The 2025 guide to the can’t-miss cultural moments for brands

The Paris Olympics, the Venice Biennale, Brat… no one could argue that the past twelve months have lacked heavy-hitting cultural moments. Indeed, 2024 has seen no end of causes for fans of sport, film, music, art, architecture and more to flock together. Granted, this is a trend that has been gathering steam for some years now. Yet this year, the footprints of luxury players at art fairs, film festivals, niche sporting tournaments and the like have felt especially pronounced. Looking to the year ahead, it should come as no surprise that they will expand, though devising innovative cultural programmes is proving an ever-tougher nut to crack. After all, as sound a move as it remains, a brand throwing a party during Art Basel Miami Beach is more par for the course than it is boundary-pushing. Still, there is a legion of cultural moments around the globe that remain relatively untapped. Below is a cursory run-through of some of this year’s stand-out moments that luxury brands might not already have on their radars, along with some tips on what to consider when trying to make a mark. Which is the fairest art fair of them all? Art fairs are now a natural territory for luxury brand activations, with their status as fonts of spendthrift, ultra-wealthy collectors — often as eager to be entertained as they are to spend — making them catnip for brands. Whether through official sponsorships, branded art collaboration, or parallel exhibitions, parties and dinners, it’s with good reason that certain fairs have garnered reputations as 2.0 fashion weeks. That has, however, generally been reserved for two main players in the space: Art Basel and Frieze. In part because of their scale and status, in part because their shows call some of the world’s most significant style and shopping hubs home (London, New York, Los Angeles and Seoul for Frieze; Paris, Miami, Hong Kong and, well, Basel for Art Basel) they’re now can’t-miss moments for luxury brands. That said, as brands jostle for attention within the increasingly crowded landscapes of Frieze and Art Basel, looking at fairs beyond the big two — particularly those that take place in key luxury markets — is shrewd. From 19 to 21 January, Art SG — Southeast Asia’s eminent art fair — will run in Singapore. “A gateway to the expanding Southeast Asia (SEA) art market, Art SG and its valued partners drive to support Singapore’s vision of becoming a unique cultural and artistic powerhouse,” says Magnus Renfrew, co-founder of Art SG, Taipei Dangdai and Tokyo Gendai art fairs. While Singapore is hardly foreign territory for luxury brands, Art SG has garnered a key reputation for “attracting and helping to develop audiences including collecting communities in the SEA region, who have been demonstrating significant dynamism when it comes to their spending power” — enclaves of the very same communities that brands have proven keen to court in other markets. Towards the end of the month in Marrakech, 1-54 — the contemporary African art fair, which also hosts in New York and London during the cities’ respective Frieze weeks in May and October — will open the doors to its newest edition on the continent, staged between the opulent La Mamounia hotel and DaDa, a cultural hub set just off the city’s famed Jemaa El-Fnaa square. On 6 February, the opening of the 16th India Art Fair (IAF) will take place in Delhi. Also in early February, Zona Maco — Latin America’s largest art fair — will draw a global audience to Mexico City, serving as the epicentre of the metropole-wide art week that sees a glut of corresponding festivals, exhibition openings and parties animate the region’s second-largest city. Its largest, São Paulo, will play host to SP-Arte in April, offering a portal to Brazil’s booming art market — not to mention the country’s luxury-loving coterie of high-net-worth individuals spurring it along, a community that brands including Bottega Veneta, Chanel and Carolina Herrera have sought to engage through recent sponsorships and activations in the city. In September, attention will turn towards Tokyo, where Tokyo Gendai — staged between 12 and 14 September at Pacifico Yokohama — has been gaining rapid traction both among local galleries, international galleries looking to directly engage with Japan’s dynamic collector base, and global collectors of Japanese art keen to capitalise on a weakened yen. For its third edition, the fair’s dates have been shifted from July to September, falling just after Frieze Seoul and Rakuten Fashion Week, the Japanese industry’s premium showcase. The Asia-Pacific focus continues into November with Shanghai Art Week. Anchored by two homegrown fairs — Art021 and West Bund Art & Design — China’s foremost contemporary art event will also bring a flurry of openings, parties and events across its myriad private museums, foundations and ambitious project spaces. A bounty of biennials While the overtly commercial nature of art fairs makes them a pretty ‘natural’ context