Half-time for Expo 2025 Osaka: The mascots of the German Pavilion, the Circulars, developed by facts and fiction, inspire the visitors
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On July 13, the milestone had come: Expo 2025 Osaka celebrated its half-way point. Its doors have already been open for three months. facts and fiction is significantly involved in the pavilions for Germany, Austria and the European Union (EU) at the world exhibition. The mascots of the German pavilion, the Circulars, have been proving to be a notable crowd-puller.
Expo 2025 is going to take place in Osaka, Japan, until October 13, 2025. Under the motto “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”, 150 countries and 25 international organizations are taking part. By the end of June, the German Pavilion had already welcomed 1 million visitors, more than 10 million people have visited the World Expo in total. The organizer expects around 28 million visitors over the entire duration of the event.
The German Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka is dedicated to a central theme for shaping the future: the circular economy (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
Germany at Expo 2025 Osaka: Wa! Germany
The German Pavilion at Expo 2025 Osaka is dedicated to a central theme for shaping the future: the circular economy. Circularity is the leitmotif of the German Pavilion; shaping a circular world together is the motto. In the exhibition, visitors embark on an emotional and multi-sensory journey in which they discover tangible visions for life in a circular society.
Visitors experience the exhibition individually (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
The Circulars – crowd pullers in the German Pavilion
On their way through the pavilion, visitors are accompanied by the Circulars, the pavilion's mascots. They were inspired by Kawaii, the Japanese aesthetic of cuteness. The Circulars appear throughout the pavilion in various forms, but are mainly used as talking guides.
The Circulars speak automatically at important points, light up and vibrate 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 Circulars create emotional connections with the visitors, arouse curiosity and become the highlight of the visit (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
But the Circulars are far more than just an audio guide – they are a personal friend on the journey through the exhibition (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
Visitors can adjust the language and volume – and experience the exhibition in a completely personalized way. After the tour, the Circulars are returned, cleaned, disinfected and recharged – ready for the next adventure. They show how technology can intuitively and playfully enrich an exhibition experience – without pushing itself to the fore.
Over 40 touchpoints invite visitors to discover, touch and delve deeper into the content – according to their own interests (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
Whether as an interactive content guide, a walking act or a cuddly toy in the store, the Circulars are the crowd puller in the German Pavilion – they inspire visitors and bring them closer to the topic of the circular economy.
“The Circulars are cute little creatures that live in the German Pavilion. Everyone loves them! And at the same time, they are an innovative way of getting people excited about complicated content and intensifying engagement with the exhibition”
says Andreas Horbelt, Creative Director and Member of the Leadership Panel at facts and fiction.
After the tour, the Circulars are returned, cleaned, disinfected and recharged – ready for the next adventure (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
For those who cannot visit the German Pavilion in Osaka, the pavilion is also open in virtual reality and offers a first impression of the Circulars: Virtual Expo
facts and fiction: Specialist for interactive guide systems
For years, the company has been developing individual visitor guidance systems that create surprising new approaches to the content of exhibitions and thus interest broad target groups in messages of the museums.
An interactive guide system was already used at Expo 2020 Dubai: a specially developed innovative nametag transformed the pavilion into an intelligent space that responded individually to each guest: Anyone approaching an exhibit was greeted by name – in their own language.
If two or more people of different languages engaged with an exhibit at the same time, the exhibit switched to bilingual or trilingual mode. And the exhibits reacted to the content of the respective guest, for example by integrating information from their country of origin into the narrative.
At the BERLIN GLOBAL exhibition at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, visitors can use the chip bracelet developed by facts and fiction to connect to the exhibition at the beginning of their visit and start an interactive tour. The system uses the token to record responses at several interactive stations in the exhibition, allowing visitors' opinions to be incorporated into the ongoing exhibition.
In total, there are eleven dilemma questions in which visitors choose between two statements on the topic they have just experienced before entering a new room; their decision is saved on the chip wristband. At the end, visitors have the opportunity to receive an individual evaluation of the tour and to discuss the topics of the exhibition with others.
In the special exhibition “A Matter of Taste” at the experimenta in Heilbronn, a credit card also functions as a kind of admission ticket to the digital exhibits and enables the content to be addressed personally and displayed in the desired language selected in advance. With the credit card in hand – after all, you have to be able to afford taste – visitors start their interactive journey of discovery through the world of taste.
They can repeatedly make „taste decisions“ along the way and take part in small surveys. The credit card is therefore much more than the simple personalization of the exhibition, it opens up the world of data: Query results, selected favorite colors or even the length of stay – in short, the taste traces that visitors leave behind at each exhibit – are stored on the card. At the end, visitors can then compare their tastes with those of other visitors on site.
25 years of Expo experience
facts and fiction has 25 years of Expo experience and has already implemented a total of 13 country participations: At the World Expo in Japan, the agency is designing and realizing the country participation for Germany for the second time in a row and is responsible for the exhibitions for Austria and the EU.
Whether as an audio guide, a walking act or a cuddly toy in the store – the Circulars are the crowd puller in the German Pavilion (Copyright: Stefan Schilling).
Background Information
On behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, Koelnmesse GmbH is responsible for the organisation and operation of the German Pavilion at Expo 2025 in Osaka. The concept, planning and realisation of the German Pavilion are the responsibility of the “German Pavilion Expo 2025 Osaka Consortium”, consisting of the companies facts and fiction (Cologne) and GL events Live (Lyon) with the support of the Japanese branch. facts and fiction is responsible for content, exhibition and media design; the pavilion is being built by GL events Live and GL events Japan. The architecture and spatial concept were designed by LAVA Architects (Berlin).
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 currently developed the pavilions for Germany, Austria and the EU at the World Expo in Japan that will take 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 2024, the budget was again awarded to facts and fiction by the German Ministry of the Environment (BMUV).
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.