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If the last few years of design have felt a bit like a performance of productivity, Decorex Africa 2026 wants to offer something else. This year’s edition, built around the theme “Soft Life”, is less about hard-edged aspiration and more about how we actually want to live now: more comfortably, more beautifully, and ideally with less noise.
Returning to Johannesburg, Decorex remains South Africa’s, and the continent’s, biggest design showcase, and this year the scale sounds as expansive as ever. The 2026 edition promises more than 600 exhibitors, a strong mix of furniture, lighting, kitchens, bathrooms and lifestyle brands, plus the usual crowd-pulling installations and feature spaces.
There’ll also be design restaurants, DIY renovation workshops, live cooking studios and new work from this year’s Designers of the Year, alongside a broad showing of contemporary African brands and makers.
The Soft Life theme gives the show a useful lens rather than just a slogan. It suggests a shift away from interiors as what people are calling ‘status theatre’ and towards spaces that support rest, ease and daily ritual. That doesn’t mean bland minimalism or beige-on-beige decor, the show’s directors say.
If anything, they argue, it opens the door to a more layered idea of luxury: tactile materials, intelligent layouts, atmosphere, and the kinds of objects that make a home feel considered without feeling strained.
Cape Town gets the first look, with Decorex landing at the CTICC from June 25 to 28, before the Johannesburg edition follows at the Sandton Convention Centre from July 30 to August 2.
For anyone with even a passing interest in interiors, architecture, decorating or the business of design, it remains one of the easiest ways to take the temperature of what people are making, buying and thinking about right now.
Tickets start from R150 in Cape Town and R160 in Johannesburg if booked online, with concessions for students and pensioners, free entry for children under 12, and VIP options for those wanting a slightly more comfortable experience. Trade visitors who register in advance can attend for free.
It’s still early days, and the full shape of the programme will become clearer closer to the shows, but the central idea sounds like something we all need right now. After years of being told to optimise everything, even our homes, a design show built around living more gently might be exactly the right mood.
When and where?
Cape Town: June 25-28, 2026, at the Cape Town International Convention Centre
Johannesburg: July 30-August 2, 2026, at the Sandton Convention Centre
How much?
Johannesburg tickets start at R160 online or R170 on-site. Pensioners and students pay R130, children aged 12 to 16 pay R50, and children under 12 enter for free. VIP tickets are R450.
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