The theme of this edition, organized in collaboration with the General Commissariat for Italy at Expo 2025 Osaka, is that of Expo 2025 “Designing Future Society for our Lives”, a theme that aims to focus the participation of the international community on the planning of a sustainable society that supports individuals’ ideas about how they want to live.

“What is a happy lifestyle?” is the question that Expo tries to answer: life not only for human beings but also in a broader sense in terms of the creations and Nature that surround man.

The general theme is thus broken down into 3 sub-themes:

• Saving Lives: this means protecting and saving the lives of individuals. This subtheme can be associated, for example, with measures taken to combat infectious diseases through improving public health, ensuring safety with initiatives to prevent and reduce the risk of natural disasters or global catastrophes, and a harmonious coexistence with Nature.

• Empowering lives: in the sense of enriching people’s lives and expanding their potential. Related topics may well include high quality distance learning through the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies); promoting a healthy lifestyle to ensure greater longevity through adequate exercise and diet, and maximizing human potential through the use of AI and robotics.

• Connecting lives: connecting the lives of individuals in order to build communities and enrich society. This subtheme covers topics such as the power of partnership and co-creation, advanced communications enabled by ICT, and designing a data-driven society.

Application for the Award is open to products, product systems, services and events currently existing and available on the market, but only in those countries participating in Expo 2025 Osaka. This information can be found at the following link made available by the organizers:

https://www.mofa.go.jp/ecm/ec/page22e_000942.html

The products must fall within the category of the general theme (“Designing Future Society for our Lives”) and the Expo sub-themes and have been put on the market during the time period  between 1^st January 2020 and 31^st December 2024.

The categories into which products must fall in order to be presented are as follows:

1. Design for living: home furnishings and accessories, bathroom fixtures and accessories, kitchen furnishings and accessories, household appliances and electronics, home automation control systems, outdoor and garden furniture, landscaping equipment, street furniture, materials and surfaces, air conditioning and heating systems.
2. Design for lighting: public or private indoor and outdoor lighting fixtures, technical lighting systems, monumental and street lighting.
3. Design for mobility: individual and collective means of transport for air, nautical and road mobility; bicycles and bicycle accessories, cars and motorcycles, motorhomes, boats, trains and airplanes, alternative mobility, road safety and mobility accessories.
4. Design for work: furniture and accessories for work and the office, professional appliances, means of transport for work, machines and components for industry, software, tools and equipment for work, furniture and equipment for communities, medical and healthcare tools and equipment.
5. Design for the individual: clothing, equipment for sports, well-being and personal hygiene, mobile telephony, PDAs, MP3 players, personal electronics, games and articles for children, prostheses and medical equipment for private use, and jewellery
6. Food design: communication, packaging, services, places related to the sale and consumption of foodstuffs, objects and tools for food preparation and use, foods and dishes.
7. Service and social design: public and private initiative projects to improve the citizen-user/institution/service relationship, systems for sharing, welcoming, participation, for the development of a sustainable economy for communities, projects that aim to change behaviors and strategies for greater social involvement.
8. Design for communication: social campaigns, corporate identity, publishing graphics, information design, packaging, type design, video graphics, web design and multimedia.

Participation in the ADI Compasso d’Oro International Award is open to designers and companies from the different countries participating in Expo 2025. The candidate products must currently be available on the market during the period indicated in section 2.

Applications may be made by completing a specific online form.

The digital participation form, available on the www.compassodorointernational.com website has been specifically designed for the candidature and presentation of the product/service and requires the submission of photos, a description and the uploading of a short video (which may also have been recorded using a smart-phone) showing an illustration of the product/service in English and lasting a maximum of 60 seconds. The physical characteristics of the materials listed above are clearly explained in the online application form.

Application for participation in the ADI 2025 Compasso d’Oro International Award must be sent between 16^th September 2024 and 10^th March 2025. ADI reserves the right to extend the time limits within which to nominate products.

Participation in the Compasso d’Oro International Award will require the payment of the sum of €1,000 for each nominated product, to be paid upon completion of the application form directly on the website. Once payment has been made, the form can no longer be modified and all data entered will be considered usable and publishable for the purposes of the Award.

Selection and evaluation of candidate products/services will take place in two phases:

a. The initial phase will involve an analysis of relevance to the theme which will be carried out by the ADI Executive Committee. Only those products/services that are relevant to the theme of the award and the admission requirements will pass this phase. Depending on the quantity and specific nature of the applications received, the ADI Steering Committee reserves the right to establish a thematic pre-selection commission.

