For four days in June 2026, from the 4th to the 7th, Antwerp turned itself into a catwalk under a new name: Antwerp.Fashion Festival. At least one gallery still called it Antwerp Fashion Weekend. The first edition put on more than 100 shows, installations and performances across the city, most of them open to the public, and drew 26,500 visitors. The next one is planned for 2028.

A festival with a plan behind it

The festival is organised by Flanders District of Creativity with the City of Antwerp and MoMu, the fashion museum on the Nationalestraat, as part of a multi-year Antwerp Fashion Plan drawn up with the fashion department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Flanders classified it as a top Flemish event in November 2025, and the organisers offered real money to take part: up to €20,000 for a fashion brand to present a collection, and up to €5,000 for an installation or event with an Antwerp shop, restaurant or studio.

Its coordinator, Elke Timmerman, was clear about the purpose. “We wanted to take fashion out of this elitist context so everyone could have the chance to see the backyard,” she told the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode in Paris. She was equally clear about the limits: “We’re not going to compete with Paris or any other fashion week. We cannot deny that Paris is the capital but that’s super fine.” Her explanation is shorter still: “Belgians have always done it their own way.”

Keeping most of it open to the public was the right decision, because a festival meant to lower the threshold to fashion cannot start by charging at the door. Paris Fashion Week is built for buyers and press; Antwerp’s was built for them and for the city as well, and 26,500 people came.

The 2026 programme

The opening night belonged to Walter Van Beirendonck, who skipped Paris men’s fashion week for once to show 40 Years Dreaming The World Awake, an anniversary show on his career ending with his latest collection, in the Boerentoren, the 1932 tower on the Schoenmarkt. He called it “a gift to the city and to the people of Belgium”. Christian Wijnants and Marcel Sommer also showed on the catwalk, and the line-up of shows and presentations included Jan Van Essche, Façon Jacmin, Essentiel Antwerp, GMR, Marie Bernadette Woehrl and Nadav Perlman.

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The newest name was Brandon Wen, the Academy’s new creative director of fashion, who showed his own collection. Installations came from Julie Kegels, Florentina Leitner and the artist Tom Van der Borght, whose giant inflatable went up in Central Station. Venues ranged from the Academy on Mutsaardstraat and MoMu to the KMSKA, the photography museum FOMU and Het Bos on the Ankerrui; one show took place under the dome of the Botanic Sanctuary hotel. Zalando sponsored a programme of Fashion Talks on the opening day.

The Academy’s own end-of-year show, SHOWWW 2026, ran on 5 and 6 June at the Waagnatie: the fashion department’s annual end-of-year show of its students’ collections. The international trade came too. “Yesterday, around 50 foreign journalists and a group of buyers arrived to view our designers’ shows and installations,” Stefan Ceunen of Flanders District of Creativity told VRT on the first morning. “We even had to turn people away because there weren’t enough seats.”

Forty years of the Antwerp Six

The timing was not an accident. The festival marked 40 years since the Antwerp Six, all graduates of the Academy’s fashion department in the early 1980s, broke through in London in 1986: Dirk Bikkembergs, Ann Demeulemeester, Walter Van Beirendonck, Dries Van Noten, Dirk Van Saene and Marina Yee. MoMu’s exhibition The Antwerp Six runs from 28 March 2026 to 17 January 2027, with lectures, guided tours, workshops and late openings. “Forty years ago, the Antwerp Six were given the space and confidence to grow,” said Lien Van de Kelder, the city’s alderman for culture. The Academy itself is covered in our piece on the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

Antwerp has tried this before. An earlier Antwerp Fashion Festival, run by the events company Spice Productions, had reached its fourth edition by 2015. The difference this time is public money, a multi-year plan and the Academy as a partner. The earlier version of this guide promised a Fashion Night of late opening and discounts, and fashion crowds flying in from New York and Milan; we could find no record of either. The 2026 festival reported 50 foreign journalists, a group of buyers and people turned away at the door.

The next edition is planned for 2028, and its dates and programme will be on the festival’s own website, antwerpfashionfestival.be. Until then, MoMu’s Antwerp Six exhibition runs to 17 January 2027, and the Academy’s students will have the catwalk to themselves.