If IDD Cologne 2025 was the trade fair's new move to bring an urban flavor to the more industrial international furniture fair in Cologne, Passagen has always been approaching its audience from the urban side by design. Established by Sabine Voggenreiter in 1990 as a decentralized off-program to contrast the IMM in the trade fair area, Passagen is the less corporate (but not less premium), often more hidden, and potentially more diverse grassroots counterpart.

This is where design students, smaller brands, designer-makers, movers and shakers show their stuff, fresh out of the workshop. Featuring shows by universities and schools, individuals, shops, collectives and collectors, Passagen is traditionally spread out through the city and inhabits all spaces that are apt and available, ranging from workshops to wine shops, industrial buildings to mosques, and even private homes and a bunker from WWII.

Visitors are known to grab a drink from a kiosk and wander the venues marked by the iconic orange-and-black flags for hours – in spite of the biting temperatures of a January in Germany. Since it's also the season of Karneval (which lasts multiple months here), design enthusiasts will find themselves mixed in with people in colorful costumes and funny hats throughout the city.

Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

I first checked out KISD's exhibition at Ebertplatz in the inner city (a brutalist half-submerged so-called "problem space", reclaimed and redesigned by the local community).

Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

The surrounding infrastructure here is worth noting for designers: Due to the city having failed to keep up the maintenance, local artists were allowed to redesign the broken escalators… with some turned into slides, some into climbing structures, and some into psychedelic stairs that light up and play music when you walk on them.

At the bottom of the psychedelic stairs, the KISD exhibit this year shows five magazines about the "Infraordinary" – seemingly insignificant every day objects from the archives of Cologne's Kolumba Museum collection, investigated and interpreted by students in magazine form. Topics ranged from poems about touch interfaces to iconic mechanical calculators, partly designed in a concentration camp during WWII.

KISD at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Magazine about the Curta calculator at KISD Infraordinary, Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Further west, Ehrenfeld is one of the major neighborhood hubs for culture and design in the city, with an abundance of individual and collective shows for Passagen. I started at the Cologne Central Mosque, one of the more impressive new builds of the last decade in the city, and the largest mosque in Germany.

Cologne Central Mosque at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

The exhibit invites visitors into a tactile interior experience that reveals both the building's architectural history and verses from the Qur'an – audible, touchable in Braille, and visible, projected onto multi-layered textile installations.

Cologne Central Mosque at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Charming Körnerstrasse is one of the most iconic streets in Ehrenfeld – known for its shops and cafés, and also home to more than a dozen exhibitions during Passagen.

Körnerstrasse at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Behind the thick walls of the bunker K101 at the end of the street, Tubeslight shows their patented collection of lamps, designed for energy efficiency, long life, modular repairability and a flicker-free natural colour light.

Tubeslight at Bunker K101, Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Simple and beautiful, S15 by Sebastian Goldschmidtböning is a vertical wooden shoe holder.

S15 by Sebastian Goldschmidtböning at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Also on show (and for sale) were some of Roberto Cordone's last remaining, recently restored and signed polyurethane Componibili sculptures, originally created for the Ars Viva in 1973.

Roberto Cordone' Componibili at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

More plastic-fantastic, Utensil (Cologne designers' favorite industrial accessory shop) presents a new collection of stackable boxes in every conceivable size and shape.

Utensil at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Local designer Alexander von Dombois has turned vinotheque La Source into a popup shop with furniture on the menu. Stackable oak chair Tünn is accompanied by a new design for an aluminium lamp shade and candle holder, and event tables made from discarded pallet packaging materials.

Alexander von Dombois at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

The owners of Stahl Ton open their beautiful private home and event space to show off a new sideboard, staircases and various other steel structures and objects.

Stahl Ton at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Designers Fair in Pattenhalle is a collective platform for more than 30 international independent designers and schools.

Three stand-out pieces all had an element of delightful visual confusion:

The German-Danish studio das kleine b has been decorated with multiple awards from the German Design Council and focuses on handmade wooden furniture. Shelf b appears to float in space, with supporting structures hidden in the books themselves.

Das kleine b at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

LU by student Jakob Jaschke is a seemingly melting lamp concept made of powder-coated steel and a 3D-printed sleeve.

LU by Jakob Jaschke at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Martin Neuhaus paints stucco ornaments with light, using up-cycled plastic cups, Gugelhupf sand moulds for kids, and a recently updated lighting system.

Martin Neuhaus at Passagen 2026. Photo by Anki Delfmann.

Being a platform for designer-makers, Passagen is organizing the first symposium of the brand new Association for Producing Designers, with the goals of showing the world the value of durable and timeless furniture and interior design, creating an alternative to the monoculture of the mass market, and improving the economic situation of small manufacturers and independent designers. The event will take place on January 22nd at 4PM in Pattenhalle, Cologne, Germany.