Seattle Design Festival
The Seattle Design Festival was founded in 2011 as a strategic initiative of AIA Seattle in order to promote a public dialogue about the role and impact of design on urban life.
The Seattle Design Festival (SDF) celebrates all the ways that design makes life better for Seattle, and to nurture relationships among designers, citizens, city leaders, and future-thinking business innovators. Now in its 11th year, SDF is the largest design-related event in the Pacific Northwest, gathering 120+ partners and over 30,000 attendees to 80+ citywide events.
SDF’25: FEEDBACK
The 15th annual Seattle Design Festival was August 16 – 21 2025, and kicked off at the Block Party August 16-17, a free, 2-day, outdoor street festival featuring hands-on, large-scale design installations, pop-up experiences and presentations connecting the public to the power of design in Lake Union Park; for all ages and abilities. Festival goers immersed themselves in experiences that revealed the power FEEDBACK can have on design—how it transforms ideas, spaces, and communities.
SDF’25 At a Glance
- 7,400+ Attendees*
- 6 Days of Festival programming + 6 Mixers throughout the year!
- 28 Festival Sponsors
- 58 Design Teams
- 285 Local and International Designers
- 64 Festival Programs
- 29 Built Installations
- 21 Pop-Up Experiences
- 7 Mainstage Programs
- 7 Mixers/Social Events
- 25 Press Mentions in 18 Media Outlets
*Attendance so far – you can still attend by watching the Festival Rewind on YouTube.
See the full Festival in Review here.
Past Festival themes include: Beneath the Surface (SDF 2011), Design in Motion (SDF 2014), Design for Equity (SDF 2015), POWER (SDF 2017) and CURIOSITY (SDF 2023). To learn more about past Festivals, visit our Festival Archive.
Key Dates & Deadlines
- Call for Festival Planning Team — November
- Annual Theme Vote — Early February
- Call for Proposals Launch — Early April
- Deadline for Festival Proposals — End of May
- Annual Seattle Design Festival — Mid August
More info about the organization, the Festival and ways to participate on: seadesignfest.org. Stay up to date on SDF announcements by signing up for the SDF enews, and following SDF on Instagram.
