The second edition of the Next Gen Design Competition invites young designers and thinkers across Europe to engage with a world in flux—and to step in boldly to protect values they stand for and shape what will come next. If you are aged 18 to 35, born, studying, or living in Europe, this is your moment. Whether you’re an individual innovator or part of a collaborative team, you’re welcome to submit up to five entries showcasing your vision for a sustainable future. Winning this competition is an entry into a pan-European movement of change-makers. As a winner, your work and your voice will be amplified through The Next Gen Design Traveling Exhibition, The Next Gen Design Digital Showcase, The Next Gen Design Residency Program and The Next Gen Design Residency Awards, with a total prize fund of 2,000 EUR per festival.

Read more about Next Gen Design 2026: Futures Worth Living on Contest Watchers.

The premiere edition of the Next Gen Design Competition invites all creatives aged 18-35 across Europe to explore bold, regenerative, and inclusive design solutions. Under the theme “Redesign Tomorrow, Today,” this competition empowers the next generation to tackle the pressing challenges of our time with ingenuity and imagination. Submit your innovative ideas addressing sustainability themes like circular products, eco-friendly textiles, solutions to food waste, urban farming, and more. Up to 5 entries are welcome.

Read more about Next Gen Design: Redesign Tomorrow, Today on Contest Watchers.

As a host to the Ghost Project 2024: Microcosm – Design Competition, Mikser Association invites all young designers to participate with their best works. Ghost Project is an international platform for talents in the field of product design. Selected designers will have a chance to Showcase designs at the Mikser Festival in Belgrade, Serbia (23-25 May, 2024), participate in dynamic discussions and workshops, network with established creative disruptors and social innovators, and more.

Read more about Ghost Project 2024: Microcosm – Design Competition on Contest Watchers.

Mikser Association is hosting the Young Balkan Designers 2022 – regional design competition on the theme of “Life Hacks for Health & Wellbeing”. The competition is open to all persons up to 35 years of age, from the following countries: Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Slovenia, Serbia and Turkey. Applicants may be individuals or groups of creators. Each applicant may submit more than one entry. Competition winners will be awarded with participation at the Salone Satellite talent exhibition of the most prominent global design event — Milan International Furniture Fair 2022, 5-10 April, 2022 as well as, participation in the Design exhibition and Conference-Workshop program of one of the largest regional festivals of creativity and social innovation – Mikser Festival 2022, Belgrade, October, 2022.

Read more about Young Balkan Designers (YBD) 2022 – Life Hacks on Contest Watchers.

The Young Balkan Designers talent platform is hosting its design competition for 2019 on the theme: Circular Design, and invites young designers on the Balkans to participate. The call is open for design projects − products, concepts, services and scenarios that can bring the Balkans to the forefront of a much needed paradigm shift in design, production and consumption. Young designers are challenged to get familiar with the basics of circular economy and explore possibilities of innovative design approach enhancing circularity of product, materials, services and concepts. Between 30 and 40 selected projects will participate in the Talent Exhibition at Mikser Festival 2019 festival, scheduled for 24th–26th May 2019 in Lower Dorćol, Belgrade, Serbia. There will also be a touring exhibition in the region and it will include 10 to 15 selected projects.

Read more about Young Balkan Designers 2019: Circular Design on Contest Watchers.

As part of its 2017 event and the Ghost Project, Mikser Festival is hosting an international design competition under the slogan “The New Nomads“. Ghost Project 2017 calls for young designers to share their vision on how prompt design interventions can improve lives of people on the move, be their mobility deliberate or forceful, and enable them to make a new place their home. Winners of the Competition will become participants of the Mikser Festival 2017 — Southeast Europe’s largest regional festival of creativity and innovation taking place in Silos of Žitomlin mill in Belgrade, Serbia from 25-28 June, 2017.

Read more about Ghost Project 2017: The New Nomads – Design Competition on Contest Watchers.

Balkan Design Network has recently opened applications for the Young Balkan Designers 2015 competition, accepting submissions of projects that offer innovative, yet rational solutions to everyday problems. Anything from design concepts, products (furniture, lighting, interior elements, everyday objects, home accessories, stationary, aid products), to urban services, recycled materials and fashion garments is eligible for entry. Of all the submitted projects, 20-30 winning projects will be selected for inclusion in the “Young Balkan Designers” touring exhibition, which will start in Belgrade in June, 2015 and continue in Zagreb, Plovdiv, Skopje, Vienna, Istanbul and Cologne through to January, 2016.

Read more about Young Balkan Designers (YBD) 2015 Competition – Common Grounds on Contest Watchers.

Mikser Association is currently calling for submissions in the Ghost Project 2014: Social Innovation International design competition. The competition is open to anyone aged 35 years and younger, from any part of the world. The Winners become participants in the Mikser Festival 2014, Southeast Europe’s largest regional festival of creativity and innovation taking place in Belgrade’s creative quarter of Savamala, from 3-8 June, 2014. The Ghost Project’ slogan: Social Innovation calls for new concepts, initiatives and solutions that use design tools to strengthen community. Projects whose innovative features are driven by social demands rather than the market are encouraged. The competition embraces creative re-combination of existing assets: human capital, cultural heritage, local craftsmanship and accessible innovative technology aiming at establishing communication, sustainability and sense of common wellbeing within a contemporary civic society.

Read more about Ghost Project 2014: Social Innovation Competition on Contest Watchers.

Croatian Designers Society, Mikser and Public Room are inviting young Industrial designers from thirteen (13) Balkan countries to enter their best conceptual and completed industrial design work in the Young Balkan Designers 2014 Competition. Ten (10) best projects will be selected to participate in the Young Balkan Designers exhibition (touring all major regional design events and fairs in 2014) and three (3) best designers among the exhibition participants will be invited to attend a series of residency workshops and practical trainings around the region (Zagreb, Belgrade, Skopje). The Young Balkan Designers slogan for 2014: “Everyday Heroes” emphasizes the power of simple, incremental changes in social behavior that designers can contribute to their community, collaborating with the locals, visioning and solving local problems and needs related to the economic crisis, limited resources, and the necessity for people to search for alternatives to inefficient public services.

Read more about Young Balkan Designers 2014 Competition on Contest Watchers.

Mikser is inviting all industrial and interior designers, younger than 36 to become part of the 2012 Ghost Project and Young Balkan Designers initiatives. Following six years of continuous efforts in discovering and nurturing design talents in Serbia, in the Balkans and most recently on the international scene, Mikser organization is making a big leap forward in supporting innovative design ideas by launching its own product label Mikser Design with two product lines: Ghost and Young Balkan Designers. Ghost Project’s slogan for 2012 is “GET REAL!”.

Read more about Ghost Project 2012 International Talent Competition on Contest Watchers.