for brand activations, the same can’t necessarily be said of biennales. Primarily cultural forums — in which (often national) pavilions exhibit ambitious commissions created in line with a particular theme — the work shown at biennales is, in theory, presented on account of its creative merit rather than its commercial value. (In practice, the relationship between biennale and art fair is more symbiotic, though that’s a discussion for another time.) A common feature of both, however, is that they each serve as points of gathering for art professionals, collectors and lovers alike. The Venice Biennale, which took place this year, is perhaps the best case in point; at the most recent edition, brands including Tod’s and Burberry staged events around its opening in May. While the next edition won’t take place until 2026, there are a number of other biennales taking place across the year. In February, the Sharjah Biennial will open in the UAE’s third city, just a stone’s throw from Dubai and around 160 km from Abu Dhabi, with a hotly anticipated line-up: Arthur Jafa, Cécile B Evans, Lorna Simpson and Monira Al Qadiri are among participating artists. Arguably the region’s flagship art event, 2025’s iteration takes place at a time when international perceptions of the Middle East are shifting, with the region increasingly seen as a globally important producer of art and culture, not just a repository of spending power. Within such a key luxury market, events like the Sharjah Biennial offer brands an opportunity to stage ambitious, culture-led activations and platform the booming scene in meaningful ways. At the tail end of the year, in September, the Uzbek city of Bukhara — a key node of the historic Silk Road — will host its first biennial, presenting commissions by the likes of Antony Gormley and Laila Gohar alongside works by local artists such as Aziza Azim and Daria Kim. Back in Brazil, Bienal de São Paulo — the world’s second oldest after Venice, as well as a pinnacle of the Latin American art calendar — will open that same month, convened by star curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung. Finally, in December, once Art Basel Miami has bowed, art fans keen for an extended fix of tropical weather could do worse than to head to the similarly palm-strewn shores of Kerala, where the Kochi-Muziris Biennale — billed as South Asia’s largest contemporary art festival — will open on 12 December. Beyond art Of course, it isn’t all about art. Disciplines of dance, technology, architecture, design and more will be deservingly celebrated across 2025, too. In Osaka, April will see the opening of the World Expo in Japan, the once-every-five-year mega-exhibition that showcases the humanity-advancing innovations of the world’s nations. Entitled ‘Designing Future Society for Our Lives’, the event is expected to draw an estimated 28 million visitors over its six-month run. While World Expos haven’t historically been a focus of brands, Expo 2020 in Dubai (postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic) featured ambitious activations by Cartier, Lacoste and Dolce & Gabbana. Following suit in Osaka could prove a savvy move in a city with a dynamic shopping culture, not to mention a luxury spending surge driven by foreign tourist splurges. As touched on earlier, though the Venice Biennale won’t return until 2026, May brings the Venice Architecture Biennale to the lagoon, while June heralds the Biennale Danza in celebration of the art of choreography under the curatorship of Wayne McGregor — the 2023 iteration was supported by Bottega Veneta. Later in the year, in October, Accra Cultural Week, the fulcrum of the West African nation’s booming contemporary arts and culture scene, will take over the Ghanaian capital, offering a convenient activation opportunity in a region that luxury has long recognised the potential of, but has found tricky to crack. And the award goes to… If 2024 is the year in which “the runway-to-red carpet pipeline has burst”, as reported by José Criales-Unzueta for Vogue Business, then 2025 will only see the flood continue to spread. Indeed, the appetite for fresh-off-the-runway looks for top-tier talents is fierce, but while brand studios and PR offices are well attuned to a calendar of Western blockbuster premieres, film festivals and awards ceremonies, there is a roll call of global events well worth heeding — both to tap talents with vast followings and to possibly stage functions in relation to ritzy events. On the film front, March will bring the International Indian Film Academy Awards for Hindi-language cinema (yes, Bollywood). Staged in Jaipur, the 2025 edition is expected to generate a significant amount of fanfare since it marks the awards’ silver jubilee. Shifting towards the latter half of the year, ceremonies such as the Golden Rooster Awards — the Oscars of the Chinese film industry, if you will — and the Africa Movie Academy Awards are worth keeping on the radar. The same goes for the Suphannahong National Film Awards, the