gestures and small imperfections of everyday use.

Source: designboom