Circulars win German Design Award 2026
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Great success for facts and fiction: The Circulars, the mascots of the German Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, have been awarded the German Design Award 2026 in gold. In the discipline “Excellent Communications Design” the project impressed the international jury in the category “Interactive User Experience.” The gold award is the highest honor in the competition and is given to projects that set new standards in their category. The award ceremony took place on February 6 as part of a high-profile program in Frankfurt am Main.
The Circulars were a central element of the German Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka, where they formed the communicative heart of the exhibition. As mascots of the pavilion, they accompanied visitors through the exhibition and brought the principles of the circular economy to life in a playful yet informative way.
The German Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka was dedicated to a central theme for shaping the future: the circular economy (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
The Circulars were much more than just an audio guide – they became a personal friend on the journey through the pavilion.
The technology used remained invisible – the focus was on an intuitive, personal experience. The Circulars spoke automatically at important points, lighting up and vibrating to attract attention. Over 40 touchpoints invited visitors to discover content according to their own interests and delve deeper. Thanks to their intuitive operation, they created emotional connections with visitors, aroused curiosity, and thus became the highlight of the visit.
Visitors experienced the exhibition individually (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
Over 40 touchpoints invited visitors to discover, touch, and delve deeper into the content according to their own interests (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
In its statement, the jury emphasized that the Circulars translate the challenges of the circular economy into a clearly structured, interactive user experience. The exhibition makes the effects of individual decisions immediately visible and enables visitors not only to understand complex ecological relationships, but also to actively experience them. The jury was particularly impressed by the stylish combination of sustainable design, interactive layout, and cultural sensitivity.
The Circulars spoke automatically at important points, lit up, and vibrated to attract attention (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
The Circulars are much more than just an audio guide – they are a personal friend on the journey through the exhibition. The built-in technology remains invisible – the focus is on an intuitive, personal experience. The circulars speak automatically at key points, light up and vibrate to attract attention. Over 40 touchpoints invite you to discover content, touch it and delve deeper – according to your own interests. The circulars even communicate with each other when being held together. In this way, they create emotional connections with visitors, arouse curiosity and become the highlight of the visit.
“The German Design Award in Gold confirms our commitment to developing exhibitions that empower people rather than lecture them. The Circulars were born out of the idea of making sustainable content accessible in an interactive way while taking different cultural perspectives into account. I am particularly pleased that this approach has now been recognized with an award,”
says Kirsten Koehler, Creative Director at facts and fiction.
But the Circulars were far more than just an audio guide they were a personal friend on the journey through the exhibition (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
The Circulars created emotional connections with the visitors, aroused curiosity, and became the highlight of the visit (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
The Circulars made sustainable content accessible in an interactive way, taking different cultural perspectives into account (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
After the tour, the Circulars were returned, cleaned, disinfected, and recharged – ready for the next adventure (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
The German Design Award
The award is one of the most internationally recognized design prizes and is presented by the German Design Council. The German Design Award 2026 ceremony took place on February 6 in Frankfurt as part of a high-profile program with representatives from the worlds of design, business, and culture, focusing on forward-looking projects from around the world. For the Circulars, the gold award is already their second international accolade: they had previously won the Exhibit Design Award in the “Use of Storytelling” category.
About facts and fiction
facts and fiction is an interdisciplinary creative agency with more than 70 full-time employees in Cologne and Berlin. The agency was founded in Cologne in 1992. facts and fiction conceptualises, designs and implements innovative analogue and digital projects in the fields of art, culture, business and science. The focus is on museums and exhibitions, Expo pavilions, events, exhibits and digital solutions for participative and individualised experiences.
facts and fiction has developed the pavilions for Germany, Austria and the EU at the World Expo in Japan that took place from April to October 2025. The agency has 25 years of Expo experience and will now have implemented a total of 13 country participations including Japan. Large-scale, previously realised projects in the public museums and exhibitions sector include the Mining Museum in Bochum and the Berlin Exhibition at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. The agency is currently working on the design of the Zeppelin Tribune and Zeppelin Field learning and meeting centre in Nuremberg, the permanent exhibition of the Buddenbrook House in Lübeck, Germany and a permanent exhibition at the Natural History Museum in Basel, Switzerland. In Berlin, facts and fiction is active in the tension-charged field of political communications: The agency develops a wide variety of analogue, hybrid and digital event formats and exhibitions for ministries, institutions and associations in the context of political discourse. In 2025, the budget was again awarded to facts and fiction by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWE)
facts and fiction has implemented over 700 projects in 50 countries and has already won numerous awards for its work, including the BIE Award, the iF Communication Award, the ADC competition, the Galaxy Award and the Red Dot Award.