toast of the Thai film industry, which is a field of particular interest for luxury brands in the wake of the ‘T-wave’ that’s sweeping global pop culture, led by actors like Bright Vachirawit and Win Metawin. If you are looking for something more highbrow, Switzerland's Locarno festival specialises in bringing together art house movies and A list talent, including Alfonso Cuarón and Jane Campion. On the music front, other than the Music Awards Japan — a newly formed pan-Asian music awards ceremony being touted as the continent’s answer to the Grammys — which will take place in Kyoto in May, the lion’s share of events worth flagging takes place towards the end of the year. Eminent K-pop ceremony the MAMA Awards, the AFRIMA Awards and the Latin Grammys, are all set to go ahead within the final quarter of next year — the latter two celebrate music from the African continent and its diaspora, and music produced in Spanish and Portuguese, respectively. The underground bubbles over Of course, the opportunities for alignment between brands and the entertainment industry are hardly limited to red carpet events. Indeed, as 2024 has proven, the potential for more ‘on-the-ground’ activations that directly engage fan bases is outsized. While not necessarily an example of a luxury activation, H&M’s recent sponsorship of a series of mega-concerts in London, Berlin, Paris and New York — the latter being Charli XCX’s viral takeover of Times Square — gives a sense of the wide possibility at hand. While aligning with artists like Charli XCX and Troye Sivan in a year where their stars have exponentially risen is a no-brainer, the eagerness of major brands to work with talents affiliated (admittedly to varying degrees) with the cultural underground speaks to a broader, burgeoning phenomenon. As electronic music and party cultures have surged into the mainstream, brands have begun to see these scenes as more than a repository for mood board fodder and show afterparty bookings. Indeed, cultural territories that may once have been relatively alien to the members of luxury brand C-suites (though not among their creative teams) are now being recast as lucrative horizons of opportunity. Granted, this isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Notable examples include Diesel’s 17-hour raves in London and Rome, held in collaboration with music platform NTS, and Bottega Veneta’s sponsoring of the 2023 edition of Belgium’s Horst Arts & Music Festival, one of Northern Europe’s leading electronic music events. Festivals, in particular, offer significant scope for brand activation, whether through direct sponsorship, parallel events or talent partnerships. “There are Primavera Sound events in Barcelona, Porto, São Paulo and Buenos Aires; Unsound Festival in Krakow; C2C in Turin; Nyege Nyege in Kampala; Atonal in Berlin,” list Alex Moli and Alex Nikolov, co-founders of Lexa, a consultancy bridging the gaps between talent, spaces and brands in the electronic music scene. As with any scene rooted in the underground, the brands’ entrances into the equation can often be viewed with scepticism. Brands can, however, play an important role in platforming events that have a strong community resonance. “Micro is the new macro, and hyper-local communities are more important than ever,” say Moli and Nikolov. “Gen Z in particular doesn’t connect to conventional marketing, but it does value the brands that support the events they attend — particularly now when the scene is in a time of crisis.” Football’s coming home Football remains high on the agenda. The Fifa Club World Cup men’s tournament takes place in the US from 13 June until 13 July, a year ahead of the Fifa World Cup, which is being held in the same region. “The 32 competing teams [of the Fifa Club World Cup] are the best in the world, with tribal passionate fans of all genders who can be reached and activated,” notes Felicia Pennant, journalist, consultant and founder of Season Zine. “It’s a great test run ahead of the tournament next year, and strategies can span two summers instead of one.” Closely following is the Uefa Women’s Euros 2025, which will take place in Switzerland across the month of July. As the many who followed the 2021 edition will recall, the tournament was a star-making moment for women’s football, catapulting players like Lioness Leah Williamson into the cultural mainstream and towards lucrative brand deals — Williamson, for one, was swiftly snapped up by Gucci. Building on the previous momentum, Pennant notes, “this will probably be the biggest Women’s European football [event] yet”. “It’s a huge opportunity to reach an engaged female audience, widen the representation of players and fans, tell inclusive stories on and off the pitch, and showcase solutions to ongoing issues.” Beyond tournaments in the Global North, Pennant also highlights the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Morocco kicking off next December. While coverage of and activations around previous editions have been relatively limited, she notes