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Glass as Magic: Venice transforms with the Venice Glass Week
When glass meets the lagoon, light ignites, reflections dance, and history becomes living matter. The Venice Glass Week, the international festival dedicated to artistic glass, has become one of the most anticipated events for collectors, designers, and enthusiasts from around the world. Founded in 2017 with the idea of celebrating, supporting, and promoting the art of glass, Venice, Murano, and Mestre are transformed for one week into a widespread laboratory, where tradition and experimentation are in constant dialogue.
The Venice Glass Week was established in 2017 by an alliance of cultural and productive institutions: the City of Venice, Fondazione Musei Civici, Le Stanze del Vetro – Fondazione Giorgio Cini, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti, and the Consorzio Promovetro Murano. From the outset, its mission has been twofold: to preserve and enhance the rich glassmaking heritage of Venetian glass, and at the same time to encourage innovation, new artistic languages, and dialogue between master glassmakers and young designers.
Inspiring venues and new features of the current edition
The ninth edition (2025) is being held from September 13 to 21, with an evocative slogan: The Magic of Glass. The festival spans dozens of venues: the Murano Glass Museum, Palazzo Loredan (Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti), the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (for the under-35 section), Venice’s civic museums, Palazzo Franchetti, and many others.
One of the most intriguing innovations is the location of the Under-35 section inside the Galleria in Piazza San Marco (Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa) — the first time the festival has brought young creatives into one of Venice’s most iconic spaces. The collective HUB exhibitions, both the main one for established or mid-career artists and the emerging one, remain at the heart of the festival, offering an international panorama.
Other must-see locations include the historic furnaces of Murano, where visitors can witness traditional techniques (blowing, lampworking, sommerso glass, grinding), and the Glass Bateo, a vaporetto transformed into a floating exhibition space gliding along the canals, hosting exhibitions, workshops, and conversations with the public.
The Venice Glass Week is not just a festival: it is a crossroads where glass reveals its infinite facets. For collectors, it is a window onto what glass may become tomorrow, without forgetting where it comes from. An invitation to look, to choose, to own with awareness.
