Next vision: the eyewear trends igniting present and future
At MIDO 2026, one trend stands out above all: eyewear is increasingly becoming a language.
No longer just an accessory that “completes” a look, it now tells stories of identity, taste and intention. The collections on display reveal a new balance between essential design and research, between heritage and contemporaneity, between the desire for authenticity and the drive to push boundaries through increasingly advanced materials and processes.
The trends emerging today move along three strong directions. Water Lights, with transparencies, lightness and lighting effects that transform colour. Magma, where material becomes intense, organic, almost primal, driven by advanced technologies. Carnet de Voyage, bringing urban atmospheres, archives, symbols and international inspirations into design. Completing the picture are sustainable materials (bio-acetates, recycled materials, lightweight metals), reinterpreted timeless shapes (pilot, cat-eye, panto, navigator), and sober yet sophisticated palettes—crystal, havana, natural tones, with bolder accents precisely calibrated.
While MIDO powerfully showcases the eyewear of the present, the future is already on the agenda. With the LIVETREND talk on Spring Summer 2027 Eyewear Trends, the exhibition also becomes the place to start reading, in advance, the codes that will shape the next season, through the evolution of shapes, colours and materials. The starting assumption is clear: in a context marked by geopolitical, cultural and technological instability, consumers respond to anxiety by seeking identity-driven niches, rituals and new forms of aesthetic identification.
SS27 forecasts are articulated into four distinct macro-trends, each with its own visual and material universe.
Mare Noir interprets an uneasy yet sophisticated nostalgia—a desire to escape towards a past perceived as safer. The maritime theme generates a refined sense of estrangement: reimagined sailor uniforms, “modest” aesthetics, sharp black-and-white contrasts, and opaline, pinstriped, almost powdery structures. The palette moves through earthy tones, flesh hues and burgundy, while design plays with contrasts between colour and structure, blending nostalgia and futuristic tension through angles, cut-outs and clean geometries.
Urban Beach emerges from the hybridisation of everyday life and sport, portraying a fluid consumer who is both professional and athletic. It is the aesthetic of the office mood infused with leisure: tailoring combined with beachwear elements, visual irony, and a desire to break seasonal rules. Colours become more saturated and vibrant, with the return of neon, iridescent shades, compact volumes and bold transparencies. The play lies in the contrast between simple structures and maximalist details, between minimalism and decoration.
Primal Relics responds to the need for ritual and spiritual connection. It is a trend that looks to the exotic, the ancestral, the symbolic gesture. Palettes warm up with spice, mustard and ochre tones, while materials evoke primitive nature: fossil-like and marbled acetates combine with gold-toned metal structures, creating eyewear with an almost talismanic value—both sophisticated and archaic.
Summer Residence, finally, represents a desire for refuge and care. It is an intimate, domestic aesthetic, inspired by a slowed-down, private summer, far from ostentation. Shapes become light and reassuring, almost “barely there”, while materials favour soft-touch surfaces, milky acetates, delicate transparencies and discreet jewel-like details. It is a quiet luxury, made of visual comfort, diffused elegance and a sense of wellbeing, transforming eyewear into something to inhabit rather than to display.
In this dialogue between present and future, MIDO 2026 confirms itself as the place where the market meets forecasting: on one side, trends already consolidated in collections; on the other, emerging codes that will guide eyewear design in the seasons to come.