that “there’s a great opportunity to redeem that and reach local and diaspora audiences eager to champion their national identity and African heritage on different levels”. Given that football is by far the most popular spectator sport on the continent, the tournament’s 2023 edition racked up a cumulative viewership of almost two billion. But I don’t like football? Of course, sports certainly don’t begin and end with football — a fact well proven this year with the boom in attention and activations around sports as varied as Formula One, yacht racing, tennis and women’s boxing. There may not have been any particular partnerships of note around the latter, but the well-publicised culture war waged around Algerian gold medalist Imane Khelif quickly established her as a firm favourite in the luxury fashion industry; the boxer was sat front row at Matthieu Blazy’s Spring/Summer 2025 Bottega Veneta show and recently appeared on the cover of M Le Monde in head-to-toe Bottega. Khelif’s context is specific, but her case does attest to the burgeoning interest and attention paid to women’s sport. Two significant tournaments that are well worth keeping an eye on over the coming year include the Women’s Rugby World Cup — taking place in the UK from 22 August to 27 September — and the Women’s Cricket World Cup, which will be held between September and October in India. The latter in particular bears close observation. With cricket as the most popular sport in South Asia and viewing numbers for women’s cricket steadily on the rise, it’s shaping up to be a potentially star-making tournament for players and a windfall opportunity for brands who strike the right deals. How to tap in While the cultural events listed are all potentially lucrative portals to markets and cultural niches that have previously proven enigmatic for luxury brands, it would be a critical mistake to perceive them as low-hanging fruit. In each case, entry warrants painstaking consideration and an understanding that what’s more important than supporting a particular cultural moment is how that event is approached — and with whom. “The key to understanding what works is that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to key events and holidays,” says Osman Ahmed, a fashion and arts editor and consultant specialising in brokering relationships between Western luxury brands and the Indian market. “What so many brands get wrong in India is thinking too formulaically when it comes to signing ambassadors or — at worst — settling on doing another ‘Diwali capsule’. More than a calendar of events, there’s a network of highly influential and social people that brands should engage in a bespoke manner.” While Ahmed’s observations pertain to their experience working in the Indian market, they resonate more broadly. At a time when audiences view brand sponsorships with increasing cynicism, brands looking to broach new territory must deeply reflect on the intention behind their alignment and ideally demonstrate a commitment beyond a given moment. Much the same goes for sports, too. “Where brands succeed or fail comes down to whether brands do their due diligence in terms of demographics and their specific needs, budgets, outcomes and performance metrics,” Pennant says. “Is this supposed to be a moment in time or a part of a wider vision and strategy that lives beyond the tournament? Is this more than just a money grab that fans can see right through? How does this push the culture forward, resolve long-term and short-term issues, and help marginalised communities?” Demonstrating a genuine interest in — and commitment to — the communities that gather around a given event is a prerequisite. A further nuance to consider is that brands keen to align with events in new cultural territories should be prepared to dedicate the same care, attention to detail and resources that they would to events in their pre-existing key markets. After all, while many of the events discussed may once have been siloed as ‘regional’ or ‘niche’, in a hyper-networked, increasingly multipolar world, do such things even exist anymore? “Gone are the days when Indian launches were local events,” Ahmed responds. “Today, they are seen on global platforms and speak not just to Indian audiences, but a global network of South Asian diaspora and many more beyond that, too.” Now, with that said, wishing you all strength, luck and prosperity in navigating the year ahead. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. Correction: This article was updated to state Imane Khelif was wearing Bottega on the cover of M Le Monde. An earlier version of this article stated she was wearing Loewe. (29/11/24) Correction: A previous version of this article stated that India Art Fair Contemporary was set to take place in November in Mumbai. The event has since been cancelled. (6/12/24) More from this author: Art Basel Paris 2024 cheat sheet The world’s first art fair-branded perfume Frieze London 2024 cheat sheet

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