At the end of this phase all participating projects will be promptly informed as to the outcome.

b. The second phase will be the final evaluation of the Compasso d’Oro International Award Jury, referred to in section 6 below.

Among the goods/services that will have passed the first phase of analysis, the Jury will identify:

• 20 (twenty) Compasso d’Oro Awards for applicants judged to be of absolute excellence.
• Up to 50 (up to fifty) Compasso d’Oro Honourable Mentions for applicants judged excellent within the context of the themes and categories identified in sections 1 and 2.

The award-winning goods will be catalogued so that they can be placed under the care of the ADI Foundation in partnership with the relevant Government agencies (Regional Superintendence of the Ministry of Culture) and will become permanent elements of the ADI Compasso d’Oro Historical Collection.

For those products distinguished with Honourable Mentions, the relevant manufacturer will, in partnership with ADI, undertake to store the related product (at the manufacturer’s expense) so that it may be made available to ADI for any future exhibitions that will require its presence.

The Award Jury will be international in nature and made up of 5 members chosen and appointed by the ADI Executive Committee from among qualified Italian and international figures, intended in addition to design, to represent the complementary skills relating to the identified categories.

Jury members may not have products/services nominated for the Award or be personally or professionally involved with companies or designers participating in the Award.

The president of the Jury will be elected from within the Jury itself at its first meeting. Each member of the Jury has the right to one vote. In case of a tie, the vote of the President of the Jury is worth double.

The Jury will assign Awards to those projects that have received a favourable vote from the majority of the jurors. The Jury’s decision is final.

The Jury will be able to consult experts (who shall not have the right to vote) designated by ADI regarding specific technological, environmental, regulatory and economic topics; on legal issues the Jury may request the intervention of an expert designated by the president of the Design Jury.

The Jury shall have the task of:

• evaluating the awards according to the judging criteria defined by these Regulations;
• drawing up (for awarded products/services only) the reasons for the award in relation to the judging criteria;
• drawing up a general report on the selection and the sector analysed.

The Jury’s decision is final.

The Jury (and every person aware of the awards and mentions awarded) undertakes to maintain complete confidentiality until the public ceremony for the awarding of the Compasso d’Oro ADI International Award.

The Awards presentation ceremony will be held in Osaka Japan on 5^th September 2025 at the Italian Pavilion within the Expo. The date may be subject to change in the event of unexpected commitments of ADI. Those products that have received the Compasso d’Oro Award will be exhibited there.

ADI is solely responsible for the exhibition and its display methods. It reserves the right to assess the methods based on the objects that will be exhibited.

The organization and shipping methods will be evaluated based on the winners’ countries of origin and the size of the products.

10.1 Accuracy of data

The data compiled by the person submitting the application are to be considered usable for all purposes in the form in which they were presented, according to the communication requirements determined by ADI in all publications relating to the selected objects. The compilers of the form assume all responsibility for the truthfulness and correctness of the data transmitted, without prejudice to the fact that any and all costs necessary for any subsequent correction of such data will remain the sole responsibility of the interested parties. If ADI is required to proceed with the correction or elimination of the data published due to proven claims on behalf of third parties, any costs will remain the exclusive responsibility of the subjects who had mistakenly provided ADI with such data.

10.2 Liability for violation of third party rights

The originality and ownership of the candidate products, systems, services, studies or pieces of research are certified by the person submitting the application and ADI hereby specifies that it does not carry out any type of verification regarding what has been declared.

Any violation of third party rights, patents, trademarks, copyrights or other proprietary rights therefore remains the exclusive responsibility of the declarants, who hereby undertake to indemnify and hold ADI harmless from any negative consequences, including economic and/or damage that may result.

Participants also guarantee that the products, systems, services, studies or pieces of research presented are not copies or modifications of other people’s works; if a third party provides proof of the untruthfulness of this guarantee, ADI reserves the right to cancel the assigning of the Award and to proceed with the immediate exclusion of the documentation materials from any publication, specifying from now on the impossibility of proceeding to an automatic re-assignment of the same to the real owner of the candidate asset.

10.3 Use of documentation materials

All materials sent with the application are intended to be publishable. ADI shall have the right to use them, in whole or in part, as part of the selection procedure, to reproduce them in whole or in part in publications and catalogues relating to the Award, on ADI websites, in communications to the media relating to events connected with the publication of the ADI volumes and with any exhibitions featuring the ADI Compasso d’Oro Award.

Those submitting applications hereby allow all materials (texts and images) to be freely adapted according to the communication requirements of the various instruments used, thereby releasing and holding ADI harmless from any liability for any violation of third party rights.