Entering an Italian art or design fair can feel like walking into a perfect storm of color and aesthetic. It’s an experience not dissimilar to exploring a new habitat–a forest, a desert, a jungle, or the depths of the ocean floor–in which some characters show off with elaborate costumes and eye-catching colors and others simply parrot or camouflage. Although overwhelming at first, these ecosystems–whether focused on photography, drawing, or ceramics–are incredible places not just to buy art, if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford it, but to find your inspirational niche. 

If you haven’t heard of the Venice Biennale at this point, you’ve been sleeping under a rock, and Milan’s Salone del Mobile is known throughout the world as a destination for design, but the world of Art and Design Fairs throughout Italy is a landscape that’s continually evolving. In recent years, these spaces to celebrate art and design are becoming vibrant sites of dialogue, where the traditions of the past are under interrogation and where commercial necessity is increasingly countered by an illuminating focus on creative connection, collaboration, and conversation. So, as we approach 2025’s Salone del Mobile, we’ve picked out a few other fiere to add to your calendar that you might have missed–from historical stay-points that don’t get nearly as much international love as they should to the newest additions we’re excited to see grow:

Artissima 

October 31st to November 2nd, 2025

One of the best known contemporary art fairs in Italy, Artissima was established in Turin in 1994 and today presents itself in a similar style to London’s Frieze Art Fair. Galleries from around the world flock to the elegant northern city each year for a traditional main section complemented by areas such as New Entries, dedicated to galleries who are taking part in the fair for the first time and have been open for less than five years, and Monologue/Dialogue, where newer galleries with an experimental approach are invited to show either the work of a single artist or of two creatives in conversation. Alongside these areas, the fair contains three curated sections: a space for emerging artists (Present Future), the rediscovery of great pioneers of contemporary art (Back to the Future), and, intriguingly, an entire section dedicated to drawing (Disegni).

EDIT Napoli 

October 10th to 12th, 2025

Founded in 2019 by curators Emilia Petruccelli and Domitilla Dardi (best known as curator of Rome’s MAXXI museum), EDIT Napoli has already positioned itself as a powerful counterpoint to Milan’s Salone del Mobile, highlighting and reconfirming the southern city as a crucial destination for cultural exchange and a hub for contemporary design. Although the main site is set in the Monumental Complex of San Domenico Maggiore, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the historic center of Naples, the up-and-coming fair also spreads itself across the city. For the 2025 edition, La Santissima, a charming building overlooking  Naples from the heart of the Quartieri Spagnoli, will be the headquarters of the fair, housing a refreshing mix of established and emerging designers.

Art Verona

October 10th to 12th, 2025

The city of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers wasn’t dubbed “Fair Verona” for nothing. In recent years, Art Verona has stepped up its game, and in its 20th edition this year, the cool kid on the block continues to expand in scale. Although the fair has a classical base, with areas that showcase modern and contemporary galleries from Italy and abroad, they focus on establishing dialogues between emerging and established galleries; there’s even a section called LAB that’s purely dedicated to artist residencies and experimental projects based in Italy. Other areas, such as Habitat, focus on historical arts, whereas Evolution looks at the future of art with technology, ranging from artificial intelligence and robotics to 3D animation and nanotechnologies.

Arte Fiera

2026 dates tbd

With a history that goes back to the 1970s, Arte Fiera in Bologna remains notable as one of the first international modern and contemporary art fairs ever organized in Italy. This mainstay of the Italian art scene is often cited as Italy’s largest and most important art fair, and features a main section dedicated to historic and contemporary art as well as three curated sections focused on photography, painting, and publishing. Over the past three years, they’ve expanded to include a new section for artists and research galleries and a special hospitality program for foreign curators and critics, continuing their dedication to evolution.

MIA (Milan Image Art) Fair

2026 dates tbd

Ever since its conception in the 1820s, photography has had to fight for its place within the world of fine art, especially in Italy. In 2011, the MIA–Milan Image Art–Fair was conceived with the mission of giving the medium the focus and space it deserves. Today, MIA stands as one of the most important art fairs dedicated to photography in Italy, offering a unique approach to highlight what its founders call “the transverse role that photography has come to play between the languages of expression of the contemporary art system.”

Miart 

April 4th to 6th, 2025

International in outlook, like the city of its origins, Miart–the international modern and contemporary art fair of Milan–sets itself the challenge of presenting the largest chronological range of artists in the country. The fair features Italian and international participants that range from masterpieces of the early 20th century (including Balla, de Chirico, Schiele, and Picabi) right up to the present. Despite this ambitious scope, Miart is still new on the scene. Founded in 2021, it began with the theme “dismantling silence”, which was then followed by “first movement”. The fair is broken into three separate sections: “Established” showcases diverse artistic languages, “Portal” redefines anachronism, and “Emerging” highlights the newest generation of artists.

Rome Arte in Nuvola 

November 21st to 23rd, 2025

Set in the prestigious setting of La Nuvola (the cloud), a vast building designed by Massimiliano Fuksas and inaugurated in 2016, Rome Arte in Nuvola was founded with the aim to reinvigorate the contemporary art scene in the Italian capital. As its unique setting and name suggests, the fair sees the sky as the limit when it comes to the contemporary art scene and presents work from every discipline, from classical mediums like sculpture to underexplored areas like performance and street art. The fair also identifies itself as a crucial reference point for galleries and artists of central and southern Italy.

The Phair 

May 9th to 11th, 2025

Another art fair dedicated solely to photography, the Phair, as it is affectionately named, seeks to do what its name has already achieved: create the perfect synthesis between Photography and Fair. Founded in 2019 within the already-saturated art world of Turin, the Phair has managed to curate a singular space to focus on the medium. Rejecting the common format of themes and sections often adopted by Art Fairs, it seeks instead to provide a collective exhibiting experience whereby equal spaces for all exhibitors create a feeling more akin to a series of exhibitions. To ensure true exposure, the photography-focused fair opens its doors to all galleries, not merely those specializing in the arts, allowing galleries and artists to create and curate projects specially for the fair. 

EMERGING ARTISTS 

Breaking into the world of art fairs can be a daunting experience for young artistic talent. Thanks to the success of more established events concentrated on more established artists, a host of new fairs have sprung up in recent years with a specific focus on emerging creatives. These fairs provide a supportive structure for independent and early-career artists and designers to take their first steps into the world. They’re also often a scouting ground for more established galleries, meaning not only can you snap up a great deal by a new name, you can also spend your money with the knowledge that you’re helping a young artist move forward in their career. 

The Others

October 30th to November 2nd, 2025 

Cunningly timed to coincide with Artissima in Turin, The Others has established itself, since its founding in 2011, as a vibrant scene for new artistic talent. Shunning more traditional formats (in true outsider fashion), the avant-garde event dubs itself “nomadic by nature” and opts to shift its surroundings to unconventional venues, revitalizing and reinvigorating disused buildings and underexplored areas of the city. Since its first edition, the fair has been held in an old prison complex, a former stock exchange, and an old military hospital.

ReA! Art Fair

June 12th to 15th, 2025

One of the most recent additions to the Milan art fair scene, the ReA! Art Fair—founded by Maryna Rybakova and Pelin Zeytinci—is dedicated solely to independent and emerging artists. A self proclaimed “reactive, raw, and radically new reality”, the edgy newcomer features the work of emerging artists creating across a variety of media that are selected through an open call for applications. For its first edition in 2020, held in a former train factory, the physical site was bolstered by innovative technologies that allowed simultaneous online sales and engagement. For the founders of ReA!, art isn’t merely about collecting or decorating a home, it’s about fostering a means of connection and new ways of thinking.